DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA ● REG.NO. MCS/067/2018 - 20 RNI REGN. NO. 1543/57 JOURNALISM OF COURAGE MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2024, MUMBAI, LATE CITY, 18 PAGES `5.00 ● WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 Modi Sarkar ki Guarantee Government of India Hamara Sankalp Viksit Bharat Collateral-free loan of up to ₹3 lakh under PM Vishwakarma, 18 traditional trades included Scan for more information AN EXPRESS INVESTIGATION ANIL AMBANI TO NIIRA RADIA, GAUTAM SINGHANIA TO BAKUL NATH Searches,summons:ED’sPandoraprobe touchesIndianownersofoffshorefirms 80 108 132 76 RITU SARIN BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY Ram temple was desire of majority, no need to protest: IUML leader IUML Kerala chief Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal. File NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 4 RECORDINGof statements to seizure of assets; summons to searches of premises; getting details from Income TaxandRBI—anddetection of money laundering violations. These are the key aspects of the EnforcementDirectorate’s the current status of the probes, The Indian Express has learnt. The Pandora Papers refers to SAMRAT CHOUDHARY PAGE 14 Bihar Congress chief Akhilesh Prasad Singh with the MLAs and others at Hyderabad airport. PTI AS 40 MLAs of Jharkhand’s rulingallianceof JMMandCongress returned to Ranchi from Hyderabad on Sunday night, a day ahead of the Assembly floor test, 16 of Congress’s 19 MLAs in PATNA, FEBRUARY 4 neighbouring Bihar were flown fromDelhito theTelanganacapital because of fear in the party aboutanattempttosplititahead of the trust vote scheduled for February 12. Though the Janata Dal (United),BJP,andtheHindustani AwamMorcha,withthesupport of an Independent, have 128 MLAs in the 243-member House, a clear majority, state Congress leaders said they were wary of the BJP attempting to breakawaylegislatorstodealthe Mahagathbandhan a crushing blow in the crucial battleground state. Any such move would mark a massive psychological CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Indian Embassy staffer Calling it illegal, DDA demolished mosque in in Moscow held for spying for ISI: UP ATS Mehrauli; ASI records listed it a century ago LUCKNOW, FEBRUARY 4 THE UTTAR Pradesh AntiTerroristSquad(ATS)hasarrested an employee of the Ministry of External Affairs posted at the IndianEmbassyinMoscowforallegedly spying for Pakistan's ISI. Inanofficialstatementissued onSunday,theATSidentifiedthe accused as Satendra Siwal, 28. It saidthat Siwal,a nativeof Hapur district,wasarrestedonSaturday andpresentedonSundaybefore a special court in Lucknow, which sent him to judicial custody for 14 days. “The UP ATS had received inputs from several confidential Satendra Siwal was posted as Security Assistant at the embassy sources that the Pakistani spy agency ISI’s handlers had used moneytoinfluencesomepeople working at the Foreign Ministry of India to leak top secret information regarding the Indian Army and its strategies,” the ATS statement said. “The ATS developed this information and through electronicsurveillanceandevidence collection, it was found that CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 VIDHEESHA KUNTAMALLA NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 4 NO ONE’S quite sure when the Akhoondji Masjid was built in Mehrauli. But the “Mosque of Akhondji” was listed in a 1922 publication by an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India whorecordedthatwhileitsconstruction date was “unknown”, the mosque was repaired in “1270 AH (1853-4 AD)”, and that it lay west to to an old Idgah that “existed when Timur invaded India in 1398 AD”. On January 30, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) razed the Akhoondji mosque and a madrasa, describing them as “illegal structures” in Sanjay Van, a reserved forest area. “Removal of the illegal structures,religiousinnature,wasapproved by the Religious Committee, conveyed vide Minutes of Meeting dated 27/01/2024,” the DDA said. OnJanuary31,theDelhiHigh Court sought an explanation from the DDA on the basis of which it demolished the mosque,and“whetherany prior notice was given before taking the demolition action”. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 ‘Macron was pleased’: When President’s buggy returned to duty after 40 years PAGE 1 ANCHOR DIVYA A NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 4 OCTOBER LAST, when Paras, Prateek, Shivaji, Baaz,Pratapand Niagra arrived at the President’s Bodyguard, it was a signal of impending change. These six surefooted Noriker horsespulled the Presidential buggy as it made a comeback in Republic Day celebrations after 40 years. Replacing the limousine, it President Droupadi Murmu and French President Emmanuel Macron ride the buggy on Republic Day. File was this black, gold-rimmed buggy that President Droupadi Murmu and French President Emmanuel Macron rode during theceremonialprocessionalong the 1.8-km stretch from Rashtrapati Bhavan to Kartavya Path on January 26. After the assassination of the thenPrimeMinisterIndiraGandhi in 1984, the bulletproof limousines had replaced the buggy in the wake of security concerns. Until then, Rashtrapati Bhawan officials told The Indian Express, Governor General C Rajagopalachari and the CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 ownershipof29,000offshoreentities used by the super-rich to managetheirglobalmoneyflows. Thedatawasobtainedbythe International Consortium of InvestigativeJournalists(ICIJ)and shared with 150 media partners —TheIndianExpressinvestigated the Indian names on the list. The Centreannouncedthesettingup of a Multi Agency Group (MAG) to spearhead the probe. Subsequently, the Income CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 EXPRESS NETWORK BIHAR DEPUTY CHIEF MINISTER DESCRIBING THE newly consecrated Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the proposed mosque nearby as “symbols of secularism”, Indian Union Muslim ASAD REHMAN a trove of 11.9 million secret documents from 14 offshore service providers that gave details of ‘Ram Mandir dream fulfilled, Modi now has only one agenda, that of development’ SANTOSH SINGH CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Anil Ambani, Sachin Tendulkar, Niira Radia and Gautam Singhania among those being probed. File Wary of ‘attempt to split’ its Bihar MLAs, Cong flies 16 to Hyderabad SHAJU PHILIP THIRUVANANTHAPURAM,FEB4 ongoing action in the Pandora Papers investigation that shows probes have been “initiated” for almost all Indian owners of offshore firms named in the 2021 investigation by The Indian Express. They include Anil Ambani to Sachin Tendulkar, Unitech promoters and Niira Radia; Gautam SinghaniatoLalitGoyaland Malvinder Singh, according to cbc 22201/13/0250/2324 H Honoring the skills of Vishwakarma brothers and sisters PM UNDERLINES DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS SITES P6 Protect us from threats, extortion: contractors’ SOS to Shinde Govt ALOK DESHPANDE MUMBAI, FEBRUARY 4 SEEKING PROTECTION from threats,extortioncallsandhooliganism arising out of political rivalry, two organisations of state government-approved contractors and engineers engaged in various developmental projects have written a joint letter to the Maharashtra Chief Minister and the two Deputy Chief Ministers, demanding a law to protect them at work sites. They have threatened to stop work from February-end if measures were not taken for their protection. “Every district in Maharashtra state is facing the similar pattern where political opponents of the ruling side and also local-level politicians are forcefully stopping the on-going works, using physical violence against and extorting money fromthecontractor,”saidthelettersentbytheMaharashtraState Contractors Association (MSCA) and State Engineers Association (SEA) to Chief Minister Eknath Politics and confrontation CONTRACTORS COMPLAINING of threat, extortion and assault by local politicians points to the rising confrontation among parties and weakening law and order. Over the past 20 months, Maharashtra has seen a split in two parties and shift in allegiance of over 80 MLAs. Shinde, and Deputy Chief Ministers Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar. “These groups cannot be controlled by government officials. Increased instances of threatening with physical violence; beating up the contractor if they registered an opposition and dictating their own orders are growing across the state. These groups are working in an identical manner all over, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2