THE SUNDAY Vol. 36 No. 39 | Sunday, June 22, 2025 30 Pages | `5 & for State `6 | Reg. No. MCS/048/2021-23; RNI No. 46955/1988 M.p.c.s. office Mumbai-400001 FREE PRESS JOURNAL Leader in E-paper circulation l www.freepressjournal.in ● EDITIONS: ● MUMBAI ● INDORE ● PUNE ● BHOPAL ● NASHIK ● KONKAN ● E-paper GOOD LIFE Weekend Can the Rugby Premier League popularise the sport in India? Rediscovering the medicinal value of traditional rice varieties PTI Live Smart What Pride tribe feels like at workplace Sunday Read Renuka Shahane talks about her Marathi short film SAVING DEMOCRACY | Voter privacy outweighs political demands for polling visuals EC cites privacy for not sharing footage FPJ News Service MUMBAI Yoga master Prime Minister Modi on 11th International Day of Yoga at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. See also: Mumbai, nation & World The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday hit back strongly, defending its decision to reduce CCTV footage retention to 45 days postelection results, saying the move protects voter privacy and upholds electoral integrity. Senior ECI officials warned that demands to release polling day webcasts—especially post-5 pm footage—may ap- pear democratic but are actually aimed at profiling voters and intimidating dissenters. “Footage showing who voted and who didn’t can expose citizens to pressure or retaliation,” one official said. “If a party fares poorly in a booth, it can use visuals to target those who didn’t support it. That’s a threat to democracy.” Opposition parties, led by the Congress, have demanded polling booth footage from the 2024 Maharashtra elections, where the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance swept past the INDIA bloc. They claim the footage is vital to ensure transparency and detect alleged rigging. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has gone on the offensive, accusing the EC of enabling a “fixed match.” In a sharp post on X, Gandhi wrote, “Voter list? Not in machine-readable format. CCTV footage? Hidden by tweaking the law. Election videos? Destroyed in 45 days. The one supposed to answer is destroying the evidence.” Gandhi contends the Commission’s revised protocol— cutting footage retention from one year to 45 days—is not an administrative tweak but a politically motivated attempt to shield electoral malpractice. ECI officials rejected these accusations as sensationalist. “Political parties have the option of filing an election petition if they suspect wrongdoing. But instead of following due legal process, they choose to grandstand in the media,” one official remarked. The Commission insists that publicly releasing such footage without a court mandate would breach the Representation of the People Acts (1950 and 1951), as well as Supreme Court rulings on voter secrecy. “Video footage effectively functions like a digital Form 17A,” a senior official explained. “It records the sequence of voters, their identification, and even signatures. Releasing this would compromise the core principle of ballot secrecy.” 4Contd on | Nation DGCA fires warning US spy chief in U-turn on Iran nukes Won’t stop Israel: Trump over rostering lapses P Agencies WASHINGTON Dhairya Gajara MUMBAI In a rare, strongly worded order, the Indian civil aviation regulator has directed Air India to remove three senior officials from their duties citing repeated serious lapses in crew rostering. The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) gave a final warning to the airline that any future violation result in withdrawal of operator permissions. On Friday, DGCA ordered Air India to remove three senior officials from all roles and responsibilities related to crew scheduling and rostering after discovering failures in crew scheduling, compliance monitoring and internal accountability. The officials involved in this order include divisional vice president Choorah Singh, chief manager of crew scheduling Pinky Mittal as well as Payal Arora, who overlooked crew scheduling and planning. It has also asked the airline to OP SINDHU India to lift Nepalese, Lankans Agencies NEW DELHI As tensions rise between Iran and Israel, India has launched Operation Sindhu to evacuate its citizens. The mission has now been extended to include Nepalese and Sri Lankans at the request of their governments. So far, 517 Indians have been brought home. The embassy confirmed the decision through a post on the social media platform X, stating, “On request of the Governments of Nepal and Sri Lanka, the Indian Embassy’s evacuation efforts in Iran will also cover citizens of Nepal and Sri Lanka.” The decision comes amid increasing hostilities between Israel and Iran, with Israeli airstrikes targeting military and nuclear facilities in Tehran under what it calls Operation Rising Lion. 4Contd on | Nation Audit records sought D GCA has directed its flight operations inspectors to submit detailed records of all inspections and audits conducted on AI since 2024. Inspectors have been instructed to provide the data—covering both planned and surprise inspections—by Sunday. The directive includes details of cockpit/ enroute checks, station facility assessments, ramp and cabin inspections, and internal audits. On Friday, DGCA also issued a show-cause notice after it observed that Air India operated two flights, AI-133 from Bangalore to London on May 16 and May 17, exceeded the stipulated flight time limit of 10 hours, violating the Civil Aviation Requirement. Regulator orders removal of three Air India official, says next violation could result in withdrawal of operator permissions initiate internal disciplinary proceedings against them and submit the report to the regulator within 10 days, until which the officials shall be reassigned to non-operational roles. DGCA said that these officials were involved in serious lapses including unauthorised and non-compliant crew pairings, violation of mandatory licensing and recency norms as well as systemic failures in scheduling protocol and oversight. 