DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE SATURDAY, MAY 3, 2025, LUCKNOW, LATE CITY, 18 PAGES ‘PAK MUST ACT ON TERRORISTS ON ITS SOIL’ 15 yrs on, domestic institutions upstage FPIs in ownership of listed stocks on NSE HopeIndia’sresponse doesnotleadtobroader conflict,saysV-PVance THE HOME SURGE 24% 20% 17.62 FII share 16% 13.44 12% 8% 11.39 30-Jun -2009 Worried about hotspot breaking out between two nuclear powers, says US V-P 17.22 DII share 31-Mar -2025 GEORGE MATHEW & HITESH VYAS SHUBHAJIT ROY MUMBAI, MAY 2 IN WHAT could significantly changehowthestockmarket responds to global cues, the share of domestic institutional investors (DIIs) has surpassed that of foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) as on March 31, 2025. DIIs include insurers and mutual funds, which have seen a steady flow of funds from retail investors in recent years. The share of DIIs in the NSE universe of listed companies reached an all-time high of 17.62 per cent as on March 31 this year, and surpassed the FPI share of 17.22 per cent for the first time in at least 15 years, data compiled by PRIME Database shows. The DII shareholding rose from 16.89 per cent in Decemberend 2024 to 17.62 per cent in March-end 2025 following a staggering net investment of Rs 1.89 lakh crore during the three months. NileshShah,ManagingDirector, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 NEW DELHI, MAY 2 Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kerala Governor Rajendra Arlekar, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani and others at the newly inaugurated Vizhinjam International Seaport in Thiruvananthapuram, Friday. PTI TRANSSHIPMENT PORT INAUGURATED IN KERALA; PM REFERS TO CM, THAROOR Opening Vizhinjam port, PM swipe at Opp: ‘This will give sleepless nights to many’ SHAJU PHILIP & SIDDHANT KONDUSKAR THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, VIZHINJAM, MAY 2 DEDICATING THE Vizhinjam port in Left-ruled Kerala to the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday took a dig attheCPI(M)foritslongstanding oppositiontoprivateinvestment. Praising the Adani group for completingtheconstructionina shortspan,Modisaidinthepresence of industrialist Gautam Adani,“Ihavereturnedfromvisiting the port. When the people of Gujarat come to know that Adani has built such a good port here in Kerala — he has been working on ports in Gujarat for 30years,buthehasnotbuiltsuch a port there yet — he will have to be ready to face their anger. I wouldalsoliketosaytoourChief Minister(PinarayiVijayan)—you are a strong pillar of the INDI Alliance. (Congress MP) Shashi Tharoor is also sitting here, and today’seventwillgivemanypeople sleepless nights.” TheRs8,800-croreVizhinjam International Deepwater Multipurpose Seaport is being developed by Adani Ports and SEZ Limited on a design, build, finance,operateandtransfer(DBFOT) model. In 2015, when the then Congress regime inked the deal with the Adani group, the CPI(M), then in the Opposition, had dubbed it a land scam of THE SUPREME COURT Friday rejectedsteelmajorJSWSteelLtd’s Rs 19,000 crore bid to acquire Bhushan Power and Steel Ltd (BPSL) through the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP)route,andorderedtheliquidation of the company. JSW acquired BPSL in March AYODHYA, MAY 2 PAGE 1 ANCHOR Ameatshop alongtheRam PathinAyodhya. Vishal Srivastav lution banning liquor and meat shops along Ram Path, citing the road’s religious significance. Ayodhya Mayor Girish Pati Tripathi said the decision to ban liquorandmeatshopsalongRam Path was taken in view of the religioussignificanceof thestretch. “Ram Path is associated with the name of Lord Ram and has its own dignity and sanctity. Therefore, permitting the sale of liquor and meat along this route is not justified,” he said, adding CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 MUMBAI, MAY 2 THE SECURITIES and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has alleged Pranav Adani, director of several Adani group companies and the nephew of the billionaire founder, shared price sensitive information and breached regulations aimed at preventing insidertrading,accordingtoadocument reviewed by Reuters. BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY SC: Creditors’ panel made mistake in approving JSW