11062026-TTC-01.qxd 6/11/2026 12:25 AM 13 TRUMP: IRAN WILL PAY FOR STALLED TALKS WORLD /thetribunechd Page 1 CHANDIGARH | GURUGRAM | JALANDHAR | BATHINDA | VOL. 146 NO. 160 | 12 PAGES | ~5.00 | REGD. NO. CHD/0006/2024-2026 ESTABLISHED IN 1881 RIL, META TO SET UP DATA CENTRE IN GUJ BUSINESS thursday | 11 june 2026 /thetribunechd www.tribuneindia.com ‘Ending Cong misrule top feat’: Modi on record 12 yrs in office 518 PILGRIMS CROSS OVER TO PAK Surpasses Nehru as India’s longest serving PM with 4,339 days in power Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service A ‘jatha’ of 518 pilgrims crosses over to Pakistan through the Attari border on Wednesday to pay obeisance at historic Sikh shrines on the martyrdom anniversary of Guru Arjan Dev. As many as 78 pilgrims were stopped due to document issues. PHOTO: VISHAL KUMAR INSIDE Another jolt to Didi as MP quits party, RS Rinku Behera Tribune News Service New Delhi, June 10 Days after senior leader and MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy resigned from both the Trinamool Congress and the Rajya Sabha, another prominent leader, Sushmita Dev, on Wednesday quit the party and also stepped down from the Upper House. Party firebrand leader Two soldiers killed in accidental blast near LoC in Baramulla SRINAGAR: Two soldiers were killed in an accidental blast near the LoC in Baramulla district on Wednesday. Officials said the incident took place in the Kamalkote area of Uri sector. Two soldiers were critically injured. They were evacuated from the site and shifted to an Army hospital. Both later succumbed to their injuries. INSIDE Sukhu govt amends labour laws, allows shops to run 24x7 SHIMLA: Himachal Pradesh CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu has announced that shops and commercial establishments in the state would now be allowed to operate round the clock following amendments to the labour laws. He said the move would provide greater flexibility to businesses and enable consumers to shop at their convenience. INSIDE Sushmita Dev resigns amid growing TMCcrisis Saayoni Ghosh, who pitched TMC chief Mamata Banerjee as the PM face, is likely to exit too. Former Silchar MP Sushmita, who joined the TMC after quitting the Congress in August 2021, in her resignation addressed to Rajya Sabha Chairman CP Radhakrishnan, said she was resigning with immediate effect; the resignation was later accepted. Speaking to reporters, Sushmita cited “political and personal reasons” for resigning. “In the morning today, I resigned from the Trinamool, and since the Rajya Sabha seat was given by the party, I resigned from the seat also. The reason for my resigna- Indian mariner killed, 2 missing in US attack Delhi issues demarche to Chargé d’Affaires Ajay Banerjee Tribune News Service New Delhi, June 10 An Indian mariner was killed and two others were reported missing at sea following a US military attack on a merchant vessel —Settebello — off the coast of Oman on Wednesday. In response, New Delhi tonight issued a demarche to US Chargé d’Affaires Jason Meeks in protest against the attack. Meanwhile, amid fresh escalation between the US and Iran, President Donald Trump warned against possible military action, saying, “We’re going to be attacking them, and attacking them very hard.” Trump’s warning came hours after Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan — all of which host US troops — came under Iranian fire. It was the second time this week that back-and-forth strikes have tested a two-month ceasefire. On Settebello, the UK Maritime Trade Operations said it received a report of an incident some 20 nautical miles (nearly 40 km) northeast of Sohar, Oman. “The local authorities have reported a tanker has experienced a fire in the engine room and are on the scene assisting with the evacuation of the crew. The vessel has reported one casualty while two crew members are missing,” it said. Sources in India said the two missing mariners “have not been accounted for” on board the vessel. Another 21 mariners — all Indians — on board the ship have been rescued by the Omani authorities. Settebello was supposedly moving around as “a dark ship”, meaning its automated identification system was not continued on page 8 tion is both personal and political. Today, I am a free woman,” Sushmita said. She, however, declined to elaborate further, refusing to comment on her future plans or the party she might join. About leaders abandoning the