Daily Briefing: Wang Yi in Delhi next week; UPSC’s EWS selections face scrutiny; and more

Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills is in Jharkhand; Sir Isaac Newton is the “greatest pilot”; Karnataka Assembly building is now Odisha’s Vidhan Sabha: These are some of the errors found in textbooks prepared by Odisha’s State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT). About 1,678 errors were detected across 55 new SCERT textbooks for students in classes 1 to 8, including factual inaccuracies, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and wrong references. At 705, the Class 8 textbooks have the highest errors. Officials have blamed these errors on compressed publishing turnaround, copying content from NCERT textbooks, inadequate proofreading and negligence. Here’s where things went wrong.

China, Russia, Iran in Delhi next week

Ram Mandir donation funds row

Cricket in Mexican prisons

🚨 Big Story

🤝 India’s global balancing act

Signals: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Russian NSA Sergei Shoigu and Iranian Supreme National Security Council Deputy Secretary Nezamipour will be in New Delhi for the BRICS NSAs meeting on June 22 and 23. The event will set the stage for the BRICS Summit in India in September. Wang, who is also Beijing’s Special Representative on the India-China boundary issue, is expected to hold bilateral talks with NSA Ajit Doval during the visit. According to sources, Wang’s visit signals that Chinese President Xi Jinping will most likely visit India in September. Russian President Vladimir Putin will also be attending the summit.

‘All Inclusive’: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday unveiled India’s technology vision for the world. Addressing the Paris VivaTech event, Modi said, “When it comes to technology, along with innovation, what matters is access. Technology can lead to progress, only when it is democratized. India believes that in this era of disruption, technology must deliver for all.” On democratisation of artificial intelligence, the PM said: “AI must improve lives, widen access, drive growth and also help us sustain a healthy planet. Our participation as the AI Country Partner at VivaTech 2026 reflects this very vision. For India, AI means ‘All Inclusive’.”

⚡ Only in Express

About 104 candidates were selected in India’s Civil Services Examination 2025 under the 10 per cent quota for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) — those from general category families with an annual income of less than Rs 8 lakh. However, an investigation by The Indian Express found a gap between the scheme’s stated purpose and the profiles of many it has come to benefit. While they include the son of a security guard, the daughter of a railway porter and the son of a bus conductor, sons and daughters of businessmen, IIT graduates, alumni of private schools in the city could also be found on the same quota list. This has prompted a debate within sections of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on the need to strengthen rules and ensure more robust due diligence.

📰 From the Front Page

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Ram Mandir row: An employee at the ‘Pilgrim Facilitation Centre’ near Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was questioned by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Uttar Pradesh government to probe allegations that gold, silver and diamond ornaments donated by devotees were replaced with fake items. Money was also being stolen from the temple’s collection. The Centre holds a counting room in the basement, where collections from the 35-odd donation boxes fixed across the shrine premises are brought and counted. The counting is done in two shifts — roughly 8 am to 2 pm, and 2 pm to 8 pm — by about 20 tellers each. As one awaits SIT’s final report, here’s how the counting is done.

‘Bad guys’ won’t win: Justice Gautam Patel, now a retired Bombay High Court judge, is known for delivering the landmark verdict on the decade-long Dawoodi Bohra succession dispute, upholding Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin as the community’s rightful spiritual head. However, the verdict has turned into a harrowing, transnational nightmare for the retired judge and his family. Most recently, on April 22, his daughter, Aditi, was ambushed and assaulted outside her home in a London suburb. In an exclusive conversation with The Indian Express, Justice Patel speaks about the family’s defiance and the psychological toll of a cross-border criminal campaign, the “cowardice” of targeting a judge’s children, and why he and his family refuse to cower or let the “bad guys” win.

📌 Must Read

US-Iran MoU: The United States and Iran signed a 14-clause Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to begin 60 days of negotiations for a final deal on June 17 and 18, respectively. The MoU indicates that the final agreement would both address the Iranian nuclear programme and set the terms of the US-Iran political relationship. These terms are likely to strengthen the Islamic Republic, facilitating greater economic relief and the required geopolitical consent to build up conventional military capabilities that would reshape West Asia’s balance of power. My colleague Bashir Ali Abbas breaks down the key points, what each side has promised, and what it says about their respective positions after months of conflict.

June 18, 2026 marked 75 years since Rajendra Prasad gave his reluctant assent to the First Amendment, known to emerge as a “seismic shift” in India’s constitutional architecture. In our Opinion section today, Tripurdaman Singh, delving into its consequences for Indian democracy, writes: “It dealt a crushing blow to the nascent forces of Indian liberalism, creating the constitutional plumbing for a vast armoury of repressive and coercive laws, including sedition. Moreover, it established the terrible precedent of retrospectively amending the Constitution to overcome adverse judicial pronouncements.”

⏳ And Finally…

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Revolution: As part of an initiative by Mexico’s National Commission for Physical Culture and Sport, cricket has found a space in the country’s four low-to-medium security prisons. The commission’s reasoning was straightforward: cricket, they believed, would instill discipline in the inmates. It was in 2021 that Mexican Cricket Association (MCA) volunteers started explaining rules, teaching technique, and telling inmates to respect the umpire “like their warden.” As Sandip G describes, “Basketball courts became makeshift pitches. Barren land was turned into small grounds, with inmates looking forward to breaks when they could play.”

🎧 Lastly, don’t forget to tune in to today’s episode of our 3 Things podcast, where we decode the findings of the latest National Family Health Survey, where our reporter Anonna Dutt shares insights into the improvement measures, and highlights the health issues that are still prevalent among the Indian population.

That’s all for today. Have a wonderful day!

Until next time,

Ariba

Business As Usual by E P Unny