In the aftermath of the 2016 Kashmir unrest, a young local field agent, Zooni Haksar, is picked out by Rajeshwari Swaminathan from the Prime Minister’s Office for a top-secret mission. Their aim? Cracking down on terrorism and putting an end to the billion dollar conflict economy in the valley, by doing the absolute impossible – Abrogating the notorious Article 370. That too, without spilling a single drop of innocent blood – goes the official statement from Jio Studios. That kind of sums up the film in totality. Director Aditya Subhash Jambhale has made a 160 minute long explainer on why the government took the step of abrogating Article 370, with the government’s point of view firmly in place. There’s even a powerpoint presentation about the same highlighting the legal nitty gritties. 

Aditya Dhar, who is one of the producers of the film, has married a proper action thriller with a political film, turning his wife, Yami Gautam Dhar, into an action hero in the process. She’s a fine actress indeed and has taken to doing action like a duck to water. She’s the only heroine perhaps who held a gun properly in films. Her stance is perfect and so are her movements as she takes cover and runs towards her target. But it’s not only doing action where she scores. She plays Zooni Haksar with the emotional depth the character deserves, investing lots of angst and sorrow in her character. It’s the anger of a common Kashmiri who is tired of the violence and the unrest and finds herself unable to take it any more. When she’s given a chance to become an agent for change, she takes to her assignment with full commitment. Be it her confrontation scenes with the militant supporters or her subdued romance with CRPF soldier Yash Chauhan (Vaibhav Tatwawadi), her expressions are bang on.

The film rests on her and Priyamani’s shoulders. The South actress plays a straight-laced bureaucrat who sorts out problems for her political bosses with a smile. Be it dealing with the red tape or with probing journalists, her smile never slips. Her Rajeshwari Swaminathan is  the shield to Zooni’s sword and the two women support each other at every turn. It’s great that the director made two women as the protagonists. He could have easily cast two macho actors in the roles and the film would have become something that glorifies alpha males. Since two women have been cast, the narrative becomes more nuanced by default. 

Arun Govil makes an entry as the PM but he doesn’t quite cut the same commanding figure as Modi is in real life. The same is true of Kiran Karmarkar, who plays the Home Minister. 

The film is a cracker of an action film and if one doesn’t dwell on its political stance much, can be thoroughly enjoyed as an action thriller. 

Major Byju’s shareholders including Prosus NV and Peak XV Partners voted Friday to oust its founder as chief executive officer, escalating a battle over the fate of the once high-flying online tutoring startup that is fighting to remain in business.

Byju’s rejected the resolutions, which also sought to remove Byju Raveendran from the board of the company he founded in 2015, the company said in a statement on Friday.

“The resolutions passed during the recently concluded extraordinary general meeting – attended by a small cohort of select shareholders – are invalid and ineffective,” according to the statement.

A spokesperson for Prosus declined to comment, while Peak did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The vote sends another clear signal of displeasure with the once-celebrated entrepreneur, who boycotted the meeting. It’s an unusual twist in a long-running dispute between a company once counted among India’s most valuable startups, and a clutch of influential investors that helped bankroll its pre-Covid ascent.

The shareholders’ decision came after a rowdy hours-long Zoom call for investors and management on Friday that several Byju’s employees tried to crash, according to two people who attended. Several times during the meeting, unknown participants tried to disrupt the proceedings with whistles and other loud noises, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing a private call.

Online-education pioneer Byju’s and its creditors have been mired in a prolonged restructuring conflict after the firm missed an interest payment on a $1.2 billion loan. A unit of the company was put into bankruptcy in the US after the default.

Raveendran, whose ascent from tutor to the leader of a company once valued at $22 billion captivated a nation then enamored of charismatic tech entrepreneurs, is taking increasingly desperate measures to keep the business afloat after expanding too rapidly during the pandemic. Byju’s was caught off-balance after demand for online tutoring dropped off as schools reopened.

Some board members have resigned and Raveendran has pledged his home as well as those owned by his family members to raise money for employee salaries. It’s also selling new stock at a discount of more than 90% from its previous funding round to raise capital.

Raveendran’s company is one of several once-lionized tech startups that have grappling with financial or legal troubles. Paytm, the firm that popularized online finance across India, is struggling to address the abrupt suspension of a key division by the central bank.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

The joy in the INDIA bloc over seat-sharing breakthroughs may prove to be short-lived, with the Trinamool Congress reiterating that it will contest all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. The party’s snub to the Congress comes after a wild swing in less than 24 hours, with sources in the alliance indicating on Thursday that seat-sharing talks were back on track and Trinamool sources telling NDTV earlier on Friday that the party could not find a third seat for the Congress “even with binoculars”. 

Derek O’Brien, Trinamool’s leader in the Rajya Sabha, said, “A few weeks ago, the TMC chairperson and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee stated that TMC is fighting all the 42 seats in Bengal. We are also in the fray in a few seats in Assam and the Tura Lok Sabha seat in Meghalaya. There is no change in this position.” 

The strong statement will come as a setback to the INDIA alliance as well as the Congress, which has finalised a seat-sharing deal with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and has also reportedly worked out an understanding with the AAP for Delhi, Gujarat, Goa and Haryana in the past few days. 

A pact in West Bengal would not only have been a major morale boost for the opposition bloc, which has seen some major exits of late, but would have also been important electorally because the state sends the third-highest number of MPs to the Lok Sabha. 

The indications on Thursday were that the Congress had scaled down its demand for seats in West Bengal to five and was looking to score a hat-trick with the Trinamool Congress after its successes with the Samajwadi Party and the AAP. To sweeten a potential deal, the Congress was reportedly willing to offer two seats to the Trinamool in Assam and one in Meghalaya. Congress sources had said that the talks were moving in a positive direction.

Come Friday morning, however, clear signals had begun to emerge from the Trinamool camp that the party was unwilling to budge from its initial offer of two seats to the Congress – the number won by the party in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. “Even with binoculars, we are unable to find a third seat for the Congress”, a Trinamool spokesperson had told NDTV.