express illustration chennai l Thursday l September 03, 2026 l `9.00 l PAGES 22 l late city EDITION Banks mobilise $127.23 billion in deposits from Indian diaspora: RBI Total forex inflows touch $136.38 billion India attracted $127.23 billion in Foreign Currency Non-Resident deposits under RBI’s special USD-INR forex swap facility till August 31, the closing date Scheme a big hit, closed one month early RBI’s special USD-INR forex swap facility for FCNR (B) deposits, Overseas Foreign Currency Borrowings and External Commercial Borrowings was launched on June 8 as part of efforts to strengthen India’s external sector position and support forex liquidity amid global uncertainties. The measures led to a surge in forex inflows totalling $136.38 billion as on August 31 ■ ■ Under RBI’s the FCNR (B) scheme, Indian banks offered attractive interest rates to mobilise foreign currency deposits The response has been strong enough for the RBI to advance the closure of the FCNR(B) window from September 30 to August 31, having already achieved its objective ahead of schedule FCNR(B) Deposits are foreign-currencydenominated fixed deposits 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 Retd Air Marshal BrahMos board shake-up on cards Mishra 1st CEO of Ram temple trust J a v a r i a R a n a @ New Delhi Govind Dev Giri is the new general secretary; Mahesh Bhagchandka to be the treasurer relative of the late VHP international president, he has also THE Shri Ram Janmabhoomi authored a book on Singhal. Teerth Kshetra Nyas, the trust Madan Mohan Pandey had that manages the Ayodhya tem- been associated with the Ram ple, appointed former Air Mar- Janmabhoomi case in local shal Jeetendra Mishra as its courts and is also associated first chief executive officer at a with the VHP . meeting held on Wednesday . Nirmala Yadav has been asA native of Deoria in Uttar sociated with the RSS. Pradesh, Air Marshal Mishra Air Marshal Mishra is exled the Western Air Command pected to bring in discipline during Operation Sindoor. and management expertise in The Ram temple trust also running the affairs of the Ram appointed for mer temple, search comtreasurer Govind Dev mittee member Giri as general secreSuresh Haware said. tary to fill the post vaHaware is a retired cated by Champat nuclear scientist and Rai, who chose to reformer chief of Shri sign following the doSaibaba Sansthan nation theft scandal. Trust in Shirdi. Among other deciThe other members sions, the trust anof the three-member Jeetendra Mishra nounced three new selection panel are retrustees, including a tired Supreme Court woman. The new trustees are judge Pramod Kohli and retired Delhi-based businessman Ma- L t G e n e r a l Vi s h n u k a n t hesh Bhagchandka, Ayodhya- Chaturvedi. based advocate Madan Mohan The selection panel reviewed Pandey and Nirmala Yadav of , 5,585 applications and held disShikohabad. cussions with 16 candidates. VHP leader Sharad Sharma The final shortlist had three has been appointed the spokes- names, from which the trust man of the trust. picked Air Marshal Mishra. Mahesh Bhagchandka is The other two shortlisted likely to be named treasurer of candidates, according to rethe trust. He is the chairman of ports, were retired Major GenM2K Group and a trustee of the eral Sanjay Pratap Singh Bisht Ashok Singhal Foundation. A and Shruti Hardwari. N A M ITA B A J PAI @ Lucknow back to campus Sixteen months after BrahMos missiles were battle-tested during Operation Sindoor, the Indian side is examining a proposal to restructure the Indo-Russian joint venture (JV) behind the supersonic cruise missile, including changes to its board and a plan to bring more engineering and R&D work in-house, sources familiar with the matter said. The proposal, discussed at a meeting on Monday looks at drop, ping DRDO’s Director General (Missiles and Strategic Systems) from the Indian side of the BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd board and setting up a dedicated engineering team within the company Sources . said it also envisages splitting the Chairman of BrahMos Aerospace and Director General (BrahMos) roles into two separate posts. The Russian side’s representation is proposed to remain unchanged. The proposed restructuring comes as BrahMos scales up to meet a sharp rise in domestic orders and exports. The Philippines, BrahMos’s first overseas customer, began receiving the missiles in 2024, while Indonesia and Vietnam have emerged as new buyers. Negotiations with the UAE are