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In a vertical split, Congress has been left holding on to just five of its 11 MLAs in the 40-member Goa assembly within four months of BJP retaining the reins of government.

After day-long drama on Sunday, the merger of the dissident Congress camp with BJP fizzled out as the breakaway group, led by former chief minister Digambar Kamat, failed to garner the support of the stipulated two-thirds of the party's legislative strength, which works out to eight MLAs, to avoid the anti-defection law.

Till late in the night, it wasn't clear whether the Kamat group's strength would swell. Congress president Sonia Gandhi rushed Rajya Sabha MP Mukul Wasnik to Goa to firefight the crisis. Congress, which had made its candidates sign an affidavit and take oath before a temple deity and a Catholic cross that they would not defect to BJP after getting elected, cracked the whip immediately. The party's Goa in-charge, Dinesh Gundu Rao, held a presser to announce the removal of Michael Lobo, part of the Kamat group, from the post of leader of the opposition.

The development came on the eve of the two-week monsoon session of the assembly, beginning Monday.

Exactly three years ago, on July 10, the Congress legislature party had split, with then opposition leader Chandrakant ‘Babu’ Kavlekar leading a 10-member group and later joining BJP.

The Adani Group is likely to spend close to Rs 2,800 crore on buying spectrum in the auctions which will commence from July 26. Its spend will be much less than that of telecom operators like Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea as it is not going for consumer mobility but only private network solutions.

Industry analysts said that since Adani Group has stated that it would use the spectrum for private network solutions and not for providing voice and data telecom services, it is likely that it would opt for only 24.25-28.5 GHz spectrum band, which is referred to as millimetre band. The reserve price for this spectrum is `6.99 crore per MHz. Telecom analysts said that a quantum of 400 MHz is enough for private network, so the spend would be around Rs 2,796 crore.

The Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena has moved the Supreme Court yet again, this time challenging the Maharashtra Governor's decision to invite rebel leader Eknath Shinde to form the government.

On June 30, Maharashtra Governor BS Koshyari met with Shinde and senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis at Raj Bhavan, during which the two submitted letters of the supporting MLAs to stake claim for government formation.

Team Uddhav has also challenged the Maharashtra assembly proceedings on July 3-4, during which the Shinde-BJP combine first appointed a new Speaker, then held a floor test in the House.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will launch 75 defence products powered by artificial intelligence (AI) on July 11, Monday.

These 75 products will be launched at the first-ever 'Artificial Intelligence in Defence' (AIDef) symposium and exhibition organised by Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence, as part of the celebrations marking 75 years of Independence 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' and to promote self-reliance in the defence sector.

The event will feature an exhibition to showcase the cutting edge AI-enabled solutions developed by services, research organisations, industry, start-ups and innovators and the launch of AI products for the market.

A combined team of Whitefield Police and Mahadevapura Police busted two fake call centres in Karnataka's Whitefield on Thursday night, July 7. A total of 72 callers were arrested and 138 computers used by them were seized during the searches.

The joint operation was carried out under the supervision of the Assistant Commissioner of Police and the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Whitefield. The teams searched 2 premises in Whitefield, namely Ethical infotech Private Limited and Gayathri Tech Park.

The searches were conducted to check for organised cyber fraud run by fake call centres.