FRIDAY 13 TWO YEARS SEPTEMBER, 2024 HOW LONG IT TOOK THE FOUR TO PREPARE FOR THIS HISTORIC MISSION epaper.morningstandard.in facebook.com/TheMorningStandard TWO CIVILIANS COMPLETE WORLD’S FIRST-EVER PRIVATE SPACEWALK US entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis on Thursday became the first non-astronauts to perform spacewalk X.com/TheMornStandard M A L AY S I A UNICEF ALARMED BY CHILD SEX ABUSE ANOTHER MAJOR MILESTONE FOR SPACEX Hundreds of children and teens, rescued by authorities from care homes, allegedly faced an ‘unimaginable horror’ of physical and sexual abuse. A CAPITAL VIEW OF NEWS PAGE 9  NEW DELHI J8.00  Both sides refuse to yield MANDAR PARDIKAR Live telecast sticking point  PAGES 12 Govt cites court case to block it ATTEMPTING to change the optics following widespread protests by people from all walks of life against the horrific rape-murder of a 31-yearold trainee doctor at the staterun RG Kar Medical College and Hospital here on August 9, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday dramatically offered to quit. “I do not care for my chair and am ready to resign for the sake of the people. I, too, want justice,” Mamata said at the state secretariat soon after the proposed talks between her government and the protesting junior doctors failed as the medics refused to enter the venue following rejection of their de- SITARAM YECHURY EXIT, STAGE LEFT: A COMRADE TO ALL SANTWANA BHATTACHARYA EDITOR A mop of frizzy hair that placed him in a permanent Seventies, a boyish face that seemed to be built for laughter, eyes that were always smiling (though of late touched by sadness), a manner that was the very definition of amiable, speech that was erudite but easy, persuasive rather than offensive, smooth but always guided by conviction. Of all the talk of revolution that swirled around, he must have been the gentlest apostle. Which is why everyone, even the fiercest antagonists, will recall Sitaram Yechury, the person, as much as what he stood for. With fondness and not a trace of rancour. That’s what places him in a rare category among politicians—he was one of those who could converse with anyone, everyone, as a friend. Ideology defined him, but did not exhaust his inventory An endangered tribe these days, it . has lost one of its best, and not at the best of times. One would have to say Comrade Yechury at 72, is gone too soon. , Most appraisals of his career will read Yechury in terms of his well-known trajectory as a Communist frontman, starting from his days as a student leader during a definitive era at Jawaharlal Nehru University and analyse whether that promise was filled out or not in terms of building the Left movement in India. Only few realise what a talent India has been deprived of—in universalist terms. A political life that was oath-bound to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) meant that its puritanical aloofness in New Delhi always applied to him—and always kept him out of government. In fact, strangely for a politician, the question never seemed to even arise. The loss was perhaps India’s as much as the Left’s. Judge by what he managed at the highest levels, even as a faceless, behind-the-scenes interlocutor. The Manmohan Singh government’s final nuclear deal with the US—with conditions favourable to India—was a document that bore the stamp of an exhaustive, point-by-point, clause-by-clause, process of critique and emendation conducted by Yechury’s team. Imagine a deal with capitalist America being rewritten by a Communist. Ironic that his party finally withdrew support to the UPA on that very deal. Around those same days, his mediation was accepted, and bore fruit, within Nepal’s polity and vis-a-vis its India relations, at a particularly dark time in its history . CONTINUED ON P7 Junior doctors at the dharna site in Kolkata on Thursday | PTI GUV TURNS THE SCREWS FURTHER Governor CV Ananda Bose on Thursday said he will not share any public platform with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in view of people’s outcry over RG Kar. Bose said he will also socially boycott her 7 LAKH PEOPLE HIT BY AGITATION: CM Mamata claimed that around 27 patients have died and approximately 7 lakh people have suffered because of the ongoing ceasework agitation of the junior doctors @ T’Puram It is important that states should get funds which do not come with conditions Pinarayi Vijayan, Kerala chief minister A conclave of the finance ministers from five Oppositionruled states here on Thursday flagged concerns over the rise in surcharges and cesses and the low share for states from the divisible pool of taxes. The conclave, hosted by the Kerala government, was attended by Telangana deputy CM and finance minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, Tamil Nadu finance minister Thangam Thennarasu, Karnataka revenue minister Krishna Byre Gowda, and Punjab finance minister Sardar Harpal Singh Cheema, besides Kerala finance minister K N Balagopal. Inaugurating the