HYDERABAD l Thursday l October 22, 2026 l `9.00 l PAGES 16 l LATE CITY EDITION growth of Core sectors at 7.9% in Sept, highest under new series Production in key infrastructure industries rose 7.9% in September, the fastest pace under the new series, official data showed on Wednesday iron ore, electricity drive growth up from 3.1% growth seen last September Among segments, iron ore output rose by 18.4%, electricity by 11.4%, coal by 10.7% and refinery products by 10.3%, the data showed. Cement production rose 9.8% and steel by 4.9% in September compared with the same period last year. However, fertilisers (-11.7%), natural gas (-4.6%), and crude oil (-1.4%) output fell during the month under review ■ ■ The core sector expanded by 3.1% in September last year and 5.9% in August 2026, according to the government data This is the fastest pace of growth under the new series that was started in June. The base year has been shifted to 2022-2023 and expanded from eight to nine sectors by adding iron ore | p10 5.1% cumulative growth rate of core sectors during April-Sept 2026 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 Bilateral trade pact with CJP’s Das, Ranka released from Tihar jail India pretty close: Trump U D AYA N K I S H O R E @ New Delhi Rubio’s jam session at RIL in Jamnagar D I PA K M O N D A L @ New Delhi Signalling that the IndiaUS trade deal could be sealed soon, US President Donald Trump has said the pact is “pretty close” to being finalised. Speaking to reporters at a White House briefing on Tuesday (US time), he termed it “much different kind of deal” without elaborating. “They want to make a deal. We’re going to make a deal. Pretty close, yeah,” Trump told reporters when asked about the prospects of the India-US trade pact which has been in the making since February 2025. Trump’s statement comes at a time when Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on a three-day visit to India. It also comes days after the US waived fresh sanctions that threatened up to 100% tariff on India for its purchases of Russian crude oil. Earlier, Rubio told media that the India-US trade talks were down to technical details, adding that “it is something we anticipate seeing in a matter of weeks, not months”. He also attributed the US’s sanctions waiver to the efforts to finalise the trade deal, while highlighting that a comprehensive trade deal was almost complete. Rubio, who reached India on Tuesday, is scheduled to leave on Thursday . Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal has also indicated that the agreement is 99% ready and both sides were do- R A K E S H K U M A R @ New Delhi US President Donald Trump ing the legal scrubbing of the trade pact. He said the deal would be signed when the tariff structure is finalised and other issues such as anti-dumping measures and Section 301 are addressed. “The bilateral trade agreement’s first tranche has been finalised. It’s going through the final contours, the legal drafting, and we hope to be able to finalise that soon and operationalise that once we get comparable advantage or competitive advantage over our peer countries,” Goyal said during Centenary Conclave inauguration of SRCC last week. Trump’s latest comment that the trade pact will be a “different kind of deal” has triggered speculation about the final shape of the agreement. A commerce ministry spokesperson refused to comment on Trump’s statement. “There is no comment on this from the department,” the spokesperson said when contacted. Analysts TNIE reached out to for comment said nothing much could be read into it. AS part of his efforts to encourage Indian refiners to buy more Venezuelan crude, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday visited Reliance Industries (RIL)’s oil-refining complex in Jamnagar, Gujarat. On Tuesday, Rubio had said Indian refiners should process more Venezuelan crude oil. In Jamnagar, Rubio and his entourage including US Ambassador Sergio Gor were welcomed by RIL chairman Mukesh AmMarco Rubio bani, his wife Nita, and their children Isha and Anant. They were given a tour of the complex and were briefed on Reliance’s new energy giga-factories, RIL said in a statement. “The visit included discussions on the global energy landscape and opportunities for commercial partnerships across conventional and new energy .” RIL’s Jamnagar facility is the world’s largest single-site oil refining complex. A court here on Wednesday ordered the release of CJP leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, arrested for allegedly violating a “peace bond” while trying to protest at Jantar Mantar, even as the Delhi High Court made scathing remarks against them over a purported “regime change” statement. The CJP co-conveners were ordered to be released by the Special Executive Magistrate (SEM) after they were produced before the SEM court on expiry of their seven-day judicial cus- Cockroach Janta Party leaders Saurav Das (left) and Ashutosh Ranka after their release from Tihar jail in New Delhi on Wednesday | Parveen negi tody Both gave written under. takings that they won’t breach peace or call for protests at Jantar Mantar as long as the site remains denotified. Earlier, Justice Subramo- nium Prasad of the HC heard their petition against the SEM’s October 19 order remanding them to two days’ judicial custody. The judge said the purpose of police permission for a protest was to prevent “unwanted persons” from joining the protest group and ensure that a peaceful agitation does not escalate into violence. The HC refused to interfere with their judicial custody and asked them to await the outcome of their hearing before the SEM. Justice Prasad said the questions surrounding the locus and motive of the petitioners Hyd’s water clock is ticking S B a c han J ee t S in g h @ Hyderabad Hyderabad is staring at a looming drinking water emergency, with the Water Board warning that the city’s present water supply may last only another two to three months. The monsoon has ended, but reservoirs are depleted, groundwater reserves are under pressure and daily tanker bookings have surged to 6,000–7,000. If the situation worsens, households face the prospect of water supply once every three days instead of the present alternateday schedule. The state government has restricted new borewells for construction and other non-drinking purposes, while contingency measures are being prepared. With summer still months away, the situation appears dire.  