Mumbai: Mumbai residents began their Thursday morning under a cloudy, haze-filled sky with a thin layer of fog reported in some areas. The India Meteorological Department (IMD), which had earlier issued a yellow alert for Mumbai and nearby districts until Wednesday, has not issued any rain warning for today. However, the forecast indicates a partly cloudy sky with one or two spells of rain or thundershowers likely through the day.

Meanwhile, IMD’s nowcast warning issued at 7:20 am today stated that light to moderate spells of rain are ‘very likely’ to occur over Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburban, Thane, Palghar, Raigad, Ratnagiri, Pune, Nashik, Satara and Nanded districts in the next three hours.

According to IMD’s latest update, Mumbai’s maximum temperature is expected to hover around 33°C, while the minimum may dip to 25°C. The brief showers earlier in the week provided much-needed respite from rising heat and improved the city’s air quality, which had deteriorated significantly over the past few weeks due to stagnant wind conditions and increasing pollution levels.

Real-time data from AQI.in showed that Mumbai’s Air Quality Index (AQI) on Thursday morning stood at 56, placing it in the moderate category, a notable improvement from the unhealthy levels recorded earlier this month. The change was visible across the skyline, with thinner haze and clearer visibility over most parts of the city.

Among various monitoring stations, Wadala Truck Terminal recorded the highest AQI at 70, followed by Jogeshwari (68), Santacruz East (68), Parel-Bhoiwada (65) and Chembur (65), all in the moderate category. On the brighter side, several neighbourhoods reported good air quality. These included Kandivali East (47), Borivali East (48), Bhandup West (48), Malad West (48) and Powai (50), each recording cleaner, breathable air.

As per AQI.in’s classification, readings between 0–50 denote “Good” air quality, 51–100 indicate “Moderate,” 101–150 “Poor,” 151–200 “Unhealthy,” while anything above 200 is considered “Severe” or “Hazardous.”

While no heavy rainfall is expected, the weather bureau’s advisory suggests that the city may continue to experience brief drizzles and cloudy conditions through the day, a soothing change for Mumbaikars after unseasonal heavy rain showers since past week.

Kolkata, Oct 29: A 60-year old man, Khairul Sheikh, a resident of Dinhata in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal, allegedly tried to commit suicide by consuming poison on Wednesday reportedly out of the fear of getting his name deleted from the voters’ list following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state, the groundwork for which will start from November 4.

His family members have told the police and the media persons that, although the name of Sheikh was in the voters’ list of 2002, the year when the SIR was conducted in West Bengal for the last time, the spelling of his name was incorrect in that list.

According to Shaikh’s family members, he was scared that because of the mistake in the spelling of his name in the 2002 list, his name might be deleted from the voters’ list.

Confirming the development, the new District Police Superintendent, Sandip Karra, told media persons that as per the versions of Sheikh’s family members since the SIR was announced for West Bengal by the ECI earlier this week, he started panicking.

“The police have started an investigation into the matter. He is currently under treatment. We will investigate him after he recovers and get to know from him the reasons behind his act,” Karra said.

Trinamool Congress’ Cooch Behar district president, Avijit Dey, said that the incident is proof of what kind of panic is there among the common people over the SIR.

“What I heard is that some people told Sheikh that because of the mistake in the spelling of his name in the 2022 list, his name will be deleted from the voters’ list following the fresh SIR, and he will also be deported to Bangladesh. Out that fear he tried to commit suicide,” Dey added.

The BJP legislator from Cooch Behar (Uttar) constituency, Sukumar Roy, said that even if the fear factor prompted Sheikh to attempt suicide, Trinamool Congress is responsible for that since the party is responsible for spreading a false sense of fear among people about the SIR.

On Tuesday, a 57-year-old man, identified as Pradeep Kar, committed suicide at Panihati in North 24 Parganas district, reportedly out of fear of being affected by a possible National Register of Citizens (NRC) in West Bengal.

