This is the Catch Up on 3 Things for the Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.
It’s the 30th of January and here are the headlines.

Floor leaders of various parties attended an all-party meeting today convened by the government ahead of the Budget session of Parliament. The suspension of 11 Rajya Sabha MPs, who were suspended during the Winter Session of Parliament was revoked. During the meet, the Centre assured the leaders of various political parties that they were ready to discuss every issue.

The BJP’s Manoj Sonkar was declared the Mayor of Chandigarh today after he won the mayoral polls. He won with 16 votes against the 12 votes bagged by the Congress-AAP candidate Kuldeep Tita. Eight votes were declared invalid, which led Opposition leaders to raise allegations of rigging. The polls are considered significant as it is the maiden electoral test of the Opposition’s INDIA alliance against the BJP and also saw the first alliance between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress.

In a rare verdict, an additional district sessions court in Kerala’s Alappuzha district awarded the death sentence today to 15 people linked to the PFI-SDPI in the murder of BJP leader Ranjith Sreenivasan in 2021. The BJP OBC Morcha state secretary Ranjith, was hacked to death in front of his wife, mother and minor daughter in Alappuzha town on 19th of December 2021. The murder happened hours after SDPI state secretary K S Shan was killed in Alappuzha by a gang allegedly belonging to RSS-BJP on the night of 18th of December.

With opposition BJP claiming Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren was “missing”, the latter was seen at his residence, where MLAs of the ruling coalition gathered for a meeting. Soren wrote an email to the ED today, agreeing to record his statement before the agency tomorrow at 1 pm at his residence. He termed the agency’s insistence on recording a statement on or before 31st of January as “politically motivated”.

The Navy today said that it has rescued a crew of 19 Pakistani nationals from 11 Somali pirates in a successful operation on the hijacked fishing vessel Al Naeemi. The Navy’s INS Sumitra carried out the anti-piracy operation – the second in the last 36 hours – off the east coast of Somalia. On 29th of January, the same warship had thwarted a piracy attempt on the Iranian-flagged fishing vessel FV Iman, ensuring the safe release of the 17 crew members.

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