Morning Digest: 18% U.S. tariff on ‘Made in India’ products, says PM Modi after phone call with Trump; bulk submission of voter name deletion requests sparks outrage in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and more

The Hindu Morning Digest gives a select list of stories to start the day. Read the top news today on February 3, 2026

Indicating a positive turn in a bilateral relationship that had been under strain because of multiple issues, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that “Made in India” products will “now” attract a “reduced tariff of 18%” in the U.S., after a telephonic conversation with President Donald Trump on Monday. The move is expected to significantly reduce the impact of the 50% penalty tariffs that Mr. Trump had imposed on India in August 2025.

Subhan Khan, a BJP worker at the sleepy village of Janpaliya in Barmer district in Rajasthan, was stunned when his Booth Level Officer informed him that an application had been filed seeking the deletion of his name from the State’s electoral rolls through Form 7. Even more surprisingly, the form was submitted in his name. Hundreds of such forms have surfaced in this village as well as certain other villages of this district. While booth-level agents of the BJP in whose names these forms had been filed denied signing them, many said the forms had created a furore in the villages, and worried voters had sought answers from them.

Allegations have emerged in Gujarat of mass submissions of Form 7 applications seeking the deletion of names from electoral rolls. Amid the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercice, several voters have claimed that their names, phone, and Elector’s Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers were misused, and signatures forged to file false claims. In some cases, voters alleged they were asked to sign hundreds of Form 7 applications and were told the forms were for inclusion of names, not deletion.

An Air India pilot reported an instance of a fuel switch malfunction on a Boeing 787-8 flight from London to Bengaluru after it landed on Monday (February 2, 2026), following which the airline says it has grounded the aircraft and is examining the matter. The switches that supply fuel to the two engines on an aircraft were at the heart of the preliminary report into the Air India AI 171 crash in Ahmedabad last June. The preliminary report into Air India’s Ahmedabad crash, which also involved a Boeing 787 aircraft, said that the switches that supply fuel to the engine shifted or “transitioned” to the CUTOFF position one after another and there was a loss of engine thrust and both engines shut down, precipitating the crash of the Boeing 787-8 aircraft which killed at least 269. While the report didn’t specify whether this was an inadvertent or deliberate action, a tiny fragment of the exchange between the two pilots reproduced in it sparked a debate on whether the crash was a suicide attempt.

Despite five southern States being assigned a collectively higher share under the vertical distribution scheme of the 16th Finance Commission (FC) than in the past, Tamil Nadu’s share has seen only a marginal rise. The share of Tamil Nadu, which was 4.079% in the 15th FC, rose to 4.097% now, accounting for a rate of increase of 0.44%. This was followed by Telangana with a rise of 3.43% and Andhra Pradesh with 4.2%. Only Karnataka and Kerala have witnessed a double-digit rate of increase — 13.27% and 23.74%. At the all-India level, Kerala’s degree of rise is only next to Haryana’s 24.52%, while the third slot goes to Karnataka.

The Centre and the Union Territory of Ladakh administration accused detained climate activist Sonam Wangchuk of using the veneer of Gandhian non-violence to disguise actual incitement to the younger and impressionable generations to turn to violence. Appearing before a Bench headed by Justice Aravind Kumar, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta reasoned that Mr. Wangchuk’s instigation even touched upon “self-immolation” and non-cooperation in case of an external aggression. The top law officer said the region was located along the border to a country with which India had a “fragile” relationship.