President Ram Nath Kovind appointed Sunil Arora as the new Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), replacing OP Rawat. Arora will take charge on December 2. Arora was previously brought in as the Election Commissioner in September, last year to fill the vacancy created by former CEC Nasim Zaidi’s retirement.

A 1980-batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre, Arora was the skill development secretary before he was appointed as the top bureaucrat in the I&B Ministry. He has also worked in ministries and departments such as Finance, Textiles and Planning Commission and was also CMD of Indian Airlines for five years.

Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu on Monday arrived in Gurdaspur to lay the foundation stone for the construction of the Kartarpur corridor which will link India’s border district of Gurdaspur with Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan. Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Food Processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal, and Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh are also present on the occasion.

To mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev next year, India last week had decided to build the Kartarpur road corridor up to the international border between India and Pakistan to let Sikh pilgrims visit the gurdwara on the banks of the river Ravi in Pakistan. The two neighbouring countries on November 15 had made an official announcement in this regard and had decided to let the pilgrims visit the holy shrine without having to secure a visa.

On the tenth anniversary of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, the United States on Monday offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of any individual who was involved in planning or facilitating the assault.

“It is an affront to the families of the victims that, after ten years, those who planned the Mumbai attack have still not been convicted for their involvement,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. “We call upon all countries, particularly Pakistan, to uphold their UN Security Council obligations to implement sanctions against the terrorists responsible for this atrocity, including Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and its affiliates.”

“We stand with the families and friends of the victims, whose loved ones were lost in this act of barbarism, including six American citizens. The barbarity of 26/11 shocked the entire world,” he said, expressing solidarity with the survivors of the attack. The United States, Pompeo said, is committed to seeing that those responsible for the attack face justice.

Mumbai: Telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd said it has appointed eight global banks for the planned initial public offering (IPO) of its African unit. Airtel Africa Ltd, a subsidiary of the Indian telecom giant, has appointed J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, BofA Merrill Lynch, Absa Group Limited, Barclays Bank PLC, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs International and Standard Bank Group for its IPO, it said in an exchange filing.

Bharti Airtel shares jumped as much as 3.14% intraday to Rs 338.25 per share following the announcement.

The proposed IPO of the African unit follows a $1.25 billion fund raise by Airtel Africa, led by Warburg Pincus, Temasek, Singtel, SoftBank Group International and others.

Earlier this month, Airtel Africa also announced its newly-constituted board of directors that includes representatives from Bharti Airtel and the investors. “The new Board of Directors brings a wealth of industry and governance experience to further drive the Airtel Africa business,” the telecom operator said in the filing.

Jet Airways Ltd, the biggest full-service carrier in India, has been under dark clouds for the past few months. While intense pricing competition, weak rupee and rising fuel costs have hurt Indian airlines like IndiGo owned by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd and SpiceJet Ltd, Jet Airways is in a league of its own. Saddled with a debt of about 80.52 billion rupees ($1.14 billion) as of Sept. 30, Jet is desperately searching for a deal that could help mitigate its severe liquidity crunch. The airline has a market capitalisation of 35.03 billion rupees as of last close.The Tata conglomerate is now likely to be the potential white knight for the debt-laden company, but no proposal has been made yet.

Constitution Day is celebrated on November 26 every year to mark the day on which the Indian Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly met for its first session on December 9, 1947, and was attended by 207 members. The Drafting Committee of the Constitution was headed by B R Ambedkar who is often referred to as the ‘architect of the Indian Constitution’. Over the course of the next two years, the committee took important decisions regarding the objectives, principles and other aspects of the Constitution. It was finally adopted on November 26, 1949, and came into effect two months later on January 26, 1950, which is celebrated as Republic Day.

USA coach Billy Walsh calls Mary Kom a heartbreaker. Not for surpassing her former ward Katie Taylor’s haul of five World Championship gold medals — “She deserves her sixth title, coming back at 35 and beating all opposition” — but because of how Mary torments her opponents.

“She breaks your heart. She never gives your peace, never lets you rest,” Walsh said on the sidelines of the Women’s World Championships. “Her aggression is the mainstay of her game. And she has a never-say-die attitude a boxer should have. She fights till the last bell, and one can only respect that.”

But Walsh, who has led Ireland’s Taylor and USA’s Clarissa Shields to Olympic glory, believes it is her exploits outside the ring which make Mary a boxer’s boxer.

“She has been legendary. She was there at the beginning of the female boxing movement, flying the flag for the sport,” said Walsh. “Especially in India, where women boxers weren’t accepted maybe at that level.”

Indian classical music doyen, Ustad Imrat Khan, known for promoting the sitar and the surbahar internationally, has passed away in the United States at the age of 83, his family said on Friday.

Khan breathed his last in a hospital in St. Louis on Thursday after a stroke. He was unwell for quite some time and was hospitalised last week. He had been living in St. Louis for well over two decades.

"No words can express the loss? May Allah bless his soul," Khan's bereaved nephew, Hidayat Husain Khan, said confirming his death. The funeral is expected to take place on Saturday.