Days after the Supreme Court cancelled allocation of 214 coal blocks, the government moved in passing an ordinance that will enable it to acquire the land of these mines along with plants for auction later. Speaking on the matter, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, "Auction of coal mines will be completed in 3-4 months and sufficient number of mines will be put up for e-auction." He added, "Power, steel, cement sectors were going to suffer because of non-functioning of coal mines whose allocation was cancelled." The government will auction the coal blocks to private companies. 

Kate Middleton and Prince William's second baby is due in April, Britain's royal family announced. While the public now know when Prince George will have a sibling, the gender of Prince William and Catherine's second baby remains a secret. As during her first pregnancy, Catherine continues to suffer from hyperemesis gravidarum, the palace said. The condition involves nausea and vomiting more severe than the typical morning sickness many women suffer during early pregnancy.

Cyclone Hudhud death toll rose to 46, after three more deaths were reported, while it has been estimated that food grain production loss is to the tune of 22 lakh tonne. It has been reported that 42 people were injured inthe severe cyclonic storm, which devastated the three districts on October 12. Power supply has been restored to 15 lakh consumers,while the remaining nine lakh consumers would be given electricity supply by Deepavali

A Delhi court on Monday dismisses bail plea of businessman Gautam Khaitan, arrested by Enforcement Directorate in VVIP chopper deal-related money laundering case. ED carried out its first arrest in the money laundering probe in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland chopper deal last week, taking into custody Gautam Khaitan, an ex-board member of an accused company. The agency, which is trying to track the alleged kickbacks of Rs 360 crore from the deal, arrested Khaitan, a businessman and advocate, after searches were conducted at two of his premises in the national capital on Monday.

Nigeria has been declared officially free of Ebola after six weeks with no new cases, the World Health Organization said.WHO representative Rui Gama Vaz, speaking in the capital Abuja, said it was a "spectacular success story". Nigeria won praise for its swift response after a Liberian diplomat brought the disease there in July. The outbreak has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.

The wife of British-Indian millionaire Shrien Dewani, accused of orchestrating her murder while they were on honeymoon in Cape Town in 2010, had a strained relationship with her husband and was thinking of divorcing him, a South African court heard today.

Dewani, a 34-year-old businessman, did not look like someone who was grieving at his wife Anni's funeral, her cousin testified at the trial in Cape Town that resumed today.

"The things Shrien told me didn't make sense, he didn't come across as a grieving husband, the things he said on phone sounded odd. He didn't look like someone who was grieving," Anni's cousin and confidante Sneha Mashru told the court. "She was thinking of getting a divorce," Mashru added.

Union Human Resource Development minister Smriti Irani has distributed over 15,000 saris among women from Amethi Lok Sabha constituency as a Diwali gift.

The saris were distributed today by Irani's aide Vijay Gupta. Irani had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls, held in May, from Amethi. She lost to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi.

Gupta said the Diwali gifts were distributed in villages of Jagdishpur, Tiloi, Gauriganj, Salon and Amethi areas.

He said the gifts are the results of Irani's "strong will to serve the people of Amethi despite her defeat in the last parliamentary election. More than 15,000 saris have been distributed," he said. 

A footballer has died of injuries he sustained after landing awkwardly while celebrating a goal during a state-level league match, the organisers of the Mizoram Premier League have announced.

Peter Biaksangzuala, a midfielder for Bethlehem Vengthlang -- a club based in the north east of the country, damaged his spinal cord after attempting a series of somersaults to celebrate his equaliser in the fixture against Chanmari West last Tuesday.

The 23-year-old was taken to Aizawl Civil Hospital and underwent surgery on his spine, but died of his injuries on Sunday morning.

A statement on the Mizoram Premier League's official Facebook page read: "Bethlehem Vengthlang FC midfielder Peter Biaksangzuala lost his fight for survival after he suffered a fatal injury while celebrating his goal.

"It has been a sad day for Mizoram football and the demise of the footballer shook his team-mates, footballers and fans alike all over Mizoram. Read more

Former Bihar chief minister and JD-U leader Nitish Kumar today staged a day-long "dharna" (sit-in) in Patna to put pressure on the central government to accord special category status to Bihar.

Besides party workers, Nitish was joined by dozens of party MPs and legislators at the "dharna" site at the JP roundabout near Gandhi Maidan.

Nitish said the protest was against the BJP-led central government's injustice and betrayal in granting special category status to the state.

"Modi had said in rallies here that we will give special attention, special status to Bihar. Now it's been five months but nothing has happened. He said these things many times during elections and won handsomely too. But now he has forgotten the people of Bihar," Nitish said.

Early reports say that at least eight people have been killed after a fire broke out at a firecracker factory in Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. Fire engines are at the spot trying to douse the flames. Details awaited.