Steel resolution plan Adani, the nephew of Gautam Adani, was sent a notice by the SEBI last year which alleged he shared information about Adani Green’s 2021 acquisition of SoftBank-backed SB Energy Holdingswithhisbrother-in-law before the deal was announced, according to a source and the document. The matter has not been previously reported. In an e-mailed response sent to Reuters, Pranav Adani said he PAGE 11 CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Right now, China occupies Bagram air base: Trump YOSHITA SINGH NEW YORK, WASHINGTON, MAY 2 US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has claimed that China now occupies the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. The US vacated Bagram, its biggest airfield in the country, in July 2021. “But we were going to keep Bagram, the big Air Force base, which is one hour away from BIG PICTURE PAGE 13 Amaravati THE MAKING OF A CAPITAL In villages by the Krishna river, a ‘grand city’ takes shape, amid hopes and anxieties EXPLAINED GLOBAL THE STRATEGIC AFGHAN AIRFIELD PAGE 14 where China makes its nuclear weapons. That’s what they do. Theymaketheirnuclearmissiles andonehourawayfromBagram, and I said you can’t give up CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Before caste census, the first steps: How to count OBCs, general category castes NEW DELHI, HYDERABAD, MAY 2 RELATED REPORT was seeking to settle the charges “to put an end to the matter, without admission or denial of the allegations” and that “he has not violated any securities law”. Settlementtermswerebeing discussed, said the source with direct knowledge of the matter, whodeclinedtobenamedasthe matter is confidential. ThescrutinyisthelatestchallengefortheAdanigroup.USauthorities last year indicted US Vice-President J D Vance speaks during a tour at Nucor Steel Berkeley in Huger, South Carolina, Thursday. AP RITIKA CHOPRA & NIKHILA HENRY CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Insider trading case: SEBI accuses Adani nephew, he seeks to settle JAYSHREE P UPADHYAY CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 2021 under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy code. JSW Group Chairman and Managing Director Sajjan Jindal had then said that the acquisition had helped the group make an entry into Odisha and east India. Abenchof JusticeBelaTrivedi NEW DELHI, MAY 2 MANISH SAHU FOR THE second day in succession, the US conveyed its understanding of India’s response to the Pahalgam terror attack with Vice-President J D Vance saying hiscountryhopesitwillnotlead to a “broader regional conflict” — and that the US expects Islamabad to “cooperate” with New Delhi to “hunt down” terrorists “sometimes operating from their soil”. Vanceisthelatestseniorrepresentative of the US administration, after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, to spell out the US line on the terror attack that killed 26 people. Vance and his family were in India on a fourday visit when the attack — the worst since Pulwama in 2019 — took place in J&K on April 22. AskedontheFoxNewsshow, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Rejecting JSW Steel’s plan, SC orders Meat & liquor shops on key Ayodhya road to shut, Bhushan Power and Steel liquidation those affected say resettle ANANTHAKRISHNAN G AT LEAST nine meat shops and 13 liquor outlets, situated along theRamPathleadingtoAyodhya and the Ram temple, are to close following a resolution of the Ayodhya municipal corporation which cited the road’s religious significance. This has prompted the city’s tradeassociationtodemandthat alternatesitesbeprovidedtothe affected shopkeepersbeforeimplementing the resolution. Developedoverayearago,the 13-km-longRamPathstartsfrom Sadatganj and leads to Lata Mangeshkar Chowk in Ayodhya. With shops on either side, it had a makeover when the road was widened. It also links to the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Path, which leadstotheRamtemplesite,and the Bhakti Path that connects ShringarGhattoHanumanGarhi. On Thursday, the executive committeeoftheAyodhyaMunicipal Corporation passed a reso- `6.00 WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 WILL OTHER Backward Classes (OBCs) be counted as per the Central or state lists? Should every caste group — even those in the