The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet approved the appointment of RBI's ex-Governor Shaktikanta Das as Principal Secretary-2 to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with effect from the day Das assumes office. "His appointment will be co-terminus with the term of the Prime Minister or until further orders, whichever is earlier," an order said. Das retired as RBI Governor in December 2024.

Mumbai's local train services on Western, Central and Transharbour lines will be affected due to a mega block on Sunday. On Central line, a five-hour mega block will take place from 10:40 am to 3:40 pm on Up and Down fast lines between Thane and Kalyan. Similarly, the Western line will have a block from 10 am to 3 pm.

The newly elected MLAs in Delhi will take oath on February 24, while pending CAG reports will be tabled the next day, the Delhi Assembly bulletin stated. The nod to table the CAG reports, allegedly withheld by the previous AAP government, was given by CM Rekha Gupta in the first Cabinet meeting. The oath-taking ceremony will begin at 11 am.

Maharashtra suspended bus services to Karnataka following an attack on MSRTC bus in Karnataka's Chitradurga, state transport minister Pratap Sarnaik said. The bus was attacked by some miscreants, who also blackened the face of driver Bhaskar Jadhav, the minister said. The services won't be resumed unless the Karnataka government makes its stand clear on the issue, he said.

Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin on Saturday said he wouldn't agree to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) even if the Centre offered to provide ₹10,000 crore in funds to the state. He added that opposition to the NEP goes beyond the attempt to impose Hindi and includes other factors. "We are not opposed to any language," the 71-year-old stated.

The Muslim community voluntarily demolished a 168-year-old mosque in Meerut to make way for Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridor. "We removed...mosque on our own, but we possess documents from 1857 that prove [its] historicity," a mosque representative said. The process of deciding compensation is underway in consultation with the mosque management, Meerut's ADM (City) said.

Shaktikanta Das, the 67-year-old ex-RBI Governor appointed as PM Narendra Modi's Principal Secretary-2, is a retired 1980 batch IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre. He did his schooling from the Demonstration Multipurpose School, Bhubaneswar, and BA and MA in History from St. Stephen's College, Delhi. He also pursued a postgraduate course in Public Administration from the University of Birmingham, UK.

Environmentalists and even the CPI oppose the decision to set up the brewery in Elappully, Palakkad, which could deplete groundwater; yet the decision is now taken and the state government asserts it will not go back on it. The decision to impose a toll on roads funded by KIIFB has also been taken overriding the protests of the CPI.

After the Punjab government acknowledged that the Department of Administrative Reforms, which was allotted to Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, doesn't exist, CM Bhagwant Mann said, "We changed its name and created a new department." "Earlier, it was just for the name; there was no staff or office," he added. "Now, it has been created to bring reforms," Mann further stated.

Israeli tourist David Elis Bona, 75, was arrested in Mundakayam, Kerala, for using an unauthorised satellite phone. Bona, unaware of India’s restrictions, had purchased the phone in Dubai. He was questioned by police, Intelligence, and NIA before being granted bail. Authorities seized the phone, and an FIR was filed under the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act.

Congress leader KC Venugopal tweeted whether PM Narendra Modi would pay heed to his "best friend", US President Donald Trump's remark on paper ballots and "address concerns about the integrity of our electoral process?" "I'm sure his best friend will...be appalled at...abnormal increase of...voters in Maharashtra," he added. Trump recently urged governors at White House to switch to paper ballots.

Congress leader Udit Raj on Saturday filed a complaint alleging that the BSP workers have been threatening to kill him at the directions of their party chief Mayawati. The 67-year-old claimed he has been receiving death threats since February 18. Mayawati had "strangled the social movement" and now the time has come "to strangle her", Raj said on February 17.

EAM S Jaishankar has said that the interactions between PM Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump went "very well" because both the leaders are nationalists and "nationalists kind of respect each other". Claiming Trump doesn't necessarily have a positive history with many other world leaders, which isn't the case with PM Modi, he added, "I felt..the chemistry was good."

US President Donald Trump has reiterated his stance on reciprocal tariffs, saying, "We will soon impose reciprocal tariffs...Whatever a country such as India or China charges us...We want to be fair...So (we'll charge) reciprocal tariffs." He added, "Reciprocal meaning, they charge us, we charge them...We've never done that. We were getting ready to do it until COVID-19 hit the US."

A claim along with the image of three miscreants in the Mahakumbh video case has surfaced on social media falsely alleging that three of them are from Gujarat's Ahmedabad. On fact-checking, DFRAC found some reports confirming that two of the three accused hailed from Maharashtra while one was from Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) sought a response from Air India after Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan alleged that he was assigned a "broken and sunken seat" during his journey from Bhopal to Delhi. Civil Aviation Minister K Ram Mohan Naidu spoke to Chouhan personally and instructed Air India to take necessary action.

The National Green Tribunal has sought the Uttar Pradesh government's response to a plea alleging a lack of adequate sanitation facilities at Maha Kumbh leading to open defecation on the banks of the Ganga river at Maha Kumbh Mela. The applicant, who filed the plea, also submitted a pen drive containing video clips of open defecation, Live Law reported.

EAM S Jaishankar has reacted to US' DOGE cancelling USAID's $21 million fund for "voter turnout in India", saying that it's "worrisome". "USAID was allowed here in good faith...now, suggestions are being laid out...[about] activities which are in bad faith," he added. He further said that India should know about the people involved if "there's something to it".

Esteemed writer B Prabhakar Shishila raised serious concerns about the declining state of the Kannada language. He urged the Karnataka government to mandate Kannada as the medium of instruction from Class 1 to Class 10 in all schools. He suggested that English should serve as a bridge language between institutions.

As many as 159 students of Odisha's KIIT have returned to Nepal, days after a Nepalese female student allegedly died by suicide at the university and the college administration ordered Nepali students to vacate the hostel. A group of students who returned to Nepal said they were "abused" and subjected to "inhuman treatment" at the KIIT after her death.

Madhya Pradesh High Court held that a married woman can't claim her consent for physical relations with another man was taken on the pretext of false promise of marriage. The court quashed a rape case against a man booked after a married woman's complaint last year. The accused man, also married, had moved the HC after the woman's rape accusation.

Research conducted by Padma Shri awardee Dr Ajay Sonkar showed that the Ganga river contains 1,100 types of bacteriophages, known as its "security guard", that destroy harmful bacteria and instantly purify water despite crores taking a holy dip during Maha Kumbh, ANI reported. In a release, the UP government had quoted Sonkar's research to "debunk doubts" about Ganga's water quality.

Signboards of Delhi's Akbar Road and Babar Road were defaced by miscreants reportedly after watching the film 'Chhaava'. In a video surfaced online, miscreants can be seen spraying the signboards with black paint and pasting pictures of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj on them. A team of police and civic officials rushed to the spots and immediately restored the signboards.

A prisoner from Dausa's Shyalawas jail on Friday night allegedly threatened to kill Rajasthan CM Bhajanlal Sharma, police said. It added that 29-year-old Rinku, serving a life sentence in a rape case, called the Jaipur police control room and threatened to kill Sharma. An intense search operation was conducted in the jail from 3 am to 7 am, police stated.

A 45-year-old man who collapsed during celebratory firing at a wedding in Jalandhar died of a heart attack, the police said. An investigation was launched after a video of the incident emerged online, showing the deceased, Paramjit Singh, collapsing as soon as another man fired a bullet in air. However, no gunshot wound was found on his body, police said.