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New Delhi: Dr Manik Saha was named the new chief minister of Tripura after Biplab Deb stepped down from the post on Saturday. Saha is the state BJP president as well as Rajya Sabha MP. He was a frontrunner for the post. The decision was made during the BJP’s legislative party meeting for which union minister Bhupendra Yadav and general secretary Vinod Tawde were appointed as centralobservers.

Deb congratulated the new CM on Twitter, saying: “Congratulations and best wishes to @DrManikSaha2 ji on being elected as the legislature party leader. I believe under PM Shri @narendramodi Ji’s vision and leadership Tripura will prosper.”

Twenty-seven people have been killed in a fire that broke out in a three-storey commercial building near the Mundka Metro station in west Delhi on Friday afternoon, police said. The fire was brought under control after more than seven hours but there was still smoke coming out from the floors.

More than 70 people were in the building when the fire started on the first floor and engulfed the entire structure soon after. Police personnel said they rescued some by breaking the windows in and using ropes.

Twelve people who sustained injuries were admitted to the Sanjay Gandhi hospital. Rescue operations are currently underway.

Chief election commissioner-designate Rajiv Kumar, who is set to take over from Sushil Chandra on May 15, will oversee the upcoming Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Jammu and Kashmir as well as the 2024 general elections.

The Ministry of Law and Justice announced on Thursday that Kumar, now an election commissioner, will take over as chief election commissioner (CEC) on May 15. The 24th CEC, Chandra is due to retire on May 14.

Kumar’s CEC tenure begins right after the delimitation commission finalised its order for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, recommending seven additional constituencies — six for Jammu and one for Kashmir — and taking the total number of seats in the UT to 90. It also comes at a time when the poll panel’s decisions have drawn criticism from mainstream parties in the Valley. It will also pave the way for elections to be held in the Union Territory that has been without an elected government since 2018, when the Centre abrogated the erstwhile state's special status.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday virtually suspended operation of the much-misused 124-year-old sedition provision to stop police from invoking it against anyone from now on and stayed both probe and trial in existing sedition cases to allow the Centre to examine softening the rigour of Section 124A in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to sync it with the present social milieu.

Not content with the Centre’s offer that in future no sedition FIR would be registered without prior approval of the area superintendent of police until the re-examination of the controversial provision had been completed, a bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli in their unprecedented order said, “We expect that, till the re-examination of the provision is complete, it will be appropriate not to continue the usage of the aforesaid provision of law by the governments.”

Sri Lanka's Mahinda Rajapaksa -- who resigned as prime minister after his supporters attacked anti-government protesters and sparked a day of violence -- will not flee the country, his son told AFP on Tuesday.

The 76-year-old heads a political clan whose hold on power has been shaken by months of blackouts and shortages in the island nation, which is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948.

Mahinda had to be evacuated by the military from his official residence on Monday night after it was besieged by an angry crowd.