Novak Djokovic HYDERABAD  SUNDAY  JUNE 26, 2022  `12.00  PAGES 24  LATE CITY EDITION ROMANCE OF WIMBLEDON: DJOKOVIC DEFENDS TITLE Serbian Novak Djokovic and Spain’s Rafa Nadal will reignite their famed rivalry at SW19 from Monday Iga Swiatek Rafael Nadal NO NIGHT SESSSIONS | There are no night sessions, unlike at RECORD PLAYER ALL EYES ON SERENA Swiatek’s current winning streak of 35, which encompasses six tournament titles in a row. She is tied for the longest by a woman this century Ranked a lowly 1,204 in the world and without a competitive singles match in 12 months, Serena Williams returns to Wimbledon targeting a record 24th Grand Slam and eighth title at Big W the other three Grand Slam tournaments Women TOP THREE SEEDS IGA SWIATEK ANETT KONTAVEIT ONS JABEUR FIRST SECOND THIRD Men NOVAK DJOKOVIC RAFAEL NADAL CARLOS ALCARAZ $50 mn TOTAL PLAYER COMPENSATION. $2.5mn EACH TO WOMEN & MEN CHAMPS CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOGGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Shinde meets Shah, Fadnavis? Said to request expediting of govt formation; Uddhav to sack six rebel ministers on Monday S U D H I R S U R YA W A N S H I @ Mumbai AMID buzz on rebel Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde flying in to Vadodara on Friday night and meeting BJP leaders Amit Shah and Devendra Fadnavis to discuss government formation, the ruling coalition in the state sought to pressure the dissidents further. According to highly placed sources, Fadnavis was seen at the Mumbai airport taking a Gujarat flight. “Rebel MLAs are getting restless. If there is delay in government forma- tion, things can go awry Shinde . wanted to urge Shah to immediately intervene to resolve the crisis, hence the meeting,” said a source. The leaders, however, were not available for comment. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray called a meeting of the Shiv Sena’s national executive, which authorised him to take decisions to revamp the organisation. On Monday Uddhav is expected to , recommend the sacking of six ministers to Governor Bhagat Singh Koshiyari. Both sides continued playing mind games with the rebels calling their group Shiv Sena (Balasaheb) and Shinde as its leader. Parallelly, a technical battle was being fought with Deputy Speaker Narhari Jirwal rejecting a no-confidence motion against him sought by the Shinde camp as it was sent via a random email address and was not submitted in person to the Speaker’s office. In a counter-attack, the legis- lature’s secretary issued disqualification notices against 16 rebel Sena MLAs, seeking their explanations in writing along with supporting documents by Monday 5.30 pm as to why they failed to attend a party meeting in Mumbai on Wednesday or face disqualification. However, the rebels refused to blink. “Since Shinde has the majority, our side should be heard first. Else, we will approach court and urge the governor to ask the government to prove its majority in the House,” Deepak Kesarkar said. P7, P8 Punjab in debt trap, says White Paper JAB-O-METER June 24 13,90,325 doses TAKE June 25 11,19,043 doses YOUR SHOT TOTAL: 1,97,06,96,547 NATIONWIDE JUNE 24 JUNE 25 TELANGANA JUNE 24 JUNE 25 Fresh cases 17,336 15,940 Fresh cases Recoveries 13,029 12,425 Recoveries Deaths 13 20 Deaths 493 219 0 496 205 0 W I T H T H I S I SSU E ANATOMY OF AN ASSASSINATION PLUS 12 PAGES H A R P R E E T B A J W A @ Chandigarh THE AAP government in Punjab on Saturday admitted the state was being pushed deeper into a debt trap in a White Paper it tabled in the Assembly, but sought to blame the previous governments for the economic morass. The economies of quite a few state governments are under similar stress, but it is only Punjab that has accepted it upfront. Just last week, the RBI had warned that the economies of Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal, and Bihar are in deep trouble. But Kerala sought to rebut it. Punjab’s debt has spiraled to `2.63 lakh crore and the state has `24,351.29 crore worth liabilities to service in the immediate term, the document said. “The current debt indicators of the state are probably the worst in the country pushing it , deeper into a debt trap,” it claimed. The White Paper was tabled by state finance minister Harpal Singh Cheema on the second day of ongoing budget session. It quantified the current debt as a whopping 45.88% of the state GDP . Debt ballooned 44.23% in the last five years at a compounded annual growth rate of 7.6%, the document added. Pointing fingers at the previous Congress government, it said they left an immediate and medium-ter m liability of `24,351.29 crore. Of that amount, `13,759 crore will go towards non-payment of arrears of the sixth pay commission and `7,117.86 crore for power subsidy arrears. GUJARAT RIOTS Day after SC verdict, police arrest Teesta, ex-DGP Sreekumar E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Mumbai NDRF and police personnel shift the body of one of the two labourers who were buried alive in a mudslide at a construction site at Puppalaguda on Saturday Two labourers buried alive in mudslide at construction site EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Hyderabad A mudslide in a private construction site at Puppalaguda in Narsingi buried two labourers alive while three others had a narrow escape on Saturday It’s . believed that the mudslide was the result of the rec-ent rains that lashed the area. Police identified the victims as Venkataramana and Prasad who were employed by EIPL, a private construction company to work on the 9 acre site. Earthmovers had been used to excavate the earth for the basement and five labourers were working at the spot when they noticed the soil starting to slide at about 3.30 pm. While