Thursday, December 11, 2025 | Vol. 69 No. 57 | 29 Pages Reg.No MCS/048/2021-23; RNI No. 1541/1957 M.p.c.s office Mumbai. PIN 400001 THE FREE PRESS JOURNAL Day INDIA EDITION | www.freepressjournal.in ● Leader in E-paper circulation GAMES NATION Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar sets deadline for 428 projects worth `50,000 cr Cinema I’m on the other side of my sacrifice: Priyanka Chopra Shubman Gill will aim to get back in form on home turf against SA in 2nd T20I Edit Vande Mataram: An overdue debate on the national song TO SIR, WITH EMOTIONS | Home Minister Amit Shah and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi slug it out in Parliament over chronology, fake votes and more Vote chori tu tu main main Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar CHORI PE CHARCHA NEW DELHI Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi clashed in the House on Wednesday during Shah’s reply to the discussion on electoral reforms after Gandhi objected to his citing a certain portion of his press conference on alleged vote theft during the Haryana Assembly elections and challenged him to hold a separate discussion on all his three press meets on “vote chori”. Shah lashed out at him saying he would “decide the chronology of his speech and would not be INDIGO: HC RAPS GOVT Dhairya Gajara "Post Independence, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was backed by 28 persons while Jawaharlal Nehru by two persons and yet Nehru became the PM, this was vote chori," Amit Shah said adding the second "vote chori" was by Indira Gandhi, when she granted herself immunity after court set aside her election. He said the dispute of third "vote chori" has just reached civil courts on how Sonia Gandhi became a voter before becoming citizen of India. dictated” in the matter. During his address, Shah had sarcastically referred to Gandhi’s claims saying, “Rahul Gandhi ji dropped a ‘nuclear bomb’ on November 5, 2025 when he claimed that 501 votes were cast from a single house in Haryana. The Election Commission later clarified that House Number 265, he referred to, was not a small house but a joint residence Are cops protecting Dy CM son, asks HC 4Contd on | nation 4Contd on | nation 4See also | nation PUNE LAND DEAL Urvi Mahajani MUMBAI The Bombay HC on Wednesday asked whether the police were protecting Parth Pawar, son of deputy CM Ajit Pawar, by not naming him in the Rs 300 crore Pune land deal case. THIRUPARANKUNDRAM In Phuket for work, Luthras inform court HEAT AROUND A TEMPLE LAMP Agencies NEW DELHI Saurabh and Gaurav Luthra, owners of the Goa nightclub where 25 people died in a fire, have told a Delhi court on Wednesday that they flew to Thailand for “work-related reasons”. Officials said they booked tickets via a travel portal at 1.17 am, just after learning about the blaze. The Luthras told the court they wish to return to India to cooperate with the investigation, but fear custodial action. 4Continued on | P19 DEEPAVALI IN Shashi Tharoor spurns UNESCO LIST Veer Savarkar award Agencies PTI NEW DELHI THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Justice Madhav Jamdar remarked that Parth Pawar was not named in the FIR. “Is the police protecting the son of the deputy chief minister and only investigating others?” Justice Jamdar asked while hearing a pre-arrest bail plea filed by businesswoman Sheetal Tejwani. Deepavali, the festival of lights, was inscribed on the Unesco list on Wednesday during a key meeting. Unesco describes Deepavali as an annual festival marking the last harvest of the year and beginning of a new season, symbolising victory of light over darkness and good over evil. 4Contd on | nation 4Contd on | nation Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday said he would not accept an award named after VD Savarkar. Tharoor said he will not accept the "Veer Savarkar Award" and also will not attend the ceremony in the absence of clarifications about the nature of the award or the organisation presenting it. The Thiruvananthapuram MUMBAI / NEW DELHI The Delhi High Court on Wednesday criticised the Union government for failing to prevent the chaos caused by mass flight cancellations and delays by IndiGo, questioning why the situation was allowed to spiral, causing inconvenience to thousands of flyers, before any action was taken. spread over an acre in which several families resided. Since they had not been allotted separate numbers they all had the exact same address”. As Shah said that this demon- strated that “it was neither a fake house nor a case of fake votes” and that he would “reveal what actual vote chori was”, Gandhi stood up and said he had raised a question in his address on Tuesday about Election Commissioners being granted full immunity and demanded that the Minister reveal the thinking behind it. When Speaker Om Birla allowed him to speak, Gandhi said, “they have spoken about Haryana citing one example while there were many which established that there were 19 lakh fake voters there.” GOA INFERNO MP said, "It was irresponsible on the part of the organisers to announce my name without my having agreed to receive it." Earlier, Congress leader K Muraleedharan had told reporters that no party member, including Tharoor, should accept any award in the name of Veer Savarkar “as he had bowed before the British”. 4Contd on | nation By invitation G. Ananthakrishnan The author is a senior journalist based in Chennai A s one group of litigants pursue a legal campaign to light a lamp at a specific stone pillar for the deity Murugan, marking Karthigai at Tamil Nadu’s Thiruparankundram hill temple, the focus has turned to the history of the practice and the ownership of the religious sites of Hindus and Muslims. The pillar stands near a dargah. The worship of Murugan on the hill near Madurai at Sub- ramania Swamy temple is, as per Madras HC records, mentioned in Sangam literature from at least 2,000 years ago, while the Sikkandar Badshah dargah was built on the hilltop during a phase of Muslim rule in the region. There has been a history of friction between the two communities, with civil litigation launched by the temple management in 1920, but the ground reality is that both sides maintained a general peace for a century, with the lamp ceremony being performed annually at an Uchi Pillaiyar temple located halfway up the hill, rather than at the stone lamp pillar (the deepathoon) located closer to the mosque. 4Contd on | nation Amazon in $35 billion pledge for digital leap FPJ News Service MUMBAI Global ecommerce titan Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a bold $35-billion investment blueprint for India through 2030, marking one of the largest foreign commitments to the nation’s digital future. The fresh infusion builds on the company’s nearly $40 billion deployed over the past decade and a half, placing Amazon at the forefront of India’s technology, export, and job-creation story. 4Contd on | nation 4See also | money