Daily briefing: Five soldiers killed in J&K terror attack; latest on Rahul Gandhi defamation case; and more

The attack comes amid discussions between the military and the government on a proposal to withdraw Rashtriya Rifles troops from the Kashmir Valley. 

🔴Meanwhile, Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutta Zardari will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting in Goa between May 4-5, making it his first visit to India in over six years. However, the terror attack in Poonch, hours after the announcement, once again puts a question mark on the visit. 

⚡ Only in the Express

“In 2002, 11 were murdered and today justice has been murdered.”

After a special court acquitted all 67 accused in the Naroda Gam massacre case in 2002, witnesses who deposed in the trial described it as a “black day” for the victims, terming it to be “devoid of conscience”. 

📰 From the Front Page

Meanwhile, a Surat court dismissed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s application for staying the March 23 order convicting him in a 2019 defamation case. What’s next for Rahul Gandhi? We explain

On day 3 of hearing a set of pleas seeking legal recognition of same-sex marriages, the Supreme Court wondered whether the law has “progressed” to accommodate such relationships. 

Assam and Arunachal Pradesh signed a Memorandum of Understanding over dispute areas along the roughly 800-km shared boundary, putting to rest an issue festering for nearly five decades. 

👩🏽‍💻 Must Read 

As we await the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission (EC) is set to replace the printed circuit board (PCB) of 2.2 lakh Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines as a part of routine maintenance, according to top EC officials.

In our opinion section today, Raman Research Institute Director Tarun Souradeep writes on what mega-science projects like Ligo-India hold for us: “Integrating lasers, optics, vacuum, quantum metrology and control-system technologies, LIGO-India will bring researchers in fundamental and applied sciences together”

According to a report based on the first census of waterbodies recently released by the Ministry of Jal Shakti, India has 24.24 lakh waterbodies like ponds, tanks and lakes, with West Bengal accounting for the most (7.47 lakh) and Sikkim the least (134), 

Earlier this week, China convened an online meeting of trade ministers of the grouping known as C+C5 — China and the five Central Asian republics, namely Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan — the latest in a series of diplomatic engagements by Beijing with the region since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In our explainer, we trace the path of China’s diplomacy in Central Asia, and where India stands 

⏱️ And Finally…

Alternatives to WhatsApp, Facebook and Google for communication, availability of vegetarian Indian food and the possibility of having an India House in China. These are among the demands that Bhupender Bajwa, India’s chef de mission for this year’s September-October Asian Games, is expected to raise at the April 25 meeting at the host city Hangzhou. “We want to avoid any last-minute hiccups and figure out solutions to all these issues in advance,” he says.

🤐 Delhi Confidential: Less than a month after Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Puri promised a woman sanitation worker at an event in Delhi, a jacket made of recycled plastic was delivered to her home in Uttarakhand. The Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban Twitter handle on Thursday shared photos of a smiling Prabha donning the white-coloured “waste to wealth” sleeveless jacket.

In today’s episode of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, we look at Indians finding themselves stuck in Sudan, India becoming the most population nation in the world, and Apple opening its first stores in the country.

Until tomorrow,

Varsha Sriram and Anamni Gupta