hyderabad l saturday l october 31, 2026 l `9.00 l PAGES 18 l late city EDITION bhutan glacial lake outburst triggers flood alert in india The glacial lake outburst at Sintaphu in Bhutan early on Friday triggered downstream alerts in low-lying areas of West Bengal and Assam 12,000 people relocated in assam, bengal rising trend of Himalayan hazards The outburst occurred at Sintaphu Lake near Wakila Mountain in Lungo, Laya Gewog, in Gasa district of Bhutan. Following this, the Central Water Commission issued a special advisory to authorities in West Bengal and Assam. More than 12,000 people were relocated to safer areas in West Bengal’s Alipurduar, and in Assam’s Dhubri and Kokrajhar districts | P9 ■ ■ Previous assessments by ICIMOD and UNDP identified 47 major potentially dangerous glacial lakes across the transboundary of Koshi, Gandaki, and Karnali river basins, authorities said on Friday Kathmandu-based ICIMOD said this event is part of a broader pattern of mountain hazards affecting countries across the region 70L cubic m of water was released from the Sintaphu Lake in bhutan 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 Ready for special session on ‘vote theft’, but Oppn won’t agree: Shah ‘Impeachment’ today at Kharge’s residence Union home minister Amit Shah said on Friday that the BJP is ready for a special Parliament session to discuss the alleged “vote theft” but the Opposition parties are not interested in discussion. “I challenge Rahul and Akhilesh. The BJP is ready to discuss every allegation inside Parliament ... But they will not discuss,” Shah said, dismissing the allegations against the poll panel as baseless | P10 INDIA bloc’s symbolic ‘public impeachment’ of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was postponed to Saturday due to rains, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said. The event will be held at Mallikarjun Kharge’s official residence | P9 Will serve people of India till my last breath: Modi Seen as riposte to Cong chief Mallikarjun Kharge’s ‘baap’ remark DILIP S INGH K S HATRIYA @ Ahmedabad PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that he would serve the people of India till his last breath, in an indirect response to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s recent controversial remark that “even Modi’s father will have to go”. “Jeevan ke antim kshan tak janta ki seva main hi juta rahunga (I will continue to serve the people until my last breath),” Modi said while addressing farmers after inaugurating the Bharat Bovine Breeding and Research Centre at Bhildi town in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district. During the roadshow, Modi’s supporters were seen carrying placards that read Modi kahin nahi jayega (Modi is not going anywhere) as a direct counterresponse to Kharge’s comment made at a public rally in Bihar last week, which kicked up a political storm. In his address, Modi accused the Opposition parties of rejoicing whenever the country faces a crisis. He alleged they tried to spread panic over the Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks at an event in Banaskantha, Gujarat | pti There are those who wish to see the country in distress— they actually derive pleasure when the nation faces hardship. Whenever a crisis befalls the country, they find joy in it — Narendra Modi, PM availability of fertilisers and cooking gas amid the ongoing conflict in West Asia. Without taking names, he said: “They sowed fear among farmers, claiming fertilisers would become unavailable. They created artificial queues and created a sense of panic.” After laying the foundation stones for development projects worth `14,000 crore, he claimed farmers across the country have received or saved more than `50 lakh crore through major government schemes, adding that his government transformed agricultural support through direct transfers, fertiliser subsidies, MSP payments and crop insurance. Modi said his government has placed farmers, particularly small cultivators, at the centre of its policies. He also took a swipe at previous governments, accusing them of neglecting small farmers. “Since independence, the needs of these small-scale farmers were never understood, and they were never even consulted,” Modi said, adding that farmers cultivating small landholdings account for more than 85% of the country’s farming population. Highlighting the financial assistance extended to farmers, the PM said the agricultural budget has increased fivefold and around `4.5 lak hcrore has been transferred directly to farmers’ accounts under PM Kisan Samman Nidhi. On Friday `18,000 crore was , released to nearly 10 crore farmers, including over 50 lakh beneficiaries in Gujarat. CM uses SC verdict as ammo to target KCR @ Hyderabad Welcoming the Supreme Court’s verdict dismissing claims to 550 acres of prime land at Miyapur, worth around `55,000 crore, by persons he identified as associates of former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Friday accused the BRS supremo of attempting to grab the property . Revanth asserted that his government had foiled similar attempts and protected public lands worth 1.5 lakh crore over the past three years. Speaking to reporters in Delhi, Revanth alleged that KCR, along with his associate Damodar Rao and Goldstone Prasad, had attempted to grab the Miyapur land by misusing the Dharani portal, tampering with revenue records and pressuring officials. He also accused them of facilitating transfers of valuable properties to KCR’s family members and associates. He alleged that Trinity Infra, owned by Goldstone Prasad’s brother, had purchased expensive cars and gifted them to Damodar Rao, CMD of a vernacular daily, besides donating crores to KCR. Revanth said the Congress had exposed the al- Govt hospitals to offer free Mri services | P2 State ratifies June 24 date for Godavari water project | P5 India’s poverty drop among world’s fastest PU S HPITA DEY @ New Delhi INDIA has recorded one of the fastest declines in poverty globally with the share of its population living below the poverty line falling from 57.7% in 2011 to 16.1% in 2023, a World Bank report said. The report titled India Poverty and Equity Brief: October 2026, released on Friday, said India lifted 496 million people out of poverty during this period. It, however, flagged wage disparities, noting that median earnings among the top 10% of workers were 13 times that of the bottom 10% in 2023. According to the report, In- dia made remarkable progress in reducing poverty across monetary and non-monetary dimensions. Extreme poverty, measured against the $3-a-day threshold, also fell sharply from 27.1% to 2.6%, it noted. The World Bank expects poverty (measured against the $4.20-a-day threshold) to decline further—from 14.2% in 2026 to 12.1% by 2028. The improvement is expected to be driven by strong consumption growth, rising employment, par ticularly among women, and expanded social transfers, including food subsidies. