02 February 2026
As part of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project, the construction of its ballastless track has started in Surat, said the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited in a release on Thursday, according to the PTI.
NHSRCL called the J-slab ballastless track system, used in Japan`s high-speed rail system Shinkansen, a first in India.
The stage is set for the INDIA bloc conclave of 27 non-BJP parties to be held at the Grand Hyatt in Kalina. The leaders will take part in a dinner to be hosted by Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday night and the main deliberations will take place on Thursday. Apart from Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, chief ministers Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, M.K. Stalin, Siddharamaih, Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann and others are expected to take part in the meeting.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising the Shiv Sena (UBT), the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party led by Sharad Pawar, has left no stone unturned to make a success of the meeting, which is being held to work out a strategy to ensure the defeat of the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha elections scheduled for 2024.
Just making "absurd claims" does not make other people's territories yours, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said while rejecting China's so-called "standard map" that laid claim over Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as regions within its borders. The EAM said Beijing had even put out such maps in the past claiming territories that are not theirs and that it is "an old habit" of China.
The reaction from EAM Jaishankar and the Ministry Of External Affairs (MEA) came hours after Beijing released the 2023 edition of the so-called "standard map of China" that claimed Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as belonging to that country.
Isro on Tuesday said that in the “first-ever in-situ” measurements carried out in the lunar polar region, the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) instrument onboard Chandrayaan-3 rover Pragyan has unambiguously confirmed the presence of Sulphur (S) in the lunar surface near the south pole.
“LIBS is a scientific technique that analyses the composition of materials by exposing them to intense laser pulses. A high-energy laser pulse is focused onto the surface of a material, such as a rock or soil. The laser pulse generates an extremely hot and localised plasma,” Isro said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party may announce its candidates early on its 160 "weak" Lok Sabha seats, much ahead of the elections to be announced by the Election Commission, to give them advantage of the first movers to beat the rivals.
The same strategy was adopted by it to declare candidates on 39 lost seats in the Assembly elections for 230 seats in Madhya Pradesh and 21 lost seats in 90 assembly seats in Chhattisgarh.
