The severity of air pollution and dense Smog cover in the capital today led to the cancellation of the two Ranji Trophy encounters -- Bengal vs Gujarat at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium and Hyderabad vs Tripura at the Karnail Singh Stadium.

While Gujarat team will be leaving Delhi tomorrow for Ahmedabad, Bengal team will be staying back till Tuesday before flying off to Rajkot for the next game against Tamil Nadu.

The BCCI in a media release stated that both matches will be rescheduled.

"The Technical Committee of the BCCI recognised the extraordinary circumstances prevailing in Delhi and decided to re-schedule the Paytm Ranji Trophy 2016-17 fifth round matches between Hyderabad-Tripura and Gujarat-Bengal after the first two days of play were lost due to smog conditions in New Delhi.

"The revised venue and dates for the above matches which will be played after the league phase of Ranji trophy, will be announced shortly."

The situation was not expected to improve for a few more days which effectively ruled out any chance of play. Match referee P Ranganathan, in consultation with BCCI and the respective state associations, decided that there is no point in waiting for two more days.

The dense cover of grey haze shrouding Delhi for almost a week, reminiscent of the 1952 Great Smog in London, today plunged the city's air quality to the season's worst, with even the 24-hour-average threatening to go past the maximum limit.

The real-time readings of respirable pollutants PM 2.5 and PM 10 breached the safe standards by over 17 times at many places. The hourly AQI (air quality index) of monitoring stations run by CPCB and SAFAR remained 500 plus, which is beyond the maximum limit.

Experts said while the level of sulphur dioxide (SO2) is still in control in the city, in terms of other parameters like volume of particulates, the situation was nearly as bad as the infamous London episode that had resulted in around 4,000 premature deaths.

"In London smog of 1952 about 4,000 people had died prematurely when average PM levels were about 500 microgramme per cubic metre along with high SO2 levels. Here, (the concentration of) SO2 may not be that high, but as we saw on Diwali, several gases had increased substantially. Overall it is a toxic cocktail.

"Persisting high levels can lead to more premature deaths in Delhi also," Anumitra Roychowdhury of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said.

The elevation of Rahul Gandhi is likely to be delayed as the Congress top brass is expected to further defer the process of organisational polls, which had been postponed earlier by a year till this December-end.

A meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the top decision-making body of the party, tomorrow is unlikely to take a decision on the elevation of Rahul Gandhi, with a section within the party feeling that this should be done after the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. 

Party sources say the organisational elections are to be deferred by more than a year as there is very little time to hold the polls and the party has to focus on the upcoming assembly elections due early next year. 

Many in the party are, however, divided on the timing of Rahul's elevation and want it to be deferred till the upcoming assembly polls. Some party leaders, however, also feel that in view of the current situation Sonia Gandhi should continue to steer the party and not take a back seat.

The current political situation is expected to be discussed at the CWC, including the one-day ban on NDTV which has created uproar in the opposition as also in the media. 

BJP MP Tarun Vijay on Sunday visited Apollo Hospitals, where the 68 year-old Jayalalithaa is admitted.

Vijay said Jayalalithaa was "recovering fast" and would resume work soon.

"I have specially brought holy water of lake Manasarovar of Mount Kailash for the chief minister. Amma is recovering very fast. Very soon (she will be) out of hospital and start working," he said.

Vijay said that the "prayers of millions of people are working and she will be very well."

Until recently, the attacks on liberals and the opposition came with plausible deniability for the Narendra Modi government. They could be blamed on non-state Hindutva actors, such as "fringe" RSS-aligned activists or state governments, even BJP-led state governments.

So how could you blame the Modi government for a lynching in Dadri? Wasn't Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, and law and order a state subject? How could you blame Modi for the gau rakshaks? How was it Modi's fault if ABVP activists had enough clout with the HRD ministry to ruin the life of a Dalit student in Hyderabad, making him embrace death? How could you blame the Modi government if leftists in JNU were advocating azadi for Kashmir and Delhi Police arrested the wrong guys for it? How could you blame the Modi government if lawyers were beating up teachers and journalists inside a Delhi court and the Delhi Police looked away? As for the arrests of Aam Aadmi Party MLAs, the law was taking its own course.

That plausible deniability, that isolation Modi pretended from these actions, is now going away. The mask is coming off. In becoming openly authoritarian, suppressing the opposition and the liberal media, the Modi government is making a huge mistake.

The JNU students' protest against the government over missing student Najeeb Ahmed turned violent on Sunday near India Gate, where Section 144 is in force, when police took the protesting students back to their buses in order to prevent any clash. 