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government’s sustained policy efforts were yielding tangible results, strengthening the foundations for inclusive growth and greater economic opportunities. “This is the reason why the NDA government wins people’s trust and mandate of our citizens,” she said. The report also flagged the geographical concentration of poverty, noting that poor households continue to live in rural areas. Beyond the ordinary IIIT-H flies high with intuitive drones m e g h n a n at h @ Hyderabad What happens when robots begin to understand instructions like humans do, identify objects and carry out tasks without being given exact coordinates? What if they could also detect obstacles such as glass walls that their cameras fail to recognise? These possibilities are taking shape at the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT-H), whose researchers presented a range of innovations at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2026 in Pittsburgh, the US. The institute also scored big on the research front. It presented 10 research papers and one workshop paper, all of which were accepted — a 100% acceptance rate against the conference’s overall acceptance rate of less than 37%. Its researchers also took home the Best Paper Award at a workshop. Consider AERMANI-VLM. Drones fitted with robotic arms can be useful for tasks that require objects to be located, picked up and moved. But getting them to understand what a person wants, rather than simply follow pre-fed coordi- nates, is a different challenge. The framework enables these drones to interpret naturallanguage instructions and carry out such tasks. It also keeps the AI model’s decision-making separate from the drone’s physical movements, using a set of pre-approved actions to prevent unsafe or impractical commands. Then there is the problem of glass. For a robot navigating a building or an unfamiliar space, a transparent wall can be a difficult obstacle to detect. GlassFormer addresses this by combining camera images with 60.5 GHz millimetrewave radar. The system can identify glass surfaces even in poor lighting conditions. In tests, it recorded a detection score of 0.59, compared with 0.49 for a vision-only model.  Continued on p7 established. Assuring that the Miyapur land would soon be resumed and monetised, Revanth said the proceeds would be spent on education, the welfare of the poor, tribals and Dalits, and ongoing irrigation projects. E x p r e ss N e w s S e r v i c e Note of caution The World Bank’s latest report also cautioned that as poverty declines, it becomes increasingly concentrated among households with lower levels of education, fewer assets and limited access to stable employment e x p r e ss read SC: Loan denial is not caste offence New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ruled that denial of bank rehabilitation benefits without evidence of caste bias does not attract the SC/ ST Act, quashing proceedings against bank officials | P7 Chopper crash: All 6 on board killed Dehradun: Six people, including a pilot and five pilgrims, were killed when a helicopter flying from Badrinath to Dehradun crashed near Chai village in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli on Friday, officials said | P7 My govt protected lands worth crores: Revanth KCR should advise his associates to stop encroaching on government lands. We will identify and clear the encroachments in Erravalli and construct the Srikanthachari Amaraveerula Colony. KCR and KTR should mend their ways and stop encroaching on lands, at least now A Revanth Reddy, chief minister leged conspiracy, but the then BRS government had failed to defend the state’s claim effectively in court. Quoting the Supreme Court verdict, Revanth said the revenue entries were “bogus and not genuine” and described the case as “fraud orchestrated by persons in collusion with the revenue officials”. The court had also held that the state’s title to the land was Citing other instances of alleged encroachments, the chief minister said his government had protected government and forest lands at seven locations. He said the previous YS Rajasekhara Reddy government had allotted 850 acres at Kancha Gachibowli and Mamidpally to IMG-Bharat. After the company challenged the decision in court and obtained a stay, KCR had allegedly sought a 30% commission and favoured its owner, Billy Rao. “My gover nment protected around 850 acres of land worth `40,000 crore and resumed it from IMG-Bharat,” Revanth added. The government had also protected 140 acres of reserve forest land in Hayathnagar mandal, which KCR had allegedly supported encroachers in claiming as private property. “Now, we are raising trees on the same reserve forest land,” he said.  Continued on p4 HC holds Arun Ferreira’s 2011 arrest illegal S u d h i r S u r ay w a n s h i @ Mumbai THE Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court has held the September 2011 arrest of activist Arun Ferreira “illegal” and ordered the Maharashtra government to pay him compensation of `2 lakh within eight weeks. A bench of justices Urmila Joshi-Phalke and Raj Wakode in an October 27 order came down heavily on the police for branding Ferreira as absconding in the case though he had been in jail since 2007. The HC said police had violated Ferreira’s fundamental rights, reminding the police that their motto Sadrakshnaya Khalanighrahanaya (To protect good and to punish evil) needs to be respected. Ferreira, out on bail in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, was picked up by cops in civil clothes in September 2011 as he stepped out of prison after being acquitted in eight cases, without the police following the due process of law.