Sisodia seeks action against mining mafia after Punjab MLA attacked
New Delhi, June 21: Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday demanded strong action from Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh over attack on an AAP MLA in Punjab by the mining mafia.
"Our MLA from Punjab Amarjeet Singh Sandoa was attacked by the mining mafia today. Mining mafia is ruling in the Captain Amarinder Singh's governance, the same way it used to rule in the BJP governance.
"Despite being in the opposition, our MLAs keeping their lives on the line against the mining mafia. Do something Captain," Sisodia said in a tweet.
Sandoa was injured on Thursday after he and his security personnel were attacked by sand mafia goons in Punjab's Ropar district where he had gone to see an illegal sand mining site.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national spokesperson Ashish Khaitan said that Amarinder Singh should take strict action against the mining mafia in Punjab or resign.
Seeking a white paper on the loss suffered by Punjab in the last 15 years due to illegal mining,
Khaitan also accused Amarinder Singh of casual approach towards the "mafia".
"Amarinder Singh himself once saw (illegal) mining while he was in his helicopter and ordered his officials to take an immediate action. But it has been one-and-a-half years since the Congress came to power and illegal mining is still done openly," he said.
He said the MLA had stopped illegal mining four months earlier in the same village.
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Indian-origin translator Padma Viswanathan shortlisted for International Booker Prize 2026
New Delhi (PTI): Padma Viswanathan, a Canadian-American writer of Indian-origin, has made it to the 2026 International Booker Prize shortlist as the English translator of a Portuguese language novella.
"On Earth As It Is Beneath" by Brazilian author Ana Paula Maia, described by judges as a "brutal, haunting and hypnotic novella set in a remote Brazilian penal colony, where the boundaries between justice and cruelty collapse", is among the six worldwide contenders for the coveted literary honour.
The annual prize worth GBP 50,000, divided equally between the author and translator, was won last year by Kannada writer-activist Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi for the short story collection "Heart Lamp". Each shortlisted title guarantees a prize of GBP 5,000 -- also split 50-50 between the book’s author and English translator.
"What struck us most is how spare, unflinching, uncompromising and relentless it is. Maia builds an entire moral universe out of very little: a remote prison, a handful of men, and the rituals of punishment that govern their lives.
"The novel reads almost like a dark fable about power, where brutality is ordinary and civilisation feels frighteningly thin," the judging panel, which also include award-winning Indian novelist and columnist Nilanjana S. Roy, said of the work translated by US-based Viswanathan.
The 58-year-old professor of creative writing at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville is an accomplished playwright and author, whose novels have been published in eight countries.
The list, announced on Tuesday, is dominated by women, with five of the six authors and four of the six translators being female. The authors and translators represent eight countries -- Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Taiwan, the UK and the United States.
"With narratives that capture moments from across the past century, these books reverberate with history. While there’s heartbreak, brutality and isolation among these stories, their lasting effect is energising," said author Natasha Brown, chair of this year’s judging panel.
The other books include "The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran" by Shida Bazyar and translated from German by Ruth Martin; "She Who Remains" by Rene Karabash and translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel; "The Director" by Daniel Kehlmann and translated from German by Ross Benjamin; "Taiwan Travelogue" by Yáng Shuāng-zi and translated from Taiwanese by Lin King; and "The Witch" by Marie Ndiaye and translated from French by Jordan Stump.
The announcement of the winning book will take place on May 19 at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London.
The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for a single work of fiction -- either a novel or a collection of short stories -- written in another language, translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.
According to the organisers, the 2025 winner "Heart Lamp" –- the first collection of short stories to win the prize and the first translated from Kannada –- rapidly sold out in the UK in the subsequent days, with the UK publisher, And Other Stories, immediately reprinting 40,000 copies.
