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Thursday, 17 June 2021

TheFinePrint

By Moushumi Das Gupta, Senior Associate Editor

Indian cities are opening up after another round of localised lockdowns, and
slowly, political news, especially in the Hindi heartland, is taking over the news
space again.

With Uttar Pradesh elections due next year, Shanker Arnimesh brings this
inside story of how fresh from his meeting with PM Modi and Amit Shah, CM
Yogi Adityanath, who is facing flak from within the party and outside, plans to

quell anger over his government’s Covid handling.

Meanwhile, the former CM of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje has stopped
attending state BJP meetings even as the rift within the party widens. BJP's

state unit has accused Raje of trying to run a ‘parallel system’, with the focus
only on her, especially with the launch of the 'Vasundhara Raje Samarthak
Manch Rajasthan' outfit, reports Neelam Pandey.

In Maharashtra, quota politics is back centre-stage. Manasi Phadke has this
interesting report on how a ‘Dabang Sansad’ & a ‘gentleman’ — Shivaji
descendants and BJP MPs Udayanraje Bhosale and Sambhajiraje Chhatrapati —
are out to lead Maratha protests on quotas.

Now that the devastating second wave of Covid is abating, it's time for some
stock taking on the exact pandemic toll. The Modi government is pushing states
to conduct death audits in order to arrive at a more realistic estimate, and find

out if states are quietly adding ‘backlog’ to the Covid death toll, reports Abantika
Ghosh.