conclave, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Alleged involvement in a crime is no ground to demolish properties, the Supreme Court said on Thursday and ordered a Gujarat civic body to maintain status quo and not threaten to bulldoze the house of an accused in a criminal case. Assam eviction drive: 2 killed in police firing Two persons were killed in the police firing during an eviction drive at a village on the outskirts of Guwahati on Thursday. More than a dozen others, including a magistrate and cops, were injured. STATES MUST GET 50% TAX SHARE: THANGAM Minister Thangam Thennarasu said states must get 50% share in central tax and asked the 16th Finance Commission to ensure that reliance on discretionary grants is reduced “We need a strategy to reward performing states while handholding the laggards,” Kerala FM Balagopal said. Telangana minister Bhatti said the Finance Commission should ensure fair and equitable distribution of resources among the Centre and states. TN minister Thennarasu said, “Effective devolution is less due to imposition of cess and surcharges.” Punjab minister Cheema said the GST rollout limited the fiscal autonomy of states. Karnataka Revenue Minister Gowda said the Finance Commission should recommend capping cesses / surcharges at 5%, adding that anything above that should be part of the divisible pool. Now, surcharge and cess are not part of this pool. J I T E N D R A C H O U B E Y @New Delhi Caution sounded Landslides, cloudburst in U’khand & HP likely Flash flood alert in U’khand, HP, East & West UP, MP, East Rajasthan MORE of rains this week. A red alert situation has been declared for Delhi, west UP and Uttarakhand as a depression is moving towards the hill state. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted heavy rain would trigger landslides and cloudbursts in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. Flash flood alerts have been issued in UP MP and , , Rajasthan on September 12 and 13. The IMD has also predicted widespread rains across north India this week. The depression, which was moving towards northwest from the Bay of Bengal for the past four days crossing Odisha, Chhattisgarh, north MP, suddenly took a sharp turn towards northeast on the night of September 11. “Due to the westerly winds at mid-level, the depression will recur in the northeast, leading to heavy to very heavy rain over west UP, north MP, Delhi and parts of Haryana on September 12,” said Mahesh Palawat of Skymet, a private Indian company providing weather forecasting. D I PA K M O N D A L @ New Delhi RETAIL inflation stayed below RBI’s target of 4% for the second straight month in August at 3.65%, though it is a tad higher than July’s 3.60%. The uptick is due to a 5.3% annual rise in food prices, led by vegetables and fruits. According to experts, a favourable base effect helped retail inflation stay below 4% in the past two months but this effect could fade from September, leading to a spike in Consumer Price Index (CPI). Vegetable prices shot up 10.71% year-on-year in August, though prices dropped 2.51% on a month-on-month basis. S U C H I T R A K A LYA N M O H A N T Y @ New Delhi CHAMPIONS MEET PM Prime Minister Narendra Modi with India’s Paralympians for their record haul of 29 medals at the recently concluded Paris Games, in New Delhi, on Thursday | PTI ‘Richest woman’ enters Hisar fray as ‘BJP rebel’ candidate KURUKSHETRA BJP MP Naveen Jindal’s mother Savitri Jindal, 74, is the richest woman in the country this year with a net worth of $29.1 billion. She was the aspirant for the Haryana assembly elections. However, she filed her nomination from Hisar as an Independent candidate on Thursday . On the last day of filing papers, Savitri Jindal, the chairperson of steel and power conglomerate, OP Jindal Group, and wife of industrialist late OP Jindal, entered the fray against minister and MLA from Hisar, Kamal Gupta. After filing her nomination, she said that she had pledged to serve Hisar for its development and transformation. “The people of Hisar are my family and it was Om Prakash Jindal who established my relationship with this family I am fully dedi. cated to living up to the expectations of the people and maintaining their trust,” she said. Jindal Group founder Om Prakash Jindal thrice won from Hisar (1991, 2000 and 2005). He was also a minister in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led government when he died in a helicopter crash in 2005. Savitri “The overall outlook for the agriculture sector has improved due to a good monsoon and improved kharif sowing. However, challenges remain, particularly with the uneven distribution of rainfall,” said Rajani Sinha, chief economist at Care Ratings. Core inflation (CPI excluding food and beverages, and fuel prices) also eased to 3.5% in August from 3.6% in July. Analysts feel this is a temporary dip, and the same may go up through the rest of the financial year. Meanwhile, industrial output in July grew at 4.8%, bettering the 4.7% growth witnessed in the previous month. SC