also gaining momentum. Production has been ramped up. The BrahMos integration and testing facility in Lucknow has added around 20% to the programme’s overall production capacity, supplementing existing lines in Hyderabad, Pilani and Thiruvananthapuram. Indigenous content has risen to around 70%, against a target of 85%. Sources said BrahMos Aerospace had outgrown the governance structure created in 1998, when the programme was still under development. “BrahMos Aerospace is now running four plants, supplying all three services and working against fixed export delivery schedules,” one source said. “It needs a structure suited to a production company rather than one designed around a development programme.” The proposal has also triggered concerns. Sources said the DRDO labs had provided much of the design base, testing infrastructure and specialist manpower behind the indigenisation. Removing the DG (MSS) from the board, they argued, could weaken BrahMos’ formal link with those labs. They also questioned whether a relatively small in-house engineering team could quickly replace capabilities built up across the DRDO missile complex over decades. express read TN to scrap cases on farmers & teachers Chennai: CM Vijay on Wednesday said that cases registered against farmers and teachers between May 2021 and April 2026 for staging protests seeking redressal of grievances would be dropped. The decision was taken on humanitarian grounds, the CM said | P4 Tankers drawing mountain water as the water pipeline network was washed away in the recent flash floods across Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts of Nepal | S V Krishna Chaitanya Health crisis looms as water grid collapses monitoring, E. coli tests,” a WHO official said. The government is using portable With thousands feared dead or miss- water-testing kits, with support from ing and large parts of Nuwakot and WHO and UNICEF, as WASH (Water, Rasuwa buried under mud and de- Sanitation and Hygiene) intervenbris, Nepal is confronting tions are expanded across a second emergency in the affected areas. form of a health crisis. The water crisis is parKeeping survivors safe is ticularly serious in Nuwabecoming a challenge as Ground Zero kot and Rasuwa because drinking-water systems settlements depend on a Nepal seeks have completely collapsed, network of mountain rivglobal climate sanitation infrastructure ers and streams. The reparation is destroyed and access to Bhote Koshi and Trishuli healthcare is disrupted. are the principal river Nepal’s PM Te a m s f ro m Wo rl d system through the disBalendra Shah on H e a l t h O r g a n i z at i o n tricts, fed by tributaries Wednesday (WHO) Nepal and Minisincluding the Salankhu blamed the flash try of Health and Family and Falakhu. Further floods on climate Welfare are visiting temdownstream, the Trishuli change. “There is a porary holding and sheljoins the Narayani system global contribution ter centres to check survibefore entering India as behind climate vors for signs of disease the Gandak. change. And the spread. Authorities have Here, the drinking waresponsibility to also begun regular testing ter pipelines feeding thoumanage and of drinking-water sources sands of people are comminimise its for E. coli, an indicator of pletely destroyed. effects also rests faecal contamination. In Bidur Municipality, on the global Tsering Gurung, Comthe biggest local body in community” | P15 munication Officer at Nuwakot, the main drinkWHO Nepal, said WHO is ing-water system serving working closely with the Ministry of nearly 6,000 households has been Health and Food Safety, “to assess damaged. Around 7-8 km of pipelines emerging health needs and coordi- have been destroyed, while about 20 nate the health sector response to this smaller water-lifting schemes serving emergency”. scattered settlements have also been “Basically, we are doing regular affected.  