Your Daily Wrap: CBI arrests Mamata’s close aide, SC calls electoral freebies ‘serious issue’; and more

After taking oath as the Bihar Chief Minister for the eighth time Wednesday, a day after he walked out of the NDA again, JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar said that if BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi had been his deputy CM the situation leading to his snapping ties with the BJP would not have arisen. The BJP, which was stunned by Nitish’s move, pushed Sushil, 70, to the margins of the Bihar political scene despite the fact that the latter had enjoyed a warm and close relationship with the CM in their successive coalition governments as his deputy from November 2005 to June 2013 and again from July 2017 to December 2020.

Twelve days after spinal surgeon Dr Raj Bahadur resigned as vice-chancellor of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences in Faridkot, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann accepted his resignation on Thursday. Dr Bahadur resigned on July 30, after Health Minister Chetan Singh Jouramajra asked him to lie down on a dirty mattress during an inspection at the skin ward of the Guru Gobind Singh hospital in Faridkot. Dr Bahadur then said he had felt humiliated.

Promising and distribution of freebies by political parties during poll season is “a serious issue” as the economy is losing money due to this, the Supreme Court observed on Thursday. The apex court was hearing a PIL filed by laywer Ashwini Upadhyay, seeking a ban on political parties promising ‘freebies’ to lure voters in the run-up to elections. The plea asked for steps to be taken to regulate poll manifesto and make political parties accountable for promises made therein.

Today’s movie reviews: Akshay-Kumar starrer Raksha Bandhan, that released on a day celebrating the same, comes across as a mothballed melodramatic film, while Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chaddha falls back on the easy crutches in a meandering tale, writes Shubhra Gupta.

Political Pulse

On Wednesday, TMC leaders like Firhad Hakim, Bratya Basu, Malay Ghatak and others held an unusual press conference. The crux of it, as a frustrated Hakim burst out, was that they should not all be tarred with the same Partha Chatterjee brush. “Ei Partha da ke ami chini na (I do not recognise this Partha da),” Hakim said. “We are all ashamed of what Partha has done. But that does not mean that everyone in the Trinamool is a thief.” The “clarification”, as it were, had a short shelf life. It coincided with the Calcutta High Court making the Enforcement Directorate, which has been chasing many TMC leaders, party in a case of disproportionate assets against political leaders in general. Then, TMC opponents were quick to ask why Hakim doth protest too much, while others noted that Chatterjee had been hung out to dry. Atri Mitra reports.

Last week, several male relatives of newly elected women representatives of panchayats in Madhya Pradesh took oath on their behalf. The concept of ‘sarpanch pati’, where men relatives (mostly husbands) of elected women run office in place of them, is now immortalised even on celluloid, like in the recent web series Panchayat. However, where the Madhya Pradesh example drew attention was the brazenness of the men even taking oath of office. Vidhatri Rao’s report.

Express Explained

The past week has witnessed a fresh round of violence between Israel and Gaza, and the most serious intensification of conflict since the 11-day crisis in May 2021. The crisis last year left more than 200 Palestinians and a dozen Israelis dead, with many more people injured. On Sunday, Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad declared a truce to stop the fighting. What is the Palestinian Islamic Jihad? What does the Palestinian Islamic Jihad want? We explain

Late on Wednesday (August 10) evening, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced it had cancelled the banking licence of the beleaguered Pune-based Rupee Cooperative Bank, and directed the Registrar of Cooperative Societies to liquidate the bank. What does it mean for the over 5 lakh depositors in the bank? Read our explained