The Daily Catch-Up: Jharkhand SIR, Ram Mandir and more

Welcome to The Daily Catch-Up, your three-minute evening briefing from The Indian Express. An Express investigation finds BJP booth-level agents submitting stacks of Form 7 applications seeking deletion of voters from electoral rolls in Godda — with a striking number of the names belonging to the minority community.

At one booth, an agent allegedly burnt 75 forms after being questioned by an election official. A look at whether recent protests and political pushback are forcing the BJP to recalibrate its approach, becoming more sensitive to public sentiment and grassroots mobilisation.

From Jantar Mantar to university campuses, individual grievances — cancelled exams, disputed admissions and student deaths — are increasingly turning into collective demands for institutional accountability. Two years after the rape and murder of a postgraduate doctor turned RG Kar into the epicentre of a nationwide movement, The Indian Express returns to the hospital to examine what has changed — and what has not — for doctors working night shifts.

A new UN Environment Programme report says the world can no longer avoid breaching the 1.5°C warming threshold. The focus, it says, must now shift to limiting the scale and duration of the overshoot. As NEET-UG prepares to move towards computer-based testing, the NTA has asked institutions to provide details of their IT infrastructure and available space for potential examination centres.

Shakti Sharma becomes the first woman officer from the non-medical branches of the Indian armed forces to attain the rank of Air Vice Marshal or its equivalent. Leaders at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit underline the need for a consistent approach to terrorism while also addressing wider geopolitical conflicts and the principle of national sovereignty.

Hundreds of CCTV recordings helped investigators trace a red suitcase containing a woman’s dismembered body from a train in Agra back to Chennai — and eventually to suspects arrested in Manipur. A 47-year-old woman’s remarkable run in Beed was driven by something more than a medal: her determination to support her daughter’s long struggle to clear the Maharashtra Public Service Commission examination.

The Ram temple trust is set for changes following a row over alleged theft of offerings, with three new members likely to be inducted as scrutiny of the trust’s financial management intensifies. The emerging contest between Washington and Beijing is not simply about the best AI model, but about building ecosystems that connect universities, laboratories, capital, factories and markets — an area where India has work to do.

Drawing on historian Sumit Sarkar’s work on the Swadeshi movement, this essay traces how Vande Mataram once served as a shared anti-colonial rallying cry before gradually acquiring sharper communal associations. A Court of Arbitration has ruled that India cannot unilaterally put the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance.

What does that mean for a dispute in which the court has no direct means of enforcing its orders?