REPORT ON P3 U’khand ends Friday off for madrasas N A R E N D R A S E T H I @ Dehradun A construction worker carries a water can on her head as she returns home after work in Hyderabad | SRI LOGANATHAN VELMURUGAN Rock grooves hint at prehistoric activity near Hyd S I D D H A R D H A G ATT I M I @ Hyderabad Jumbo celebrations Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy attends the Mysuru Dasara celebrations in Karnataka along with his Karnataka counterpart DK Shivakumar Four rock grooves that may be of prehistoric significance have been identified near the Banda Juvvi watch tower in Mrugavani National Park at Chilkur, raising the possibility of early human activity in the forested areas around Hyderabad. The grooves were identified by historian Satyanarayana Dyavanapalli following information provided by B Anand Kumar, administrative officer in the Forest department in Rangareddy district. He has had to be looked into. “You suddenly hear something like a regime change… You suddenly hear something (against) which we normally do by a ballot” the judge said, remarking that Das and Ranka, aged 27 and 31 respectively, were “not Gen-Z”. Clarifying that he had not made observations on the merit of the matter, the judge let the duo withdraw their plea, Both were remanded in five days of custody on October 14 after being detained for entering the denotified protest site of Jantar Mantar. Their custody was extended on October 19. One of the four rock grooves of possible prehistoric significance identified in Mrugavani National Park at Chilkur urged the Department of Archaeology and Museums to conduct a systematic survey of the site to establish their origin, purpose and age. Dyavanapalli told TNIE that the four grooves, each about a foot long and two to four inches deep, are located on a plateaulike rock surface overlooking valleys. “They may have been used repeatedly to grind or sharpen stone implements, including axes. Their possible association with Neolithic-period activities, dating to around the fifth millennium BCE, remains a hypothesis that requires sci- entific verification,” he said. The possible prehistoric origin of the grooves is also being considered in light of the red pigment visible along their surfaces, the historian said. “During the Neolithic period, stone tools were sharpened using basalt rocks, and the grinding process could have left behind a red residue. The grooves are found on granite rock, and the presence of the pigment could offer a clue to their possible use, though scientific examination is needed to establish its origin,” Dyavanapalli added.  CONTINUED ON P2 The Uttarakhand government has ordered madrasas recognised as schools to switch to Sunday as the weekly holiday instead of Friday, with immediate effect. “All recognised institutions must follow the rules laid down by the education department and the authority,” Surjeet Singh Gandhi, chairperson of the Minority Education Authority, which replaced the Madrasa Education Board in July said. He , said schools operate from 8 am to 1 pm, and the schedule won’t prevent students and staff from attending Friday afternoon prayers which are typically held after 1 pm. The Opposition slammed the order, which comes ahead of the Assembly elections. Congress spokesperson Pratima Singh alleged that whenever polls approach, the BJP reverts to “politics of polarisation and communalism”. Four categories Final jury meeting to choose winners of prestigious RNG Sahithya Samman today Parami ta Ghosh @ New Delhi All literary awards serve as signals of quality. They have their curatorial emphases and specific ambitions. Words that last, writers who take the job of imagination seriously, mark it with integrity, and speak in a unique voice, capturing attention in a crowded world of content. The Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman (RNGSS), instituted in honour of Ramnath Goenka, a stalwart of Indian print media and founder of The New Indian Express Group, returns for its fourth edition with a sharper aim. TNIE’s shortlist was decided after a meeting of the internal jury, comprising Santwana Bhattacharya, Editor, The New Indian Express Group; K Vaidyanathan, Editor, Dinamani; and Ravi Shankar, Consulting Editor, Sunday Magazine. Books published between July 2025 and June 2026 were considered for the longlist across three categories—Fiction, Non-Fiction and Debut. The fourth category, the RNGSS Lifetime Achievement Award, honours distinguished literary figures whose contributions have en- riched Indian literature over the course of their careers. In the Best Fiction shortlist are Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost-eye, a climate-crisis novel that is about families, food and marginalisation; Rahul Bhattacharya’s Railsong, about a woman who grew up in an Indian railway township against the backdrop of a nation in motion, as steam engines gave way to diesel and India passed through the tumultuous 1970s; Geetanjali Shree’s Once Elephants Lived Here, an unsettling short story anthology of people caught in their pasts; and Ashwin Sanghi’s Ayodhya Alliance, a cross-cultural story in which an Indian industrialist and a South Korean technocrat uncover an ancient metallurgical force. Four books are part of the Best Non-fiction list. They are: Abhishek Choudhary’s Believer’s Dilemma — Vajpayee and the Hindu Right’s Path to Power 1977-2018, , a mapping of the Hindu Right movement from the margins to a party of power, and its first prime minister; Raghu Palat and Pushpa Palat’s God’s Own Empire, a dramatic period novel about Marthanda Varma, the first monarch of Travancore; Ghazala Wahab’s The Hindi Heartland, a book that debunks the idea of the region as a monolith, arguing for its plurality in history , culture and politics and the way to reclaim its diverse roots; and Shaan Kashyap’s Who Owns the Past, on the official histories of colonial to modern India and the historians who wrote them. The contenders for the Best Debut award are: Never Logged Out — How the Internet Created India’s Gen Z by Ria Chopra on the constantly ‘connected’ generation; Mohsin Khan’s Allah Miyan’s Workshop on the doubts and disquiet of a Dickensian boy hero; Ponnu Elizabeth Mathew’s The Remnants of Rebellion, about a Syrian Christian family of Kerala in the backdrop of caste oppression and emerging Hindu nationalism; and Sowmiya Ashok’s The Dig: Keeladi and the Politics of India’s Past, on the archaeology of Keeladi, its centrality to the storytelling about Tamil Nadu and the politics of presenting competing stories about the past. A jury meeting in Delhi, comprising the external and internal jury, will choose the winners from the shortlist on October 22. Chaired by author and parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor, the external jury includes economist Sanjeev Sanyal and author-historian Vikram Sampath. The winners will be announced at a prestigious award ceremony in Chennai, the TNIE headquarters, on December 2.