LEAD

In the tumultuous terrain of a front-line Sikh majority state, Parkash Singh Badal was the quintessential moderate, a secular man, and a fighter for Punjab.

Sarpanch of Badal at 20, legislator at 30, chief minister at 43, and the last surviving member of a political generation that saw Independence, survived the Emergency, and saw Punjab politics take a surprising turn in 2022, Parkash Singh Badal, 95, a five-time chief minister of Punjab, died on Tuesday.

In the tumultuous terrain of a front-line Sikh majority state, he was the quintessential moderate, a pragmatic practitioner of communal harmony, a liberal and secular man, and an avowed protagonist of and a fierce fighter for Punjab’s interests.

The government on Monday launched ‘Operation Kaveri’to evacuate close to 3,000 Indian citizens stranded in Sudan, the African country that remained on edge because of fierce fighting between the army and a paramilitary force. Foreign minister S Jaishankar said about 500 Indians had reached Port Sudan and that the government is working to bring them home in ships and aircraft.

PM Narendra Modi announced the operation at a public event in Kerala, saying he has asked junior external affairs minister V Muraleedharan to travel to the region to supervise the evacuation.

Radical Khalistan preacher Amritpal Singh, who was arrested by the Punjab Police from Moga's Rode village on Sunday after a month-long man-hunt, was flown by a special flight from Bhatinda air force station to Assam’s high-security Dibrugarh Central Jail.
The rise of the radical Khalistan preacher and his successful evasion of arrest, ever since he and a posse of arms brandishing supporters stormed a police station last month, was seen as a challenge by the country's security apparatus, and brought back fears of the militancy which had stalked Punjab in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The preacher was taken into custody in the early hours of the morning at 6.45 am as he came out - in traditional attire that included a sheathed sword - of the gurdwara in Rode, Bhindranwale's native village and also the place which he took over last year as the chief of Waris Punjab De.

Drones and sniffer dogs on Friday joined the special forces to track down the group of about 7 Pakistan backed terrorists who fired armor-piercing bullets and then tossed grenades that killed 5 soldiers of the Indian Army and injured another a day earlier in Bhatta-Durian area in the BG Sector of Poonch that has in the past also witnessed long stretched encounters between the security forces and terrorists.

The entire area has been cordoned and a massive search operation jointly launched in the thickly forested area by the special forces of the Army, police and security forces. Top brass of the Army, BSF and J&K Police are camping in the area to oversee the search operations.

Five soldiers of the Army’s Rashtriya Rifles were killed and a colleague was gravely wounded after terrorists ambushed their truck around 3pm Thursday with gunshots and grenades that ignited the vehicle when it was winding through blinding rain in Bhata Dhurian on a thickly-forested mountain ridge in Poonch district of J&K’s Jammu division.

The truck was not part of a larger convoy transporting troops and it was returning from “road opening duty”—a recce team that scans for hidden explosives or suspicious movements.

The Army’s White Knight Corps identified the slain soldiers as Lance Naiks Debashish Baswal and Kulwant Singh, Sepoys Harkrishan Singh and Sewak Singh, and Havildar Mandeep Singh.