Shocking visuals appeared all over social media showing Najeeb's mother Fatima Nafees being dragged by Delhi Police personnel from the protest site.

Najeeb Ahmed, a first-year MSc student at the School of Biotechnology in JNU reportedly went missing on October 15 after allegedly being beaten up by a mob of 20 students comprising ABVP members, who had gone campaigning to his room for hostel elections. Fatima has been camping in Delhi since last month, after coming from Badaun in Uttar Pradesh following a frantic phone call from her son on the evening of October 14. 

"The shameless Delhi Police, which failed to find Najeeb for the last 23 days, have misbehaved with Najeeb's mother. She was beaten up and dragged into the police van. His sister is also detained," said Satarupa Chakraborty, general secretary of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union, slamming Sunday's police intervention in a peaceful rally.

According to media reports, members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad allegedly entered into the protest area and indulged in a scuffle with JNU protestors. This invoked the police to stop the protest and take the students inside the buses. In the process, Najeeb's mother got injured.

Defended the action on protestors, the Delhi Police said no permission had been granted for the protest and that Section 144 was imposed in the India Gate area because of Chhat Puja.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, however, strongly marked his dissent against the police. 

As city's pollution levels worsened, the Delhi government has decided to procure 15 to 20 vacuum cleaning road machines on an immediate basis aimed at bringing down dust particles in the air. 

The government has floated short-term tenders to procure such machines to immediately find a solution to the increasing dust pollution in the capital.

The report of the IIT-Kanpur study titled 'Source Apportionment Study of PM2.5 and PM10' had recently identified dust and trucks as the largest contributors behind Delhi's polluted air.

"Public Works Department is expecting to hire about 15 to 20 mechanical dust road sweepers through short-term tender process. Such machines will be hired till March next year.  

"Besides, government has also planned to have long-term tenders to hire vacuum cleaning machines so that there is a permanent solution to deal with dust pollution," sources said.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today said President Pranab Mukherjee has assured that he will seek a report from the home ministry and the JNU administration on the missing student. 

The Chief Minister called on the President. Talking to reporters after the meeting, he said he apprised Mukherjee of the matter. He also alleged that the Delhi Police did not take any action in the matter due to "political pressure". 

"People who were involved in the brawl with Najeeb were questioned by the police yesterday, 22 days after he went missing. That was also a formality. We have apprised the President of the matter. He has assured us that he will seek a report from the Delhi Police and JNU in this regard," Kejriwal said.

"Met Hon'ble Prez to seek his intervention on missing JNU student Najeeb. He assured of all support n that he will seek report from MHA n JNU," he later tweeted.

On November 3, while speaking at a solidarity meeting on the JNU campus, Kejriwal had accused Delhi Police of not probing the matter properly.

Unfazed by the 'sit-in' by the Chinese border guards at Demchok in Ladakh that led to a face-off with Indian troops earlier this week, Army engineers have finished the work for laying a water pipeline for irrigation purpose for local villagers in Ladakh division. 

Chinese had pressed its People's Armed Police Force personnel at the Line of Actual Control in Demchok this time instead of the usual PLA who came to erect a Fibre-Reinforced plastic hut on Friday at the border but was not allowed by the Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police troops, official sources said.

The sources said that while the face-off between the two sides continued for three days ending on Saturday evening, the Army engineers, ignored the warnings by PAPF personnel and continued laying pipeline for nearly a kilometre for irrigation purpose of the villagers in Demchok, located 250 km east of Leh.

According to the sources, the formula of 'active patrolling' adopted by the ITBP and army ever since 2013 fortnight long stand-off near Daulat Beig Oldie has been reaping rich dividends and Chinese have been cautious in carrying out incursion especially in Ladakh sector.

This time also, the sources said, army and ITBP personnel did not allow the PAPF guards to erect the hut and they were forced to take the material back to their base camp located a kilometre away at Demqog from the place of face-off.

In the wake of fresh attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has directed the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka to convey to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina India's grave concern over safety and security of the community in that country.

"I have asked Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka to call on the Prime Minister and express our grave concern about the safety and wellbeing of the Hindus in Bangladesh," Swaraj tweeted today.

In fresh attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, unidentified miscreants set ablaze houses of some of them and damaged two temples in central Brahmanbarhia district where several places of worship of the minority community were vandalised a few days ago.

Miscreants set fire at least six Hindu houses in a predawn attack yesterday in central Brahmanbarhia district's Nasirnagar, the place where at least 15 temples and more than 20 houses were vandalised after a Facebook post deemed offensive to Islam sparked outrage in the country.