BJP had already raised doubts about whether the suicide note recovered from near his body was actually written by the deceased person and also demanded a proper investigation into the actual reason behind the suicide.

On Tuesday, both the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress’s General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee accused the BJP and the Union government of spreading a sense of fear and division by using NRC as a tool, where people are often made to doubt their own right to existence, the reflection of which was felt in the suicide of Kar.

Since the beginning, Trinamool Congress leadership had been describing the SIR as an indirect ploy by the BJP and the Union government to impose the NRC in West Bengal.

New Delhi, Oct 29: When his estranged elder sibling Tej Pratap Yadav said that Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi was living in their father Lalu Prasad’s shadow, the younger brother could have nodded in agreement since his aspiration to be Bihar’s next Chief Minister lay through that path.

Early this year, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) national executive committee passed a resolution empowering Tejaswi to levels that equalled that of the founder and party President Lalu. It was thus clear who among the latter’s nine children would carry the legacy forward.

Four of Lalu-Rabri’s children exhibited interests in politics, with Misha Bharti standing by Tejashwi in the current family feud, seemingly content as a Lok Sabha member, while the younger Rohini Acharya has extended support to Tej Pratap.

Rohini, who unsuccessfully contested as an RJD candidate from Bihar’s Saran Lok Sabha constituency in 2024, makes no secret of her disappointment over their father’s endorsement of Tejashwi. She also makes it known that it was she who donated a kidney to Lalu earlier.

Tejashwi’s elevation in RJD was, therefore, through a family feud that is standing out more vividly with the elections. The resilience and determination that he has shown in his fights within the family and party reflected outside – in seat-sharing negotiations. Despite his age and experience being less than most of his allies, he handled them with elan, refusing to give in much to their demands.

He lacks the rustic sense of humour of his father, but that did not come in the way of making the partners smile, even if reluctantly. The exercise bore fruit in 2020 when the Mahagathbandhan fell short of a majority by only a dozen seats and the RJD emerged as the single largest party, winning 75 of Bihar’s 243 Assembly constituencies. He has thus lived by Lalu’s legacy of using alliance strength when facing a stronger opponent.

In 1999, when Sonia Gandhi was poised to stake a claim to form the government but Mulayam Singh Yadav refused to support, Lalu – despite being a political rival at times – was more amenable to working with the Congress. Though he had only seven seats in the Lok Sabha, the Bihar strongman played a role in trying to bridge gaps between regional leaders and Gandhi.

In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, when the RJD won 24 Lok Sabha seats, giving Lalu substantial influence in forming the new government, he had famously said “I will play the role of queenmaker”, referring to his support for the Sonia-led Congress.

In the run-up to the 2025 polls, Tejashwi did upset a few parties – including the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and national ally Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) – but he did not want RJD to either lose vote share or vote bank, accommodating more partners. He calculated that getting AIMIM onboard could paint a Muslim overreach and could affect Yadav votes. Bihar’s caste census report of 2022 shows the former at around 17.70 per cent and the latter at about 14.3 per cent. He is rather intending to somehow break into the Backward (OBC) and the Extremely Backward Class (EBC) votes, who together constitute some 63.1 per cent of Bihar’s population.

The RJD, which initially enjoyed their support, witnessed an erosion in OBC votes, being viewed as leaning further towards Muslim-Yadav support; while EBC votes shifted for Bihar’s ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United). He is thus trying to live Lalu’s legacy of using “Mandal” over “Kamandal”.

Lalu’s rise to prominence was rooted in the implementation and political mobilisation around the Mandal Commission’s recommendations. He used it as a tool against so-called Kamandal politics, said to be in favour of majoritarian, upper-caste-centred Hindutva projects. This consolidation also helped Lalu decimate the rising Communist forces, who stuck to “class struggle” over the state’s caste equations.

However, Tejashwi also carries the legacy of “jungle raaj” under the Lalu-Rabri regime that his critics have repeatedly raised with a slogan of “good governance” from Nitish Kumar. That is among the aspects of his father’s shadow that the young Yadav is trying hard to step out of.