Table of Contents
The Hindu Editorial Analysis
We understand the significance of reading The Hindu newspaper for enhancing reading skills, improving comprehension of passages, staying informed about current events, enhancing essay writing, and more, especially for banking aspirants who need to focus on editorials for vocabulary building. This article will explore today’s editorial points, along with practice questions and key vocabulary.
Three workers dead, several missing after quarry collapse in U.P.
- Three workers lost their lives and at least eight more are still trapped after a stone quarry suddenly collapsed in Obra, Sonbhadra district, on Saturday evening. Rescue teams from the State and National Disaster Response Forces reached the spot quickly and started operations.
- Officials said that debris was being removed continuously. Obra MLA and Minister Sanjeev Singh Gond, along with senior officers like the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police, were present at the site and keeping a close watch on the rescue work.
- Locals said around ten labourers were working when the quarry wall suddenly broke. An eyewitness said machines were drilling holes in the rock when a big part of it cracked and fell apart, causing the accident.
- An FIR was filed at Obra police station against Krishna Mines. The company was accused of negligence and not following important mining safety rules. Authorities said strict action would be taken after the incident.
- Sonbhadra SP Abhishek Verma said that NDRF and SDRF teams recovered the body of Raju Singh, aged 30, from Panari village. A case was filed under the legal sections related to such quarry accidents.
- ADGP Piyush Mordia said the collapse happened in the Billi Markundi mining area of Obra. Senior officers, including NDRF Deputy Commandant Naveen Sharma, supervised the rescue work, which continued through the night with the help of police teams.
- The Congress party criticised the government, accusing it of supporting the mining mafia. UP Congress chief Ajay Rai demanded that one member of each deceased worker’s family be given a government job and ₹1 crore compensation.
27 lakh workers deleted from MGNREGS database after Centre carries out e-KYC
- Nearly 27 lakh workers were removed from the MGNREGS database between October and mid-November. This number is much higher than the 10.5 lakh workers who were added during the same time. These deletions happened while e-KYC verification was being carried out to remove people who were not eligible.
- Lib Tech called this sudden spike unusual. Earlier, the deletion number for six months was around 15 lakh, but now 27 lakh deletions happened in just one month — almost double the previous total.
- In the first six months of 2025-26, MGNREGS recorded 98.8 lakh new entries and 15.2 lakh deletions, making the net addition 83.6 lakh. But after the mid-November deletions, these net additions dropped by 17 lakh.
- About 6 lakh of the deleted workers were active workers — people who had worked at least one day in the past three years.
- Andhra Pradesh, with a 78.4% e-KYC completion rate, reported 15.92 lakh deletions, making it the state with the highest number of removals during the verification month.
- Tamil Nadu, with 67.6% completion, saw 30,529 deletions, while Chhattisgarh, at 66.6% completion, reported 1.04 lakh deletions. This shows that states doing steady digital verification faced major impacts.
- Officials denied that e-KYC alone caused deletions. They said state governments and gram panchayats regularly remove names during verification and during the scheduled five-year renewal of job cards.
- Standard procedures require that proposed deletions be published, workers be given time to appeal, and the gram sabha approve the final removal, to keep the process transparent.
- e-KYC requires mates to take a photo of every worker and upload it to the NMMS attendance app, where it is matched with Aadhaar to stop misuse of digital attendance.
- The Ministry said that NMMS was being misused in many ways — wrong photos, photos taken from other photos, mismatched numbers of workers, repeated photos on muster rolls, gender mismatches, and many worksites failing to upload afternoon images.
- States were told to check all photos and attendance at every level — gram panchayat, block, district, and state — to fix these problems and improve digital monitoring.
- ABPS, which became compulsory in early 2023, uses Aadhaar as the worker’s financial identity. It requires exact demographic details to match. While it aims to remove fake or duplicate job cards, it has also blocked many genuine workers.
- Researchers said this sudden deletion wave is similar to what happened during the ABPS rollout. They pointed out that new Aadhaar-based systems, though meant to improve verification, often end up creating hurdles for real workers and cause exclusions without proper review.
NIA confirms Red Fort attacker was a suicide bomber; arrests accomplice
- A week after a car blast near Delhi’s Red Fort killed 13 people, the NIA confirmed that the car driver, Umar ul Nabi, a doctor, was actually a suicide bomber behind the attack.
- The agency arrested a man from Kashmir who allegedly worked with Dr. Nabi. This incident is now confirmed as Delhi’s first suicide attack using a car bomb and the second such attack after the 2019 Pulwama bombing.
- After the November 10 blast, Home Ministry sources said the explosion happened earlier than planned and caused less damage because the bomber acted in a hurry as police raids had already caught two of his associates.
- The NIA arrested Amir Rashid Ali, in whose name the car was registered. He was taken into custody in Delhi after NIA took over the case from Delhi Police on November 11.
- Investigations showed that Amir, from Samboora in Pampore, helped plan the attack and came to Delhi to buy the vehicle that was later turned into a car bomb.
- The NIA also confirmed through forensic testing that the dead driver was Dr. Nabi, originally from Pulwama. He worked as an Assistant Professor of General Medicine at Al Falah University in Faridabad before carrying out the attack.
- Another car belonging to Nabi was seized for examination. The agency has questioned 73 witnesses so far, including several injured in the November 10 explosion.
- The NIA’s investigation is continuing across multiple states, with support from the police in Delhi, J&K, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and other agencies.
- J&K Police have increased checks at car showrooms and fertilizer shops, especially those selling ammonium nitrate. Shopkeepers have been told to keep proper records, follow all rules, and report any suspicious bulk purchases.
- Police said these checks will continue to make sure all sensitive materials are monitored properly, especially after large quantities of explosives were recently found during terror-related investigations.
- These strict inspections were started after J&K Police recovered nearly 2,900 kg of explosives, including ammonium nitrate, during coordinated raids in Faridabad, Haryana, conducted on November 9 and 10.
Important Questions
- What caused the quarry wall in the Billi Markundi mining region of Obra to crack and collapse according to the eyewitness?
- Why did the Obra police station register an FIR against Krishna Mines after the quarry accident?
- What led to the deletion of around 27 lakh MGNREGS workers during the e-KYC month?
- What issues did the Ministry find in the NMMS attendance photographs uploaded by mates?
- How did the NIA confirm that Dr. Umar ul Nabi was the suicide bomber in the Red Fort car blast?
- Why did the Home Ministry believe the November 10 explosion happened earlier than planned?
Important Vocabulary
- Rescue operations – efforts to save people trapped in an accident.
- Negligence – not being careful when you should be.
- Supervised – watched over to make sure work is done properly.
- Compensation – money given to families after loss or damage.
- Verification – checking if information is correct.
- Beneficiaries – people who receive benefits or help from a scheme.
- Demographic – personal details like name, age, or address.
- Exclusions – when some people get removed or left out.
- Forensically – proved using scientific tests.
- Conspired – secretly planned something wrong with someone.
- Explosives – materials that can cause a blast.
- Investigation – official process of finding the truth about a crime.
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