Hectic lobbying was on behind the curtains in Haryana BJP for the post of chief minister, who is "likely" to take oath on October 22 even as the party high command has kept its cards close to its chest.

Amid the last minute attempts to stake claim for the post of Chief Minister in Haryana, a meeting of the newly elected 47 party MLAs has been convened in Chandigarh tomorrow.

The meeting will be chaired by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu and party vice president Dinesh Sharma, who have been appointed observers by the BJP's Parliamentary Board for deciding on who will be the CM of Haryana.

BJP's Rajeev Pratap Rudy says it is clear that there will be a CM of the BJP in Maharashtra. "Rajnath Singhji and Naddaji will be in Maharashtra as observers. Everything is in the open. The BJP's top leadership will have a conclusive statement on how we will proceed with our alliance," he said.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has been trending on Twitter since yesterday after the party's abysmal results in the both the states. Rahul Gandhi has yet to accept responsibility for the poor showing, though party leaders have been quick to blame former CMs Prithviraj Chavan and BS Hooda for the results.

The hashtag 'Where is Rahul Gandhi' trending since yesterday, is also a reference to Cong spox Shobha Oza's statement to a TV channel that Rahul was in Delhi yesterday, when in fact, he was in Vizag. Here's a look at one of the sharpest tweets.

ANI reports that 10 people have been injured in the explosion at the firecracker factory in Andhra Pradesh. An earlier report said that there were eight deaths, but ANI reports there are no casualties. 

MHA sends an advisory to all states to avoid communal flare-ups. The MHA asks states to stop forcible installation of idols at disputed sites, if at all. 

If you're a royal watcher, you should know that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's second baby will be born in April 2015.That's William and Kate, to the rest of us.

Maharashtra's former deputy CM Ajit Pawar explains the reason for the
NCP's disastrous results at the hustings and the status of govt formation. "The BJP has not contacted us yet, it is up to them to make a decision on what they want to do. We want to work for the people and solve their issue. 
A new govt in Maharashtra needs stability, that's why Praful Patel offered external support to BJP. We didn't have time to campaign everywhere but still we have done well, we are happy," says Pawar. 

And the focus is now on the Delhi polls. Manish Sisodia, senior leader of the AAP, says,  "Even a child will tell you that Arvind Kejriwal will be a better Delhi CM than Jagdish Mukhi. If BJP thinks there is a BJP wave they should show their mettle in Delhi."

Mohammedan Sporting, one of the oldest football clubs in India (founded in 1891), goes bankrupt and is shutting down. The decision to shut the Kolkata-based club was taken on Saturday. The club currently plays in the I-League and premier division of CFL. The players have not received salaries for three months.

The visit of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who was to attend a crucial BJP meeting in Mumbai today, has been deferred. "The new date would be announced later," Leader of Opposition in Legislative Council Vinod Tawde said.

"Newly elected BJP legislators will meet at the state BJP office this afternoon and celebrate our victory," he said.

Singh was to travel to Mumbai today to decide on who will lead the BJP government in Maharashtra. "I am going to Maharashtra tomorrow to decide on BJP legislature party leader," Singh had said yesterday.

The BJP has appointed Singh and senior leader J P Nadda as central observers to choose legislature party leader, as decided by the BJP Parliamentary Party.

Congress leader Kumari Selja blames former Harayan CM BS Hooda for the party's loss in the state. She says Hooda is the major factor for party's loss in Haryana. "It was a one man show, Hooda didn't care about other state leaders," she says.

During his second term as the Haryana CM, Bhupinder Singh Hooda had to contend with fierce hostility from within Congress and opponents over various issues like lopsided development, misuse of change of land use (CLU) to favour big corporates, favouritism in selection for government jobs and corruption.

The Congress won just 15 of the 90 seats in the assembly polls and was ranked third.

Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut's blink-and-miss presser after Uddhav Thackeray met his winning MLAs. Raut states the obvious -- the party had a meeting with all party MLAs and all the MLAs gave Uddhav the right to decide the legislative party leader. No decision on forming the government in Maharashtra.

Just in: Dhaula Kuan gang-rape case: All five convicts sentenced to life imprisonment. All the five men were also fined Rs 50,000 each.

The five convicts- Usman, Shamshad, Shahid, Iqbal and Kamruddin have been convicted of abducting and gangraping the woman while she was walking home with a colleague after being dropped off by an office cab after midnight.

They had threatened the two women with a country-made pistol and tried to force them into their vehicle, but the victim's friend managed to escape after a brief struggle and call the police. The five men then drove to west Delhi's Mangolpuri area where they took turns raping her and then dumped her on an isolated road.

ISRO's Mars Orbiter @MarsOrbiter tweets: Phew! Experience of a lifetime. Watched the #MarsComet #SidingSpring whizzing past the planet. I'm in my orbit, safe and sound.