4Contd on | Nation PAKISTAN BAFFLED OVER NOBEL MOVE FPJ News Service MUMBAI Pakistanis and social media users are baffled by the government’s decision to nominate U.S. President Donald Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, crediting him with de-escalating tensions between India and Pakistan and calling his intervention “a testament to genuine statesmanship.” The move, however, has sparked widespread derision both at home and abroad, with critics likening the nomination to awarding “an arsonist a firefighter’s medal.” Leading Pakistani newspaper Dawn captured the public mood with the headline: “Can you believe Pakistan wants to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize? The internet can’t either.” 4Contd on | Nation TRUMP: WON’T GET IT, NO MATTER WHAT I DO Vidhi Santosh Mehta MUMBAI U.S. President Donald Trump has bitterly complained on Truth Social that the Nobel Peace Prize would remain out of his reach even though he had among other things prevented a war between India and Pakistan.This is the 15th time the U.S. president has claimed credit for this and the second time after Prime Minister Modi called him up to disabuse him of this notion In a long list of what he sees as his peace-making victories, Trump listed his involvement in halting 4Contd on | Nation Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of US National Intelligence in a remarkable turnaround to her previous testimony has now aligned herself with President Donald Trump to say that Iran could produce nuclear weapons "within weeks". On March 25 she testified to the Congress that Iran was not building nuclear bombs. She told the Congress that “The IC (Intelligence Community) continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. The IC is FATF flags Pak-China missile link FPJ News Service MUMBAI A recent report by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has spotlighted a 2020 incident involving the illicit transfer of sensitive missilerelated equipment from China to Pakistan, raising fresh concerns about Islamabad’s compliance with global non-proliferation norms. The FATF, in its report titled Complex Proliferation Financing and Sanction Evasion Schemes, stated: “In 2020, Indian custom authorities seized an Asian-flagged ship bound for Pakistan. During an investigation, Indian authorities confirmed that documents mis-declared the shipment’s dual-use items. Indian investigators certified the items for shipment to be ‘Autoclaves’, which are used for sensitive high-energy materials and for insulation and chemical coating of missile motors.” The cargo was intercepted at Gujarat’s Kandla Port aboard the Chinese vessel Da Cui Yun, which had set sail from Jiangyin Port in China and was headed for Karachi’s Port Qasim. Intelligence inputs from India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) had alerted customs about the suspicious consignment. 4Contd on | Nation microplastics Up to 50 times more in glass bottles Agencies PARIS In a startling discovery, a new study by France’s food safety ANSES has determined drinks stored in glass bottles contain significantly more microplastics than those sold in plastic containers or cans. The study, released Friday, found that glass bottles of A study finds glass bottles of soft drinks, lemonade, iced tea, and beer contained five to 50 times more microplastic fragments per litre compared to plastic bottles and metal cans soft drinks, lemonade, iced tea, and beer contained five to 50 times more microplastic fragments per litre compared to plastic bottles and metal cans. On average, researchers detected about 100 microplastic particles per litre in drinks stored in glass containers, according to AFP. “We expected the opposite result,” said Iseline Chaib, a PhD student who led the research. The common belief has long been that glass is a safer, more inert packaging material. However, closer inspection revealed that the source of the contamination was not the glass itself, but rather the paint on the bottle caps. 4Contd on | Nation closely monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program. In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely em- boldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran's decision-making apparatus. Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons. “ On Friday after Trump repeated his assertion that she is wrong, Gabbard posted on social media that her March testimony had been taken out of context by "dishonest media". Her stance changed after Trump said she was "wrong" and that intelligence showed Iran had a "tremendous amount of material" and could have a nuclear weapon "within months". 4Contd on | Nation resident Trump on Friday indicated that he is unlikely to urge Israel to stop its airstrikes on Iran. Speaking to reporters in New Jersey, Trump said, “I think it’s very hard to make that request right now. ...If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing. But we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens.” No evidence: Putin R ussia has repeatedly told Israel that there is no evidence Iran is aiming to get nuclear weapons, Sky News Arabia on Saturday quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying in an interview. "Russia, as well as the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), has never had any evidence that Iran is preparing to obtain nuclear weapons, as we have repeatedly put the Israeli leadership on notice," Sky News Arabia quoted Putin as saying. He was speaking at St Petersburg on Friday.