The Catch Up: 20 May

3 Things

This is the Catch Up on 3 Things for the Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.
It’s the 20th of May and here are today's headlines.
Polling is underway for 49 Lok Sabha seats across six states and two Union Territories including Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla. As of this afternoon, the Election Commission received about 1036 complaints from various political parties in West Bengal related to malfunctioning EVMs, agents being stopped from entering polling booths, and voters being threatened or stopped from going to cast their votes in different constituencies. Meanwhile, in addition to five Lok Sabha seats in Odisha, voters will also cast their ballot for the second phase of simultaneous state assembly elections in 35 seats today.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said that he was hurt seeing the poverty in Odisha despite the state having “so many mineral resources”, and alleged that the Chief Minister’s Office and residence had been captured by “a handful of corrupt people”. In an indirect dig at V K Pandian, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s close aide and BJD’s key election strategist who is from Tamil Nadu, Modi also claimed that people were saying the keys of the Puri Jagannath Temple’s Ratna Bhandar (treasure trove) had been sent to the souther state. THis is his third visit to Odisha in a fortnight.
Days after a Banaras Hindu University study reported long-term adverse events of “special interest” in a group of over 900 people a year after they were vaccinated with Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has called it a “poorly designed study” with critical flaws. The director-general of the apex medical research body has also written to the authors of the paper and the editor of the journal in which it was published, stating that it “incorrectly and misleadingly” acknowledges ICMR though the body did not offer any financial or technical support for the paper.
The Enforcement Directorate has moved an application seeking an extension of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal's judicial custody by 14 days in the money laundering case linked to the 'excise policy scam' after he surrenders on 2nd of June. Kejriwal is currently on interim bail till 1st of June after he was granted bail by the apex Court.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has been killed in a helicopter crash in the mountains to the northwest of the country, close to its borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The helicopter, which was also carrying Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and the Governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province Malek Rahmati, disappeared in dense fog on Sunday. According to Iran’s Constitution, the First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber will take over as interim president.
This was the Catch-Up on the 3 Things by The Indian Express.