DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 2025, NEW DELHI, LATE CITY, 20 PAGES BY UNNY After top level meet, fresh GST registration norms to curb harassment AANCHAL MAGAZINE NEW DELHI, APRIL 18 IN A bid to curb undue harassment of taxpayers, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has issued revised instructions for its officers to refrain from unnecessary interventions in the process of Goods and Services Tax (GST) registrations. It is learnt that the move follows a top-level meeting in the government on a series of complaints raised by applicants in recent days about the need for submission of several documents and clarifications to GST officers. TheCBIC,whichcomesunder theMinistryof Financeandoversees indirect taxes, pointed out that various unwarranted documents are being sought by raisingpresumptivequeries.Officers havenowbeendirectednottoissue notices based on presumptive grounds, minor discrepancies,orforadditionaldocuments thatarenotessentialforprocessing applications, the ministry said in a statement on Friday. Applicants had complained about the string of queries for documents such as proof of principal place of business, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 DAYS BEFORE J D VANCE VISIT Intariffseason,PMModiandMusktalk: ‘Immensepotential’intech, innovation PM heads to Saudi next week: Trade, energy and defence ties on the table Talks as Tesla’s India retail ops in the works, after Starlink deals with Jio, Bharti SHUBHAJIT ROY SHUBHAJIT ROY & SOUMYARENDRA BARIK NEW DELHI, APRIL 18 NEW DELHI, APRIL 18 ATAtimewhenIndiaandtheUS are trying to work out differencesontariffsandworkonconvergences towards a trade deal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Friday that he spoke to US billionaire Elon Musk and discussed the “immense potential” for collaboration in technology and innovation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his family during his visit to the US in February. File His conversation with Musk comes days before US Vice President J D Vance is scheduled to visit India next week from April 21 to 24. This also comes in the middle of negotiations for a bilateral trade agreement between India and the US that was launched after Modi’s meeting withUSPresidentDonaldTrump in the White House in February. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi is headed to Saudi Arabia next week — his first visit to the country in his third term. Since first assuming office in 2014, Modi has travelled there twice before — in 2016 and 2019. Sources said that trade and investments, energy cooperation, reviving the IMEEC (IndiaMiddle East-Europe Corridor) CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 E E X P L A I NE D BUSINESS AS USUAL `7.00 (`8 BIHAR & RAIPUR, `15 SRINAGAR) WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 ● Key issues AMID A China-US trade war, this will be a chance for India and Saudi Arabia to exchange notes. Saudi has played an important role in mediation of USRussia-Ukraine talks, and Delhi would want to get a sense of the negotiations. Eviction notices to 41 Dalit families in Hapur withdrawn, inquiry on US lawyers’ body lists 327 cases of student visas being revoked, half of them Indians ABHINAYA HARIGOVIND NEW DELHI, APRIL 18 ABOUT 50 per cent of the 327 international students whose US visas were revoked or Student andExchangeVisitorInformation System (SEVIS) records terminated recently — as per reports collected by the American ImmigrationLawyersAssociation (AILA) so far — are Indian. Based on reports from students, attorneys and university employees,AILA,inapolicybrief dated April 17, said 14 per cent of these students are from China, and “other significant countries represented in this data include South Korea, Nepal and Bangladesh”. Indians constituted the largest international student cohort in the US in 2023-24, according to data from Open BIG PICTURE NEETIKA JHA NOIDA, APRIL 18 THE HAPUR district administration has withdrawn eviction notices issued to 41 Dalit families stayingatIndraNagarinHapur’s SyanaChorahaarea,officialssaid on Friday. On Friday, The Indian Express had reported that the families, who had built houses in the area after being relocated by the Ghaziabad authorities in 1986, had received the notices stating that their occupancy on the land was “illegal”. Of the 41 houses, local resi- The Shape Shifter The make-believe world of ‘Dr John Camm’ PAGE 17 THE WORLD The Indian Express reported the eviction notices Friday dents said 40 had been built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 GOVERNOR IN MURSHIDABAD TODAY West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose at a shelter in a Malda school for those who fled violence-hit Murshidabad, Friday. He is likely to visit Murshidabad Saturday. Partha Paul PAGE5 ‘WILL TAKE A PASS’: TRUMP WARNS OF QUITTING UKRAINE PEACE TALKS IN CASE OF DELAY PAGE 12 33 FIRs and 16 blasts: Held RESIDENTS CHALLENGE RESETTLEMENT EXERCISE IN MP HIGH COURT SC stays demolition by FBI, gangster’s history No doors, windows: ‘Ghost homes’ notice to Nashik dargah, of terror, crime in Punjab for compensation under scanner seeks report from HC MAN AMAN SINGH CHHINA ANAND MOHAN J EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE HARPREET SINGH alias Happy Passia,agangster-turned-terrorist who has been arrested by the FBI and US Immigration department’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), faces several cases in Punjab for violence,extortionandterror-related incidents, including 16 blasts. Originally from Amritsar, he has been named in 33 FIRs, and 10 Look Out Circulars. As per a dossier prepared by PunjabPolice,Passiawasaccused of orchestrating 14 grenade at- IN WHAT highlights the challengesof relocatingpeople toset up factories or mine mineral resources, hundreds of “ghost homes” or empty structures were allegedly constructed in Madhya Pradesh’s Singrauli district to claim compensation after a private firm bagged a mining project in the region. These homesarenowunderthelensof the district administration. A field visit by The Indian Express revealed that many of these “homes” have no doors or THE SUPREME Court has stayed ademolitionnoticeissuedbythe Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC)againstadargahinthecity, and sought to know from the Registrar General of the Bombay High Court whether an urgent hearingpleachallengingtheApril 1 notice was refused to be listed. On April 7, the Trust managing the Hazrat Satpeer Sayed BabaDargahhadapproachedthe High Court with a writ petition, seeking a direction to quash the NMC notice,which had said that CHANDIGARH, APRIL 18 SINGRAULI, APRIL 18 Harpreet Singh after his arrest in California. PTI tacks, an IED blast and a rocketpropelled grenade (RPG) attack in the state. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 MUMBAI, APRIL 18 The empty structures in MP’s Singrauli. Anand Mohan J windows.Inseveralcases,broken bricksandcowdungserveasthe foundation.Somewerehurriedly built for as little as Rs 10 lakh. At the same time, several residents said despite being legitimate homeowners, they had CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 an alleged illegal structure at the dargah has to be demolished within15days.Thepetitionerapprehended that if the directions in the notice were not complied with, the civic body would raze the structure on April 15. On the night of April 15, a crowd clashed with police after NMC officials initiated demolition of the structure. The next day, the Supreme Court bench of Justices P S Narsimha and Joymalya Bagchi was informed by senior advocate Navin Pahwa, who represented the Trust, that there was an urgency in the matter as the CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 INDIAN STUDENTS IN THE U.S. 11,26,690 International students in the US 3,31,602 Indian students in the US 36,053: Number of Indian undergraduate students 1,96,567: Indian students in graduate courses 97,556: Indian students on Optional Practical Training 1,426: Non-degree Indian students (Open Doors data for 2023-24) Doors. Of the 11,26,690 international students in 2023-24, 3,31,602 students were from CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 ICU technician held for rape of woman on ventilator at Medanta: Police ABHIMANYU HAZARIKA GURGAON, APRIL 18 A 25-YEAR-OLD technician employed at Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon has been arrested in connectionwiththeallegedrape of a woman patient, said police. The woman, employed with aprivate airline,hadallegedthat she was sexually assaulted by a hospital staff member at Medantawhileshewasonaventilator there earlier this month. The accused — identified as Deepak,aresidentofBadhaulivillage in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district—wasnabbedFriday.During questioning,headmittedtocommitting the crime, police said. According to police, Deepak had been employed as an ICU equipment technician at the hospitalforthepastfivemonths. Following his arrest, the hospital said it had suspended him. The incident came to light on April 14 when the woman lodged a complaint with police detailing the assault. According to the FIR, the woman had come to Gurgaon for training and was stayingatahotel.Shewasadmitted to a hospital after she almost drowned while swimming. On April 5, her husband shifted her to Medanta for further care. The woman alleged that on April 6, while she was on a ventilator, a hospital staff member sexually assaulted her. She said she was unable to speak at the time because she was not fully conscious and was frightened. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 On a hilltop in Udhampur, a climate station with its head in the clouds PAGE 1 ANCHOR AMITABH SINHA NEW DELHI, APRIL 18 IN A quiet corner of Udhampur, ataheightof 2,250metresabove meansealevel,wheresnowcovers the hilltops and wisps of clouds come to you, stands a white container. This is India’s first-of-its-kind atmospheric monitoring station meant to study a little-known aspect of how clouds are formed. While scientists have a fairly robustunderstandingof thegeneralprocessesof cloudformation and precipitation, a key part of this process — related to formation of ice crystals in clouds and theirimpactonrainfall—ispoorly understood. Inaugurated last week, the new station in Jammu and Kashmir aims to bridge this criticalinformationgap,whichaffects the ability of scientists to modelcloudbehaviourandmake accuraterainfallpredictions,particularlythoseofextremeevents. Thenewstationwillfocuson the study of ice nucleating particles (INPs), the rare and hard-todetect small particles floating in theairthatarethestartingpoints for the formation of ice crystals inclouds.Theseicecrystalseventuallycomedownasrainorsnow or hail, once they grow bigger by accumulating more water droplets in the clouds. Though the study of INPs is growing, it is still not very common, mainly because of the difficulties in detecting these particles due to their very low concentration in the atmosphere. Udhampur’s Himalayan High Altitude Atmospheric and Climate Research Centre will be the first facility in Indiato enable these studies. Established by the Central University, Jammu, in collabora- The centre was established by the Central University, Jammu, in collaboration with the Ministry of Earth Sciences tion with the Ministry of Earth Sciences, this new centre is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment that will facilitate this area of research. “The climate centre is meant tocarryoutmanykindsof observations related to weather and climate, but the study of INPs is surelygoingtobeitsUSP(unique selling point),” says Shweta Yadav, the centre in-charge and associate dean of international affairs at the Central University in Jammu. INP studies at the Udhampur centre will be carried out in association with scientists from ETH Zurich, Switzerland who have been using a similar instrumentattheir researchstationlocated high in the snow-covered mountains of Jungfraujoch. Higheraltitudes are more suited for these kinds of studies. “Attheselocations,theclouds literallycometoyou.So,itismuch easier to run your experiments and make observations. The alternativewouldbetosendtheinstruments on an aircraft into the clouds. That is costly and yields onlyshort-termmeasurements,” says Vijay Kumar Soni, the head of the environment monitoring research centre at India Meteorological Department. India’s other facility to study cloud dynamics is located in Mahabaleshwar,apopulartourist destination in Maharashtra. ThoughMahabaleshwarisnotlocatedatveryhighaltitudes—only about 1,300 metres above mean sea level — it gets clouds at very low levels, especially during the monsoon. The facility, run by the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, does not havetheinstrumentstocarryout INP studies. INPs are a critical component of clouddynamicsandprecipitation processes. They play an essentialroleinmuchof therainfall and snowfall across the world. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2