A Bangladesh court today acquitted cricketer Shahadat Hossain and his wife on charges of torturing an 11-year-old girl whom he employed as a maid, a prosecutor said.

Questioning as to why Maulana Azad was not conferred the Bharat Ratna during the rule of Nehru-Gandhi family, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today alleged that leaders critical of the first Prime Minister were not given the respect they deserved.

Hitting back at senior Congress leader S Jaipal Reddy, the Law Minister said differences between Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru are too well known and there was also a difference initially between the two on the 1948 "police action" following which the Hyderabad state, which was under the Nizam's rule, merged with the Indian Union.

"He (Jaipal Reddy) has said there were no differences (between Nehru and Patel) and that they were comrades in arms for 10 years. Jaipal Reddy was saying that the Law Minister (Prasad) was speaking unlawfully. I was not speaking unlawfully. I was speaking factually," Prasad said. 

The senior BJP leader asked why Patel, a "great Indian" who unified in India and died in 1950, was given the country's highest civilian award only in 1991.

"Jawaharlal Nehru was Prime Minister for 14 years thereafter (after 1950) and his daughter Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister for 16 years thereafter. Why is it that so many people were given Bharat Ratna for good reasons, but this great Indian Sardar Patel was ignored? It was only when (P V) Narasimha Rao outside the (Nehru-Gandhi) family became Prime Minister in 1991 that he was given a Bharat Ratna," he noted.

India and Japan are set to sign a historic civil nuclear cooperation deal during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's two-day visit to Tokyo this week, a move that will boost bilateral economic and security ties and facilitate leading US-based players to set up atomic plants in India. 

The two countries had reached a broad agreement for cooperation in civil nuclear energy sector during Japanese Prime Minister Shiozo Abe's visit to India in December last year, but the deal was yet to be signed as some issues were yet to be worked out.

Modi and Abe are set to sign the deal on Friday, Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported.

The deal would allow Japan to export nuclear technology to India, making it the first non-NPT signatory to have such a deal with Tokyo. It would also cement the bilateral economic and security ties as the two countries warm up to counter an assertive China.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to be the mascot of 'Incredible India' campaign with the Tourism Ministry finally deciding to do away with plans to rope in any Bollywood stars, including Amitabh Bachchan, for the role which was lying vacant after ouster of Aamir Khan earlier this year.

No Bollywood actor will be engaged for the campaign aimed at attracting foreign travellers and video footages of Modi during the last two-and-a-half years where he has talked about tourism in India and abroad, will be used for the campaign, a senior ministry official said.

The ministry is planning to use -- for radio and audio release -- two types of videos of different durations where Modi had talked about the uniqueness and diversity of the various places in the country, the official said. 

At present, the ministry is "working on selecting the footages", the official said, adding that the campaign would be released in the next 40-45 days as the Indian 'tourism season' starts by November-end due to favourable weather as also the Christmas holidays and New Year celebrations.

The official said the process of selecting the agency, which will carry out the task of running the campaign, is also under the process.

"Vacuum cleaning of roads will start from Nov 10; Jet sprinkling of roads from tomorrow; Govt to bring odd even soon."

"Landfill sites fire to be bulldozed; People should stay at home as much as they can, work from home"

"All constructions and demolitions banned in Delhi for 5 days."

"Delhi has always been polluted but we are taking all emergency measures to control the menace."

"Badarpur plant will be closed for 5 days"

"All Delhi schools to remain closed for the next 3 days."

"We are not pointing fingers at anyone. We need to sit down and come out with a solution."

Emphasising that the situation in the national capital was alarming given the soaring levels of pollution, the Delhi government on Sunday remained adamant on its stand that crop burning by the neighbouring states were the main contributors towards the 'gas chamber' like situation in the city. 

Speaking to ANI here, Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain stated that the source of pollution in Delhi is not from within Delhi but from its neighbouring states.

"The situation is same in Haryana where Gurgaon and Faridabad are more polluted than Delhi," he said.

Asserting that the Delhi Government was not indulging in blame game over the pollution level in the national capital, Jain further said that crop burning in neighbouring states remain the main reason.

"The conditions in Delhi have not changed a bit, even traffic emissions remain the same. Crop burning is the reason behind it all," he said.

The Delhi minister further said that all hospitals are ready and well equipped to handle the situation, adding that there has been an increase in the flow of patients with breathing problems. 

