This is the Catch Up on 3 Things for the Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.
It’s the 1st of February and here are the headlines.

Presenting the interim Union Budget in Parliament this morning, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that there would be no change in tax rates for direct and indirect taxes, including import duties. Meanwhile, the fiscal deficit for 2024-25 is estimated at 5.1 per cent of GDP against 5.8 per cent in the current financial year. With the Lok Sabha polls right around the corner, Sitharaman kicked off her Budget speech by highlighting the economic triumphs of the Modi government over the last decade.

The political reactions to the Budget were largely along expected lines. Political leaders from the ruling NDA alliance have welcomed it, while some Opposition leaders very quickly wrote it off as “disappointing”. While, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh called the Budget “encouraging”, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said, quote, "It was one of the shortest speeches on record in the Budget. Not very much came out of it,” Unquote.

Amid the ongoing political crisis in Jharkhand following the Hemant Soren’s resignation and subsequent arrest last night, Governor CP Radhakrishnan has agreed to to meet the coalition legislators today. Late night, Champai Soren, the state’s Transport Minister and a loyalist of the CM, had staked claim to form the government, but the Governor had sought time saying he will revert on their proposal after considering the legalities.

The Supreme Court today asked the Anjuman Intezamia Masajid, which had approached it against the Varanasi district court’s order allowing Hindus to perform prayers in the Gyanvapi mosque’s southern cellar, to move the Allahabad High Court. The mosque committee, as a result, moved the Allahabad High Court. The Advocate on Record for the mosque committee, this morning, had moved an urgent application before the Supreme Court seeking its intervention.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court has acquitted a 40-year-old man, who spent nearly 12 years in jail, after finding that his daughter’s rape allegation against him was made after her father had objected to her being in a relationship. The court also found that she had previously admitted that her father did not have sexual relations with her. The HC noted that it was “clear like noon day that her statement by no stretch of imagination can be said to be of sterling quality”.

This was the Catch-Up on the 3 Things by The Indian Express.