general category — be counted separately? These are the key questions before the government as it moves to operationalise its decision to include caste in the next Census, former officers involved with the Census exercise tell The Indian Express. The final decisions on these challenges, they add, will be “political calls”. Unlike the Scheduled Castes (SCs)andScheduledTribes(STs), who are enumerated based on official lists notified under constitutional orders of 1950, there is no unified or single list for the OBCs. The SC and ST lists, which GOVT & POLITICS SECC 2011 FULL OF GAPS, CENSUS WILL BE STREAMLINED: HANSRAJ AHIR PAGE 4 currently include 1,170 SC and 890STcommunities,areperiodically updated through parliamentary amendments. In the case of the OBCs, two separate lists are maintained. The National Commission for Backward Classes has a Central list that is used for reservation in Centralgovernmentjobsandeducational institutions. Simultaneously, each state maintains its own OBC list that differs from — and is often more extensive than — the Central list. The government now faces a critical choice: whether to limit OBC enumeration to the Central CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 To Attari and back, J&K constable: I would rather die than go to Pak ARUN SHARMA JAMMU, MAY 2 ON APRIL 26, when a senior officer called him to say that he and his eight siblings had to leave India because they were considered Pakistan citizens, Iftkhar Ali felt as if someone had cut the ground from beneath his feet. Having served 27 years in theJ&KPoliceserviceandknowing no other home, he told his shocked superior officer he would “kill himself” rather than cross the border. “Like you, I too had only heard of Pakistan,” Iftkhar, a 45year-old constable from Salwah village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, tells The Indian Express now. “I have everything — my wife and children, relatives, friends, and colleagues — here. There’s nothing in Pakistan.” On April 29 — three days afterheandhiseightsiblingswere issueda‘LeaveIndia’noticeinthe aftermathof thePahalgamterror attack—theJammuandKashmir HighCourtstayedit,orderingthe central government and the J&K administration against forcing them to leave India. The order came on the back of a petition that he filed in the High Court against the notice. As a result, Ali and his eight siblings — older brothers Zulfqar Ali, 49, Mohammad Shafiq, 60, and Mohammad Shakoor, 52; and his sisters Shazia Tabsam, 42, Kouser Parveen, 47, Naseem Akhter, 50, Akseer Akhtar, 54, and Nashroon Akhter, 56 — have now returned to the village. Althoughhegotanotice,neither his wife nor his three minor sons got one “because they were At the Integrated Check Post near Attari-Wagah border in Amritsar district on Friday. PTI all born in India, they didn’t get the notice”, he says. The eighth of nine children, Ali was two years old when his parents,FaqurDinandFatimaBi, brought him to the erstwhile state of J&K. In their petition, Iftikhar and his siblings said that their father Faqur Din was a ‘hereditarystate subject’ and Indian citizen according to the 1955 Citizenship Act. They also said he owned about 17 acres of land and a house at Salwah village, addingthattheirfatherwasconsidered a permanent resident of J&K “even at the time of enactment of the J&K Constitution in 1957”. Apermanentresidentcertificate was a document previously issued under the Jammu and Kashmir Permanent Resident Certificate(Procedure)Act,1963, to prove one’s permanent residence in the former state of Jammu and Kashmir. A feature under the special status offered to the state, the certification ceased to exist after the Article 370 in 2019. According to the petition, whatcastshadowsovertheircit- izenship is that during the 1965 war, Pakistan took over areas alongtheLineof Control,including the place where Faqur Din and his wife Fatima Bi lived with children, then three. As a result, the family spent years at a camp inTralkhalinPakistan-occupiedKashmir, during which time the couple had six more children. LocalsintheareaclaimFaqur Din and his family returned to Salwah in 1983. Posted in Katra since earlier this year, Iftkhar joined the state police in the late 90s — when CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Lucknow