The Catch Up: 12 March

This is the Catch Up on 3 Things for the Indian Express and I'm Niharika NandaIt’s the 12th of March and here are the top stories of the day.A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised Manohar Lal Khattar at the inauguration of the prestigious Dwarka Expressway project, he was removed as the Chief Minister of Haryana by the BJP, and replaced by the party’s Kurukshetra MP and its state unit chief, Nayab Singh Saini. Opting for an OBC leader in place of Khattar, who has held the CM position since 2014, particularly with the Lok Sabha and the Haryana assembly elections around the corner, seems to be a strategic move on the part of BJP. Tejas, the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft, crashed in Rajasthan today, during an operational training exercise. According to a post by the Indian Air Force on X, the pilot was able to eject safely. The incident is said to have occurred at Jawahar Nagar in Jaisalmer, with the crash site being around 100 km away from the venue where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was addressing the Bharat Shakti programme. A day after the Ministry of Home Affairs notified the rules for implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the Centre today announced a new portal for people who want to apply for CAA and shared the link for the same. According to the rules of the act, a Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, who entered India before December 31, 2014, can now seek Indian citizenship without producing a valid passport of these countries or a valid visa from India. In further news on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act,West Bengal CM Mamta Banerjee, while addressing an administrative meeting at Habra in the state’s North 24 Parganas district urged people to not apply for citizenship under the act. She said that the act lacks clarity and if they did apply, they would be quote “marked as refugees and infiltrators” and “deprived of government schemes” unquote. She said that she will not let CAA be implemented in her state. The Ministry of External Affairs today “rejected” the comments by China objecting to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh on the 9th of March during which he launched several projects of the Central government in the region. On Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, when asked about PM Modi’s visit said, quote “China strongly deplores and firmly opposes the Indian leader’s visit to the East Section of the China-India boundary. Quote. The MEA in its statement added that China’s objections will not change the reality that the State of Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India.This was the Catch-Up on the 3 Things by The Indian Express.