In case you missed it

Nation mourns: Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passed away at 89 following multiple organ failure. Chatterjee, who had been associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for most part of his life, is a 10-time Lok Sabha MP. Chatterjee was a central committee member of the CPI(M), which he had joined in 1968. However, he was expelled from the CPI(M) in 2008 for refusing to resign as the Speaker after his party withdrew support to the UPA-I government. Chatterjee’s family on Monday refused to drape the late leader's body in the CPI(M) flag offered by the party and also refused to take the mortal remains of the veteran leader to the party headquarters at Alimuddin street.

Shelter horror: Naushma alias Babli (40) and Poonam Bharti (18) died under mysterious circumstances at a Patna shelter home weeks after the shocking case of rape, assault and death at the Muzzafarpur shelter home. On Monday, the secretary Chirantan Kumar and treasurer Manisha Dayal, who run the state-run Aasra shelter home for women with mental disabilities in Patna, were arrested over their links with the death of two inmates.

CM charged: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and 11 other MLAs were charged in the Delhi Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash assault case on Monday.

Near miss: Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Umar Khalid was allegedly shot at on Monday outside the Constitution Club of India near the Parliament. According to the police and eyewitnesses, the attacker dropped the weapon and fled the spot. Khalid was unhurt.

Making history: For the first time since its inception in 1996, the Aero India show is set to fly out of Bengaluru. The new venue is widely speculated to be the Bakshi Ka Talab air force base on the outskirts of Lucknow, though an official announcement has been delayed given the politics that is swirling around the flagship event.

One poll: The Centre is keen on holding elections in 11 states along with the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have said, adding that the government would not require a constitutional amendment to bring about the change.

Agree or disagree?

Pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi paying homage to Muthuvel Karunanidhi as his body lay in state at Rajaji Hall in Chennai may have given rise to speculation if the BJP is open to an alliance with the DMK? But senior journalist Shekhar Iyer writes that similar scenes were witnessed when AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa died in December 2016.

The DMK was not the ‘family party’ that it is today when its founder CN Annadurai, popularly called ‘Anna’ or big brother in Tamil, passed away in 1969. A young Muthuvel Karunanidhi, who emerged from the grass root anti-Hindi agitation, was one of Anna’s trusted lieutenants, but there were others in the party who were equally popular, if not more. But onceincharge there was no space for challengers or even potential challengers to his leadership and that became the genesis of a party that would eventually revolve around one leader and his family. Read Veeraraghav’s take on how the curtains may have fallen on the beloved scriptwriter of Tamil Nadu, bbut his Dravidian screenplay continues to be written by his son MK Stalin.

If someone thought that the late DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi’s one-time politician-son and former Union Minister M K Alagiri may hold a threat to the party and his younger brother M K Stalin, who is now in control than ever, they may be mistaken. N Sathiya Murthy explains how Alagiri’s claims on the Marina sands after paying respects at his father’s yet-to-be built memorial on the site where he was buried, that Karunanidhi’s ‘true loyalists’ were still with him, may require greater proof and evidence on the ground, for anyone to take him seriously.