TMC, she said, “I am not privy to who is doing what. I am not directly involved in Bengal politics. I am from continued on page 8 New Delhi, June 10 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said the country’s neo middle class and middle class would drive the growth of aspirational India, even as he termed “liberation from Congress misrule” as one of the biggest achievements of the BJP-led NDA government during its 12 years in office. Modi was speaking after NDA partners — 72 leaders, including 22 chief ministers from BJP-ruled and coalition-ruled states — passed a resolution hailing him for surpassing Jawaharlal Nehru as India’s longestserving elected Prime Minister. Modi completed 4,339 days in office on Wednesday. Dedicating the milestone to the people and the NDA, the Prime Minister said, “A major success of the NDA’s 12 years is that the country has been liberated from the grip of the Congress, which had pushed it into the abyss of helplessness, misery and inferiority. The country was made to feel PM Narendra Modi being served ‘jhalmuri’ by WB CM Suvendu Adhikari at a meeting of NDA leaders at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. PTI NDA RESOLUTION SALUTES PARKASH SINGH BADAL The NDA resolution saluted seven leading lights of the coalition, including late AB Vajpayee, SAD patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray, George Fernandes, Sikander Bakht, besides LK Advani and MM Joshi. The resolution was a message to SAD and Shiv Sena-UBT, which broke away from the NDA. CONG CALLS IT ‘DUBIOUSLY INVENTED’ MILESTONE The Congress accused PM Modi of presiding over the ‘murder of democracy’, calling his feat as a ‘dubiously invented’ milestone and contrasting his tenure with Nehru’s formative years in office. INSIDE TRUMP AMONG WORLD LEADERS HAIL PM INSIDE as if fast-paced growth was not possible and slow growth was the norm. This slow growth was called the Hindu Now, AU bank accuses Hry of forced recovery Cong protests at EC office over RS paper rejection Bhartesh Singh Thakur Shekhar Singh Tribune News Service Tribune News Service Chandigarh, June 10 AU Small Finance Bank has alleged that the Haryana State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (SV&ACB) detained its Managing Director Sanjay Agarwal for a full day on March 26 and the state police locked its branches across the state on March 30 to “extract” the amount it was allegedly defrauded of in a multi-crore scam. The bank levelled these allegations in a civil writ petition filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. During a hearing on May 29, the Bench of Justice Suvir Sehgal and Justice Vikas Puri issued a notice to the Haryana Government. Officials of IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank, along with Haryana Government officers, are continued on page 8 New Delhi, June 10 The Congress on Wednesday met the Election Commission and sought the immediate reversal of the rejection of Meenakshi Natarajan’s Rajya Sabha nomination from Madhya Pradesh, alleging that the Returning Officer (RO) had relied on a criminal case that did not exist in the eyes of law. Describing the RO’s order as “egregious”, “patently unlawful” and “without authority of law”, the Congress said the EC must act swiftly to restore fairness to the electoral process and set aside the rejection of Natarajan’s nomination. A high-level delegation led by AICC general secretary KC Venugopal, which also included candidate Natarajan, senior Congress leaders Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Jairam Ramesh, Bhupesh Baghel, continued on page 8 Farmers plant paddy as a mark of protest next to the Ferozeshah toll plaza in Ferozepur. TRIBUNE PHOTO Farmers stage unique protest over land, plant paddy next to busy NH toll plaza Anirudh Gupta Ferozepur, June 10 High drama unfolded at the Ferozeshah toll plaza on the National Highway-5 (Ferozepur-Ludhiana road) on Thursday when members of the BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) occupied a portion of the highway and sowed paddy after dumping soil to protest an alleged land compensation dispute. Gursewak Singh of Ferozeshah village claimed the land on which the toll plaza had been set up belonged to him and his brother, Satnam Singh. He alleged that when land was acquired for the NH project in 2019, an additional 3 kanal 12 marla was occupied beyond the acquired area, but no compensation ITBP floats tender to get body