In a once-in-a-million-years encounter, a comet, the size of a small mountain, flew past Mars on Sunday.

Comet Siding Spring passed just 140,000 km from Mars, less than half the distance between Earth and the moon and 10 times closer than any known comet has passed by Earth, National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.  

The comet is named after the Australian observatory that discovered it last year. Before the comet passed, it could be seen in space racing toward red planet, trailed by a cloud of debris.

BJP's Jagdish Mukhi, the person in charge of Haryana says a meeting of MLAs will be held tomorrow in Chandigarh. Central observers will be there and a decision on the Haryana CM will be taken.

In winning the Haryana Assembly election, and emerging as the single largest party by far in Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party has demonstrated the ability to expand its support base at the expense of its principal rival at the national level, the Congress. Read more

In Mumbai, NCP President Sharad Pawar reaches the party office for a meeting with MLAs. The NCP won 41 seats in Maharashtra, one less than the Congress. 

BJP observers for Maharashtra, Rajnath Singh and JP Nadda, to meet Uddhav Thackeray.
Om Mathur had said that Uddhav congratulated the party's win in both the states but Maharashtra was not discussed.  Mathur also said, that media reports claiming Uddhav had accepted that the deputy CM would be from the Sena was untrue. No conversation in this regard took place.

AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa has thanked Union Minister Maneka Gandhi for her "heartwarming missive" in the wake of her sentencing in a graft case and actor Rajnikanth for his "gracious sentiments" on her return to home from jail.

The Union Minister of Women and Child Development had said in a letter to Jayalalithaa that she would be happy to do anything "to make this time less onerous."

In her reply to Gandhi, Jayalalithaa said the letter "touched me deeply." "I was especially moved by the fact that, despite your busy schedule as Union Minister, Ministry of Women and Child Development, you found the time to think of me and send your heartwarming missive."

A day after returning from the Parappana Agrahara prison in Bangalore, former CM and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa announced a solatium of Rs 3 lakh for the families of sympathisers who lost their lives after her conviction on September 27. According to an official statement from the AIADMK, as many as 193 people have lost their lives. Read more

Meanwhile, BJP president Amit Shah and senior leader Nitin Gadkari are in a meeting at Gadkari's house. Gadkari tells reporters that he is not in the running for the CM's post.

The Maharashtra and Haryana government formations are being discussed between the two. Also at the meet is Haryana BJP in-charge Jagdish Mukhi. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has requested Olympian sprinter PT Usha to scout and groom sporting talent in Gujarat.

Usha, who is called the Payyoli Express after the Kerala village where she was born, says the invite from Modi came last year when he was Gujarat's chief minister, but she decided to accept it now.

She will be going to Gujarat next month to begin her training camp.

The PM has chosen well since Usha boasts of a very impressive resume with four gold medals and a silver at the 1986 Seoul Asian Games. She narrowly missed a bronze medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics by a fraction of a second.

Usha has a training school in Kerala but she has been struggling to keep it alive due to lack of funds.

The irony of coalition math is that a party with an enviable result has to allow another that has under-performed to call the shots - at least to some extent. Read

Uddhav Thackeray is at Sena Bhavan meeting his newly-elected legislators. A day after the verdict the Shiv Sena, which clearly had misread the writing on the wall by pushing the BJP to walk out of the alliance over disagreement on seat sharing, got professorial goading voters to ponder over what they have done in the election.

The Shiv Sena stood second in the overall tally in Maharashtra capturing 63 seats out of a total of 288.

Just in: PM Modi to meet his council of ministers over dinner at 8 pm today. 

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray heads to Sena Bhavan to meet all newly elected legislators.  

PM Modi at the AIIMS convocation tells graduating doctors, not to ever forget acts of kindness of their chaiwala, a peon -- repay them now, he says.  

The Narendra Modi government has shuffled the official panel set up to commemorate Jawaharlal Nehru's 125th birth anniversary, dropping many UPA picks but retaining Suman Dubey, a former journalist and family friend of the Nehru-Gandhis.Sonia Gandhi had resigned from the panel, set up last year with 'Left liberal' luminaries and known admirers of Nehru and the Congress, after the change of government in May.

As Prime Minister, Modi is ex officio head of the reconstituted 30-member panel, which will oversee yearlong celebrations starting next month.
Read more

The BJP legislature meet is likely in Chandigarh tomorrow. Observers will then convey mood of the MLAs to the PM.