verdict on Kejriwal bail petition today HARYANA POLLS H A R P R E E T B A J W A @ Chandigarh ternal political forces influencing a section of the doctors. “I did my best, but I apologise to the people for failing to bring them to the negotiating table. There are instructions from outside, asking some of the junior doctors not to sit for negotiations,” she said. Earlier, chief secretary Manoj Pant sent an email inviting the junior doctors, holding sit-in outside the state health department headquarters at Salt Lake since Tuesday for the , meeting with the CM at 5 pm. Though the email had mentioned a 15-member delegation, the government later blinked and allowed 30 doctors as desired by the protesting medics. The doctors reached the secretariat around 5.25 pm, but stayed put outside the venue for over two hours. “We made recording arrangements. There should be mutual trust,” Pant said. Retail inflation inches up as base effect diminishes Heavy rain predicted for Delhi, depression moves to U’khand EXPRESS READ SC cautions against ‘bulldozer justice’ Vijayan said states need a higher share from the taxes collected by the Union government, adding that Kerala has been demanding that the states’ share be raised to 50% considering the “vertical fiscal imbalance between the taxing powers and expenditure obligations of the Union and the states”. The meet also discussed the approach towards the 16th Finance Commission and issues of fiscal federalism. mand to telecast it live for transparancy . The junior doctors, too, expressed disappointment with the talks falling through and said they would continue their agitation. They added that they were open for talks. Earlier in the day senior doc, tors of state-run hospitals warned that they would join the protests if any action is taken against their junior colleagues protesting against the rape-murder. The junior doctors said that they were disappointed at the CM talking about her chair since they never wanted her resignation. Mamata said the meeting couldn’t be live-streamed since the matter is sub-judice. “What the Supreme Court can, we can’t,” she said, hinting at ex- We’ve tolerated a lot of canards for the last 33 days. I thought the doctors would engage in talks for the sake of the patients and on humanitarian grounds — Mamata Banerjee Oppn states seek equal tax share EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE Didn’t ask CM to quit, say docs No talks for 2nd straight day, Didi offers to resign E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Kolkata 1 2 AU G U ST 1 9 5 2 - 1 2 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 24 Isaacman opened the hatch of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and made his way through to open space. After about 15 minutes, he was replaced by Gillis. Two other crew members remained strapped to their seats to monitor from inside. The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, which lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, is yet another major milestone for Elon Musk’s space firm | P9 joined politics thereafter and was elected as an MLA from the Hisar assembly seat twice. She won the bypoll from Hisar in 2005 and was made a minister in the Hooda government and was reelected in 2009. She was defeated by Kamal Gupta in Hisar in the 2014 polls when she contested as a Congress candidate. She quit Congress in March this year when her son Naveen also left the party and later joined BJP . In the recent Lok Sabha polls, Savitri campaigned for her son in Kurukshetra and also campaigned for the BJP candidate from the Hisar Lok Sabha seat Ranjit Singh Chautala. When asked if her contesting the seat against the ruling party would not amount to rebellion, Savitri said, “It won’t be considered so. I had only campaigned for my son (in the Lok Sabah polls). I have not taken BJP membership.” Polling for the 90-member Haryana assembly is due on October 5 and the results will be out on October 8. THE Supreme Court will deliver on Friday its verdict on CM Arvind Kejriwal’s plea challenging his arrest by the CBI and seeking interim bail in the excise policy case. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan, who had on September 5 reserved its verdict on the pleas, will pronounce the judgment. While senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi represented Kejriwal, senior Additional Solicitor General (ASG) and senior lawyer S V Raju appeared for CBI. Notably, the SC granted bail to Kejriwal on July 12 in the same case being probed by the ED. He was arrested by the CBI on June 26 in the case. Terming the arrest of Kejriwal “illegal and arbitrary”, Singhvi said, “There should be safeguards regarding arrest of an accused…You can’t just barge in to arrest without any basis,” he said. Opposing Singhvi’s argument, ASG Raju said that Kejriwal moved Delhi High Court without going to the sessions court. “They first approached SC, then the HC before going back to the SC.” No laws were violated in arresting Kejriwal, the CBI asserted.