of jawan lost on Everest 30 yrs ago THE TRIBUNE EXCLUSIVE Ujwal Jalali Tribune News Service New Delhi, June 10 Thirty years after an Indian mountaineer disappeared in the death zone of Mt Everest during one of the most tragic expeditions in the country’s climbing history, the government is planning an unprecedented mission to bring his mortal remains home. In a rare and highly complex operation, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) has initi- ated the process to retrieve the body of Lance Naik Dorje Morup, who died during the 1996 Everest expedition that became part of the infamous Mt Everest disaster that year. Official documents exclusively accessed by The Tribune reveal that the ITBP has floated a tender to hire a high-altitude recovery agency capable of conducting what mountaineering experts describe as one of the most challenging body retrieval missions ever attempted by India. Morup’s remains are believed to be lying at an altitude of around 27,700 ft on Everest’s northern Tibet- The mission will be one of the most challenging ones ever by India. FILE facing slope, deep inside the mountain’s notorious “death zone”, where oxygen levels are rate of growth, whereas it should have been called the Congress rate of growth.” The Prime Minister said it was only under the NDA, first led by Atal Behari Vajpayee and later by him, that the country experienced development with speed and scale, reflected in the expansion of airports, roads, railways, digital transactions and pro-poor welfare schemes. Modi credited the people for “showing exceptional wisdom” by repeatedly electing a stable government at the Centre since 2014. “The wisdom of our people is exceptional in that they have elected a stable government successively. The importance of political stability has been established in today’s world marked by chaos and uncertainty,” he said, describing India’s 7.7 per cent growth in FY 2025-26 as remarkable given the global headwinds. Citing the abrogation of Article 370, strikes against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and eradication of Naxalism as transformative decisions, Modi said, “The NDA never hesitated to take bold continued on page 8 edit: Modi milestone insufficient to sustain human life for prolonged periods. The proposed operation, c m y b scheduled between June and September, would involve a team of elite Sherpas climbing above 8,000 metres to recover the body and transport it down the mountain before repatriating the mortal remains to India through Nepal. According to the tender document, the operation would require the deployment of at least six highly experienced Nepali Sherpas, preferably Everest summiteers, with expertise in technical retrieval operations above 8,000 metres. The selected agency will also have to secure permissions from the Chinese authorities in Tibet, arrange transportation across the Tibet-Nepal border, complete legal formalities for repatriation and ensure preservation of the remains, which have been exposed to sub-zero temperatures for nearly three decades. The mission is to be conducted with full adherence to religious and cultural protocols. Morup was among three ITBP climbers who disappeared during the 1996 expedition, one of the deadliest seasons in Everest’s history. The team was attempting the continued on page 8 was paid for the excess land. Gursewak said while compensation was released for the acquired land, the actual area occupied was larger than what was reflected in official records. He claimed that a fresh demarcation carried out by the patwari and kanungo later confirmed their claim regarding the continued on page 8 Indian-origin scientist bags top Europe research award Considered among Europe’s most prestigious honours in Chandigarh, June 10 life sciences, the EMBO Gold Gautam Dey, an Indian-origin Medal is awarded by the Euroscientist working pean Molecular Biolowith the European gy Organisation Molecular Biology (EMBO) annually to Laboratory at Heidelscientists early in their berg in Germany, has independent careers. been awarded the The award is given to EMBO Gold Medal those based within the Gautam Dey for exceptional conEuropean Molecular tribution to life sciBiology Conference, ences in Europe. Dey shared an inter-governmental organithe award with Omaya sation with 32 member states. Dudin from the University Dey has been awarded continued on page 8 of Geneva in Switzerland. Vijay Mohan Tribune News Service