Above the Fold: Top stories of the day
1. Foreign teams have been asked to leave Nepal as the search-and-rescue portion of relief efforts after last week's earthquake wind up. Now the massive task of rebuilding begins.
2. Andhra Pradesh police have arrested a "Maoist couple" in Tamil Nadu with more than 20 cases in Kerala connected to them.
3. The Kishore BIyani-led Future Retail is merging with Sunil Mittal's Bharti for a combined business with an expected turnover of more than Rs 15,000 crore.

The Big Story: Bills down to the wire
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government would have been fairly happy with the first half of Parliament, despite severe setbacks especially on the land bill front, as they could see the Opposition coming together. Still, the first half saw the passage of important bills regarding insurance, mines and coal blocks. Now the battle gets harder.

With four days left in the Parliament, the government has six key pieces of legislation it wants to get through: land acquisition, Goods and Services Tax, Real Estate, Juvenile Justice, Black Money and the India-Bangladesh Land Border Agreement. Almost none of them are assured passage.

But all is not bleak for the government. Its floor managers appear to have worked hard to cobble together some support for the GST and Land Border Agreement Bills, with the Trinamool Congress in particular, falling in line on the former. The Real Estate Bill, which will be taken up today, is likely to provoke heated debate in the Rajya Sabha. The results of today's efforts and the next three for the BJP could say a lot about its ability to govern despite the disparity in numbers in the two houses.

The Big Scroll
There are lots of signs suggesting a growing closeness between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Trinamool Congress.

Policying & Politicking
1. A chargesheet in the alleged corruption case against a Congress politician from Maharashtra has brought two former chief ministers of the state under the scanner.
2. A regulator has recommended that 12 cancer drugs be added in the National List of Essential Medicines, which would mean they come under price controls.
3. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh wants India to celebrate Press Day on May 6, because it is the birthday of Narada, "the first reporter of the universe".
4. Stalin and A Ramadoss, two Tamil politicians who would both like to be chief minister, have put out open letters criticising the current CM, O Paneerselvam, signaling the beginning of election moves a year ahead of polls in the state.
5. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will this week make his first visit to what is known as the red zone of Maoist-affected areas, by travelling to Bastar in Chhattisgarh.

Giggle

Punditry
1. After the government first proposed and then withdrew its decision to separate debt management from the Reserve Bank of India, Usha Thorat in the Indian Express asks for a more thoughtful, consultative approach on the issue.
2. Rohini Singh in the Economic Times puts forward the proposition that Modi has been trying to alter his image, from one of being close to industralists, to a Prime Minister who maintains his distance and fights for the poor.
3. Embedded, jingoistic reporters and Indian journalists adamant that they should have right of way contributed to the backlash against the Indian media in Nepal, writes Jayant Sriram in the Hindu.
4. Bihar, which saw casualties of its own after last week's earthquake, should learn from Nepal's experience, especially considering the likelihood of calamities affecting the state, writes Giridhar Jha in Mail Today.

Don't Miss
Ajmal Kamal asks: Are Hindi and Urdu really two different languages?
How the original Hindi language, spoken in Hindustan, was turned into Urdu ‒ the language of a particular social class of a non-Hindustani origin residing in a small part of a city ‒ by whom, under which circumstances, using what authority, and to achieve which purpose, is a string of intriguing questions which have not found their due place in the public discourse about the origin of Urdu.