Continued on: P15 S V KRISH N A CHAITA N YA Modi to visit Delhi’s SRCC in Gen Z pitch @ Rasuwa (Nepal) I f r a h M u f t i @ New Delhi Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address students at Delhi’s Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC)—a campus that once marked his national rise—on September 5 on the occasion of Teachers’ Day . The proposed visit to the college, which is celebrating its centenary year, comes amid the BJP’s ongoing outreach efforts to draw young voters to the party In the wake of the . recent students’ protests and growing discontent among youngsters over education reforms to employment, party leaders have turned their focus to wooing first-time voters through campus interactions and digital platforms. Just three weeks ago, Modi had addressed the convocation ceremony at IIT Delhi, where he interacted with graduating students and positioned Narendra Modi youth as central to India’s future. The upcoming interaction at SRCC is expected to carry a similar tone, but in a more conversational campus setting. Modi last visited SRCC in 2013 as Gujarat chief minister. His speech then drew a packed audience and marked one of his early high-profile engagements with students in Delhi. Over a decade later, his return to SRCC comes at a time when campuses are more politically aware and digitally active, with student engagement often spilling into social media. The official confirmation of PM’s SRCC visit is awaited. TN plans investment panel with 21-day approval mandate E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Chennai In a move aimed at speeding up regulatory clearances and improving the ease of doing business, Industries Minister S Keerthana on Wednesday introduced the Tamil Nadu Business Facilitation (Amendment) Bill, 2026, in the Assembly to establish the Tamil Nadu Investment Promotion Commission. The high-level body will be empowered to give binding directions to government departments and nodal agencies. The commission, to be headed by Chief Secretary M Sai Kumar, will bring 22 state laws under a new investment facilitation framework to provide a streamlined, transparent and time-bound mechanism for regulatory approvals. The bill seeks to provide deemed approval for projects within 21 days, with certain exemptions. It will amend the Tamil Nadu Business Facilitation Act, 2018, and empower the commission to facilitate “large, strategic and high-impact” investments. These include projects involving investments of `200 crore or more, those expected to generate at least 5,000 jobs, ventures linked to free trade agreements, and investments by the Tamil diaspora. As per the bill, where state laws or subordinate legislation prescribes a period of more than 21 days or do not specify a deadline, the approval period will generally be deemed to be 21 days.  P7 S Keerthana State to give power to private engineers to okay building plan Registered private engineers across TN will soon be allowed to issue building plan approvals for residential, commercial and industrial buildings through thirdparty certification. The state has close to 2,000 registered engineers who will be authorised through a government order. The scheme will cover residential buildings up to 750 sq m FSI area, commercial buildings up to 300 sq m and factory buildings up to 2,500 sq m in approved industrial estates | P5 Digital licences, RCs in TN from Sept 15 Chennai: TN has decided to phase out the practice of issuing chip-embedded cards for vehicle registration certificate (RC) and driving licence. Instead, licence holders will be allowed to download digitally signed versions of the documents from September 15 | P2 Minjur desal plant among Vijay’s `14K-cr infra push E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Chennai Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay on Wednesday announced a slew of urban infrastructure projects worth `14,112 crore, including a `4,800-crore desalination plant at Minjur, `2,400 crore for revamping Madurai’s 40-yearold underground sewerage system, and `1,850 crore for road works across urban local bodies. The announcements made by the CM under Rule 110 in the Assembly cover drinking water, sewerage, waste-to-energy projects, roads, urban greening, school infrastructure, heritage and tourism facilities, and infrastructure works in under-served areas. The proposed Minjur desalination plant, with a capacity to convert 400 million litres of seawater a day into drinking water, will cater to North C Joseph Vijay Chennai, Avadi, Ponneri and Minjur areas. A separate `500-crore scheme will be implemented to provide 24-hour drinking water to all households in Avadi Corporation, while `410 crore has been earmarked to augment the capacity of the Kilpauk water treatment plant in Chennai. Another `1,000 crore will be spent on improving drinking water facilities in Madurai and Cuddalore corporations, nine municipalities and 20 town panchayats. The government will also spend `300 crore in the first phase for renovating 33 old combined water supply schemes across the state.  P7