Telangana caretaker Chief Minister and TRS President K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday described Congress President Rahul Gandhi as the "biggest buffoon" in the country.

Hours after dissolution of the Telangana state Assembly on Thursday, ruling TRS announced candidates for 105 constituencies.

The Supreme Court today has said homosexuality is not a crime in India. The top court pronounced its verdict on petitions challenging the colonial-era Section 377 that criminalises consensual gay sex. In 2013, the Supreme Court had cancelled a Delhi high court order that had decriminalized homosexuality, by overturning the outdated law, saying it was up to parliament to take a call on scrapping laws. Five celebrities, in 2016, petitioned the Supreme Court to reconsider its own ruling. Chief Justice Dipak Misra, who headed the five judge bench hearing the case said,"Respect for each others rights is supreme humanity. Criminalising gay sex is irrational and indefensible."

Political cartoonist P Mahamud has won the first edition of an award set up in the memory of journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was assassinated in Bengaluru a year ago. The announcement was made on Wednesday by two India centres of writers’ organisation PEN.

India probably overestimated manufacturing output while calculating economic growth that topped 8 per cent in the June quarter, according to a member of the central bank’s rate-setting panel.

The CBI on Thursday said it has arrested four persons including the promoters and directors of Jayem Industries and officers of the Food Safety and Drug Administration and Excise Department in connection with the multi-crore gutkha scam in Tamil Nadu.

Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday recommended dissolving the state assembly, nine months before its term ends, to enable holding of early polls in the state.

Barely a week before the state's biggest public festival Ganeshotsav, petrol-diesel prices in Maharashtra's Parbhani shot up to Rs 88.77, perhaps the highest in the country, an official said.