three of them managed to get to safety, Venkataramana and Prasad were buried alive. By the time rescue workers could reach Venkataramana, he was dead. Prasad was still breathing when rescued, but died while being taken to a nearby hospital. Police registered a case and are trying to gather the details of the victims. The police are verifying if all required safety measures were in place at the site. The bodies were sent for postmortem examination. A day after a Supreme Court bench observed that people with vested interest had sought keep the 2002 post-Godhra riots pot boiling and suggested action against them, the police arrested activist Teesta Setalvad and former Gujarat DGP R B Sreekumar in Mumbai and Ahmedabad respectively on Saturday . The Gujarat Police sent its Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) to Mumbai to arrest Setalvad. The court’s ruling was widely read as pointing towards Setalvad’s NGO, Citizens for Justice and Peace, which worked extensively with many victims, including petitioner Zakia Jafri, whose family was a victim of the Gulbarg Society massacre. Setlavad was a co-petitioner in the case. As for Setalvad, she lodged a complaint at Santacruz against the Gujarat Police ATS for banging her door and assaulting her. Earlier in the day, the Ahmedabad Crime Branch arrested Sreekumar after registering a complaint and conducting a preliminary inquiry. The complaint named Sanjeev Bhatt, Sreekumar and Teesta Setalvad as accused, adding they misrepresented information, damaged the image of Gujarat and abused the legal process. According to the complaint, they had created a situation where false evidence was thrown against the Special Investigation Team probing the case, the trial court, the Gujarat High Court and the Supreme Court. Reinfections propel recent Covid-19 surge R E N U K A K A L PA N A @ Hyderabad WITH the State reporting a surge in Covid-19 cases, experts believe that most of these cases are reinfections — people infected earlier are again catching the infection despite taking two doses of the vaccine. Describing this as “normal”, experts are emphasising on the third precautionary dose. As per the government data, a sizable chunk of the population has taken two doses of Covid-19 vaccine. The sero-survey conducted in January-February this year shows that approximately 92.9 per cent of the population in the State has developed Covid-19 antibodies. In view of this, it seems that most of the people who are getting infected now are actually getting infected for the second or third time. “The infections we had during the first or second wave were from different variants. There has been evidence that people have had Covid two times with the same variants as well. However, this time, we don’t know whether it is reinfection of the same variant or of different variants,” said Dr Subodh Kandamuthan, director, Dr Kakarala Subba Rao Centre for Healthcare Management at the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI). A study conducted in the United States, published by ‘researchsquare’ reveals that reinfections are not always harmless as we might assume. It might add to the risk of death, hospitalisation and adverse health outcomes. As of now, no such effect has been seen on the Indian populaCONTINUED ON P5 tion. We don’t have qualitative data to speak about effects of Covid19 reinfection. It all depends on the factors like environment, age and comorbidity. We have to avoid the reinfection by taking precautionary measures Dr Ranga Reddy Burri, president of Infection Control Academy of India ACCUSED IN SEC’BAD RAILWAY STATION ATTACK Avula Subba Rao incited youths as Agnipath scheme threw a spanner in his plan to make a quick buck, say investigators | P3 After backlash, govt beats retreat on teachers’ assets EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @Hyderabad ireddy Venkatreddy condemned the Education Department’s edict to declare the assets of gover nment teachers and demanded its immediate withdrawal. FOLLOWING widespread criticism by government teachers and leaders of the Congress and BJP the School Education , Political pressure department on Saturday withIn a statement, Venkat Reddrew its proceedings directing dy said that the State govteachers to file annual ernment has brought an property returns. State order insulting all the Education Minister P teachers for the wrongSabitha Indra Reddy doings of some people. directed the Education He said that as the govdepartment Secretary ernment was afraid to stop implementathat the teachers wotion of the proceeduld support agitations ings immed-iately . against the CPS and Earlier, the School GO 317, the governEducation de par t- No official of any ment brought an orment had issued orgovernment der to intimidate ders directing all govdepartment has been asked to them. ernment teachers to declare assets. “No official of any submit annual propThen how come government departerty statements. The only teachers have ment has been asked teachers were also been asked to asked to take prior take prior permis- to declare his or her assets. T hen how per mission before sion to buy and come only teachers purchasing / selling sell properties? have been asked to inmovable and immovKomatireddy form and take prior able properties. Venkatreddy, MP permission to buy and These orders were sell properties?” issued recently on the recommendations of Vigilance Venkat Reddy asked. The BJP too objected to the and Enforcement department in a case relating to dispropor- order, with party leaders Bandi tionate assets of a headmaster Sanjay, Dr K Laxman and T Raja Singh accusing the govfrom Nalgonda district. However, teachers and politi- ernment of intimidation tacP4 cians like Bhongir MP Komat- tics.