The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah two-horse chariot that rampaged across India to score a spectacular victory in the general election five months ago continued its triumphal march across the small northern state of Haryana today but stuttered and sputtered to a halt a little behind the finishing line in the much bigger expanse of Maharashtra. Read more

With the party emerging as No. 1 in Maharashtra and set to form the state government, and winning Haryana outright, Amit Shah has emerged as the most influential man in BJP after Narendra Modi. Even for Modi, Shah is the to-go man -- the one who can ruthlessly turn the PM's popular appeal into bagfuls of votes. Read

As always, the editorial in the Saamna was tart and snarky. Taking a swipe at Modi and the BJP, the editorial said, the "wave" seen during the campaign had lost its force even before reaching the shores. "In some places, there was more foam and less water in the wave," it quipped.

Another BJP senior leader who wants the party to go with the Sena and not the NCP. Subramanian Swamy says the Shiv Sena doesnt want to accept this change, adjustments need to be made and we should get back to working together. 

After a manic weekend, a relatively light beginning to the day for the PM. Narendra Modi is at the AIIMS convocation in Delhi.

I consider Haryana's victory as a sign that there is a wave of change in the nation, says BJP's Subramanian Swamy. 

The decision on who the BJP will tie-up with to form government in Maharashtra remains undecided. Nothing conclusive after the BJP Parliamentary meet last evening, and for now, most MLAs are still in their constituencies. Observers Rajnath Singh and J P Nadda who are to visit Maharashtra today are waiting for state unit to give them the go-ahead. BJP, it seems, is still unsure whether it will go with the Sena despite Uddhav Thackeray's overtures. Uddhav had called Amit Shah, state election in-charge Om Mathur, Devendra Fadnavis and PM Modi. 

BJP observers Rajnath Singh and JP Nadda's visit to Maharashtra not fixed yet. 

Home Minister Rajnath Singh and senior BJP leader J P Nadda have been appointed as party observers to decide on who will lead the government in Maharashtra. The duo, who will travel to Mumbai today, will also meet Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, reports CNN-IBN.  

With the BJP falling short of a majority in Maharashtra by 22 seats, it is expected that it would go with former ally Shiv Sena, which won 63 seats. The BJP won 123.  

However, the NCP, which won 42 seats, has offered outside support to the BJP. 

BBC reports: The Spanish nurse who became the first person to contract Ebola outside West Africa has now tested negative for the virus, the Spanish government says.

The result suggests Teresa Romero, 44, is no longer infected -- although a second test is required before she can be declared free of Ebola.

Romero contracted the virus when treating two infected patients in a Madrid hospital earlier this month. The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 4,500 people across West Africa.

Narendra Modi will be the first Indian prime minister to address the gallery of Australian member of parliamentarians and leaders at a special joint sitting of Federal Parliament after he attends the G20 leaders; Summit in Brisbane next month.   

While several MPs have expressed their delight and happiness for him to make his maiden trip as the PM, there are speculations that he would be delivering his historic address in Hindi like he has done in the past in other parts of the world.   

Labor Senator from Tasmania Lisa Singh said Modi's speech in Hindi would mean he was bringing in respect, culture and strengths of India to Australia.  "And I think it is important that he makes this journey to our country," 42-yearold Singh, who is the first federal Parliamentarian of Indian origin, said.

In an editorial in its party mouthpiece Saamna, the Shiv Sena on Monday questioned the voters' decision. "Is the public happy with the results in Maharashtra? The people of Maharashtra have not given a clear mandate. There is uncertainty again."

It congratulated the BJP for its performance. On government formation it said, "Political wrangling to go on for a few days."

"The Congress and NCP benefited from Shiv Sena and BJP breaking its alliance," the editorial said. 

The BJP emerged the biggest party in the state by winning 123 out of the 288 seats. The Shiv Sena is a far second; it won 63 seats.  

Hong Kong leader CY Leung has accused "external forces" of involvement in the territory's pro-democracy protests.In a TV interview, Mr Leung said the rallies, which have paralysed parts of the territory for three weeks, were "out of control" even for organisers.

German intelligence has accusedpro-Russian rebels of shooting down a Malaysian passenger jetover Ukraine using missiles captured from government forces, amedia report said today.

The UN voiced alarm today over theincreasing use of the death penalty in Iraq in the decadesince its reintroduction, warning such punishments would onlyfuel deadly sectarian conflict.

Between heeding a messagefrom officials to remain calm and another to flee loomingattacks by Ugandan rebels, the choice for many residents inthe Democratic Republic of Congo town of Beni is clear.

A three-member team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) today visited the blast site at Khagragarh to ascertain allegations by opposition parties that an office of the ruling Trinamool Congress was located there. 

A three-member team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) today visited the blast site at Khagragarh to ascertain allegations by opposition parties that an office of the ruling Trinamool Congress was located there. 

A three-member team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) today visited the blast site at Khagragarh to ascertain allegations by opposition parties that an office of the ruling Trinamool Congress was located there.