Filipino southpaw Manny Pacquiao reclaimed the World Boxing Organization welterweight title for the third time with a unanimous decision victory over former champion Jesse Vargas in his comeback fight.

The 37-year-old Pacquiao on Saturday systematically dismantled the former welterweight champion despite Vargas' size and reach advantage.

He used a short right-handed counterpunch to floor Vargas in the second round en route to a one-sided win in front of a crowd of 16,132 at the Thomas & Mack Center.

"I feel happy," Pacquiao said. "I'm trying every round to knock him down but also not be careless."

Pacquiao, 59-6 with two drawn and 38 knockouts, showed he still has a lot left in the tank but he failed to get the knockout victory that has eluded him for the past seven years.

All three judges scored the bout for Pacquiao, two of them by 118-109 and the other by 114-113.

The IMD will now make necessary amendments to its existing climate models for better prediction in the future, M Rajeevan, secretary, the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said.

It, at present, uses the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Climate Forecast SystemVersion 2 (CFSv2), procured from the United States, to understand oceanicpatterns.

The system was modified to suit IMD'S requirements.

As per IMD's initial forecast, rainfall from the Southwest Monsoon was expected to be 'above normal'.

September was expected to receive 'excess' rainfall, but that did not happen. This was primarily due to La Nina, an oceanic phenomenon linked to cooling of Pacific waters resulting in better monsoon in the Indian sub-continent.

The firing started at 2 am on Sunday. The BSF said it is effectively retaliating to Pak firing.

More details about the identity of the martyred jawan are awaited.

As many as 32.14 lakh debit cards data was compromised and 641 customers across 19 banks were duped of Rs 1.3 crore using stolen debit card data. 

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, which is scheduled to meet later this week, has asked officials from the Finance Ministry, the Corporate Affairs Ministry and various banks to appear before it.

The panel is headed by Congress MP Veerappa Moily. Representatives of State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Yes Bank have been asked to brief the panel on 'security-related issues concerning payments in the banking sector', according to a Lok Sabha secretariat notice. 

The notice said the panel will also be briefed by representatives of the Department of Financial Services from the Finance Ministry and the Corporate Affairs Ministry. 

The suspected security breach happened through a malware in the systems of Hitachi Payments Services, which serves ATM networks.

There are around 60 crore debit cards operational in India, of which 19 crore are indigenously developed by RuPay while the rest are Visa- and Master Card-enabled.

The banners put up on electricity poles in Rawalpindi urged Sharif him to contest election in 2018 by one Sheikh Amjad Ali.

Since government officials cannot enter politics for at least two years after leaving service, the banners urged that the mandatory period should be reduced in case of Sharif. 

They claimed that election of Sharif will end tension between military and government. It is not for the time the banners have appeared in favour of the army chief.

Previously also banners addressing him had urged him to 'stay on' and asked the government to extend his tenure. In July, posters were seen in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and several other major cities, urging the general to impose martial laws instead of retiring.

The army has so far not commented on the banners.

At least four places came under indiscriminate shelling and firing which has been started by Pakistan army to target civil and defence facilities in the area, a police official was quoted as  saying by TOI.

He said the Indian Army has effectively retaliated using same calibre weapons.

The American media cited law enforcement sources reporting that no gun had been found after a cry of alarm in the crowd, and Trump swiftly resumed his speech in Reno, Nevada.  

The 70-year-old Republican tycoon reappeared just minutes after being led away by three Secret Service officers, who shielded his body with their own, AFP reported.

Minutes later, he reappeared to cheers, declaring: "Nobody said it was going to be easy for us, but we will never be stopped, never ever be stopped. I want to thank the Secret Service. These guys are fantastic. They don't get enough credit. They don't get enough credit. They are amazing people."

Just before the fracas, Trump could be seen shielding his eyes from the lights in order to peer into the crowd as a struggle broke out. There were signs of a fracas in the audience as the agents led Trump away, but once a suspect was in custody Trump returned to resume his stump speech.

Television footage showed a suspect pinioned on the ground by officers and searched, before he was led away by local law enforcement, including an armed response team in tactical dress with rifles. 

The candidate appeared unrattled and spoke with his usual self-confidence, finishing his planned remarks and accepting applause before returning to his campaign plane safely. 

'I would like to thank the United States Secret Service and the law enforcement resources in Reno and the state of Nevada for their fast and professional response,' he said in a campaign statement. 

Reporters at the venue had earlier cited unnamed local law enforcement sources and witnesses in the crowd as saying there had been a report of a gun among the Trump supporters.