The 14 Longlisted entries for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature prize were announced on Tuesday.

Various forces controlling Bollywood will be under the scanner for next two days.

With the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court due to rule on the Ayodhya “title suit” on Friday, suspense prevailed on whether the Supreme Court would intervene to get the verdict deferred after a bench refused to hear a plea to postpone the verdict on technical grounds.

The department of telecommunications on Wednesday banned bulk SMS and MMS services across the country for the next 72 hours as a preventive measure to halt the spreading of rumours by mischief-mongers over the Ayodhya title suit verdict expected on Friday.

The Centre is expected to consider a significant reduction of security personnel in civilian areas of Kashmir after the all-party delegation, which returned to New Delhi on Wednesday, submits its report to the home ministry. Government sources said a majority of the political parties felt there was a need for a “‘visible” reduction of forces,

The Delhi police will operationalise the dedicated Commonwealth Ga-mes lanes on selected roads from Thursday. Regular traffic will not be closed fully. Those violating the rules and deliberately straying into the lanes will be fined `2,000. Joint commissioner of police (traffic) Satyendra Garg said: “The exclusive lanes will come into effect from Thursday. It will be done on a need-based manner and there will be no 24-hour closedown.”

Adding more disgrace to India’s attempts at holding the Commonwealth Games, a day after the foot overbridge collapsed near Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Tuesday, a false ceiling at the newly-constructed weightlifting stadium at the same venue also partially caved in on Wednesday morning. Thankfully, however, there were no injuries in the incident which took place at 8 am while a joint team of Delhi government and CWG organising committee officials were inspecting the venue.

Bihar is heading for multi-cornered contests in the coming electoral battle. While the Congress is the only national party fighting the all seats on its own, the real players in the state are chief minister Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Two days ahead of the pronouncement of the Ayodhya title verdict, home minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday said that it would be inappropriate to reach any hasty conclusion that one side has “won” or that the other side has “lost” and appealed to all the parties to the suits as well as the general public and the media to help maintain peace.

The BJP-ruled states — Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat — are gearing up to maintain the law and order satiation in the light of a high court’s judgment to be pronounced on September 24 on a tile suit at Ayodhya. The Congress is also leaving nothing to chance and the AICC general secretaries have already swung into action.