DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2022, NEW DELHI, LATE CITY, 20 PAGES SINCE 1932 `7.00 (`8 BIHAR & RAIPUR, `12 SRINAGAR) WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SC lets BCCI amend cooling-off clause, sets stage for Ganguly and Jay Shah to continue Court allows board’s plea that clause is unduly stringent, needs to be changed PRESIDENT MURMU TO REPRESENT INDIA AT QUEEN’S FUNERAL KEN STARR, BEHIND IMPEACHMENT OF CLINTON, DIES AT 76 PAGE 14 Full support for Agnipath rallies, Punjab CM says after Army warning ANANTHAKRISHNAN G NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 14 IN AN order that paves the way for BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah to continue for another term in office, the Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the cricket board'srequesttopermitamendments to its constitution so as to modify the requirement of a mandatorythree-yearcooling-off CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 Sourav Ganguly, Jay Shah WILL JAY SHAH BE NEXT BCCI CHIEF? PAGE 19 E E X P L A I NE D WORLD Monopoly versus ● continuity THE BCCI “cooling-off” debate is one between monopoly and continuity. In 2016, the original Supreme Court order on the issue had asked office-bearers to take a break after every threeyear tenure, stressing the importance of fresh blood in cricket administration. Board was waiting for weather to change, says reform panel head Lodha SANDEEP DWIVEDI NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 14 FORMER CHIEF Justice of India R M Lodha, who headed a SupremeCourt-mandatedpanel that recommended a series of reformsin Indiancricket administration six years ago, described the contentious cooling-off ‘Cooling-off clause a snow mountain’ clauseintheBCCIconstitutionas a “snow mountain” that cricket CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 Vedanta-Foxconn: Shinde dials PM, site survey begins in Gujarat JV held 6 meetings with Gujarat, 2 of these with CM, say officials Any laxity will be viewed seriously: CM Mann MAN AMAN SINGH CHHINA CHANDIGARH, SEPTEMBER 14 WITHTHEArmywarningthatits recruitmentralliesinPunjab,under the short-term Agnipath scheme, may either be “held in abeyance” or shifted to neighbouring states due to “vacillating” support from the local civil administration, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday directed deputy commissioners to provide “complete support” andwarnedthat“anylaxityshall be viewed seriously”. As reported by The Indian Express on Wednesday, in a letter dated September 8, addressed to V K Janjua, Punjab Chief Secretary, and Kumar Rahul, Principal Secretary, Employment Generation, Skill Development and Training, the Army’szonalrecruitmentofficer in Jalandhar, Major General CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 VALLABH OZARKAR, ALOK DESHPANDE & AVINASH NAIR Smoke billows from the plane at Muscat airport in Oman. PTI Smoke from engine of AI Express plane in Muscat, all evacuated PRANAV MUKUL NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 14 AS MANY as 145 passengers, includingfourinfants,andsixcrew members were evacuated from an Air India Express plane in Muscat on Wednesday after smoke was observed from one of the engines of the Boeing 737 aircraft. According to reports, the plane was preparing to depart for Kochi at 11.20 am (Oman time). When it was on the taxiway, another aircraft reported seeingfumesfromoneof theengines. The aircraft was then stopped on the taxiway and the cockpit crew activated the onboard engine fire extinguishers. Meanwhile, slides were deployed to evacuate the passengers. Accordingtosources,noneof the passengers suffered any major injuries; some sustained minor scrapes and injuries during evacuation. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is investigating the incident. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Mamata claims restraint, says cops could have fired; BJP calls it TMC conspiracy EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE KOLKATA, SEPTEMBER 14 A DAY after several BJP workers and police personnel were injuredinKolkatainaface-off during the Nabanna protest march, West Bengal Chief Minister MamataBanerjeesaidthepolice couldhaveopenedfirebut“controlled the situation in a restrainedmanner”whilethemain CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee meets ACP Debjit Chatterjee at SSKM Hospital in Kolkata on Wednesday. Express MUMBAI, AHMEDABAD, SEPTEMBER 14 HOURS AFTER the VedantaFoxconn joint venture signed a memorandumof understanding with the Gujarat government Tuesdayforitssemiconductorfacility,MaharashtraChief Minister Eknath Shinde, who drew Opposition fire for letting the Rs 1.5lakhcroreproject“slipout”of thestate,spoketoPrimeMinister Narendra Modi and was assured thattheCentrewouldhelpbring “big projects” to the state. Shinde told reporters Wednesday: “It has been only one-and-half months for our government.Assoonaswecame to power, Dy CM (Devendra) Fadnavis and I held meetings with Foxconn and Vedanta. We requested, offered them a subsidy of Rs 39,000 crore.” “Such projects don’t go out of Modi leaves for SCO today, Russia confirms his meeting with Putin SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 14 PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi is likely to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, sources said Wednesday. ThePrimeMinisterwillreach Samarkand Thursday evening for the summit. RussianPresidentialaideYuri Ushakov told reporters that President Putin will discuss Russian-Indian cooperation within the UN and G20 with Prime Minister Modi during the SCO meeting. “A conversation on internationalagendawithModiwillalso take place, the sides will discuss issuesofstrategicstability,thesituation in the Asia Pacific Region, and, of course, cooperation within major multilateral formats,suchastheUN,theG20and the SCO," Ushakov said, Russian GOVT & POLITICS CHINA AND UKRAINE ON TABLE AT INDIA-FRANCE TALKS PAGE 7 news agency TASS reported. “This is particularly importantbecauseIndiawillpresidein the UN Security Council in December, and in 2023, India will lead the SCO and also chair the G20,” he said. On July 1, the two leaders spoke to each other and reviewed the implementation of the decisions taken during President Putin’s visit to India in December 2021. Eye on graph, Himachal Pradesh Police has been working to check crime rate — NYPD its model PAGE 1 ANCHOR AMIL BHATNAGAR SHIMLA, SEPTEMBER 14 THEDATAonthedashboardwas stark and called for immediate action:week after week, over 25 per cent accidents across the state, including in districts such asShimla,KulluandMandi,happened between 6 pm and 9 pm. At the weekly meeting chaired by the DGP of the Himachal Police, it was decided that more traffic personnel would be deployed during these hours, in- stead of during the afternoon hours, when traffic was lean. The results followed: In 2021 there were 1.73 lakh traffic accidents, down from 1.81 lakh accidents in the pre-pandemic year of 2019. Police have also written to the Public Works Department (PWD) to install crash barriers at 500 accident spots. This, after data showed that these hilly routes make for 70 per cent of mishap-pronestretchesandthat more than 3,020 “roll down” accidents have taken place in the last five years. For close to two years now, the Himachal Police have been working with a new model of The department is using a new model of ‘predictive policing’ ‘predictive policing’, using a data-intensive approach to steer the state towards reduced crime and accident rates. Every week, DGP Sanjay Kundu and his team pore through data from the week gone by — graphs of crimes under different heads, along with the weekly average over the last five years. An uptick in crime is marked with a red line and a drop is depicted in green. According to the latest NCRB dataforHimachalPradesh,thetotalnumberofcases,includingunder IPC sections and special and locallaws(SLL),stoodat18,833in 2021,afallof2,000casesfromthe previous year. The total number of violentcrimes,includingmurder,dippedto1,762in2021from 1,817 in 2020. The number of environmentaloffencesalsodipped from 198 in 2020 to 163 in 2021. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 hand in one or two months. The companyhadalreadymadeupits mind, and may have thought the (previous MVA) government wouldnothelp.Theydidn’tknow the government would change. Theirdecisionwasalreadymade, so they signed the MoU (with Gujarat). But now they have tweeted that they will expand here in future. They want to create a manufacturing hub for iPhone and TV equipment. This is also a bigthing.Wewelcomeit,”hesaid. CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 EXPRESS NETWORK TWO SISTERS, BOTH MINORS, FOUND HANGINGIN U.P. PAGE 9 Goa CM Pramod Sawant, Goa BJP chief Sadanand Tanavade with the Congress MLAs, in Panaji on Wednesday. PTI EXODUS BEGINS, SAYS CM Cong cracks in Goa, 8 of its 11 MLAs join BJP Ex-CM Kamat, who swore not to leave Congress, leads exit: God told me to go MAYURA JANWALKAR & MANOJ C G BUSINESS AS USUAL PANAJI, NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 14 AS RAHUL Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra entered its seventh day, the Congress, on an electoral decline for years now, was dealt another body blow Wednesday when eightofits11MLAsinGoa,including former Chief Minister DigambarKamatandformerLeaderof OppositionMichaelLobo,quitthe party and joined the BJP. While the BJP called the high-profile exits as the beginningof the“Congress chhoro yatra”, the Congress hit back, saying a “nervous” BJP had “fast tracked” its “Operation Kichad” CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 BY UNNY THE EDITORIAL PAGE AYARAM, GAYARAM PAGE 12