Social activist Anna Hazare said Saturday that he will launch a hunger strike from January 30 next year at his village if the anti-corruption ombudsman Lokpal is not appointed.

The Defence Ministry Saturday approved military procurement worth Rs 3,000 crore, including Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles for Navy's two stealth frigates and armoured recovery vehicles for the Army's Arjun main battle tanks, a senior official said.

A farmer from Maharashtra, who had participated in a two-day kisan rally in Delhi against the agrarian distress in the country, died early Saturday after accidentally falling from a building in central Delhi, police said.

Amid demands by parties to increase the number of polling stations where paper trail machine slips are matched with EVM results, outgoing Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat has said the poll panel will take a final call on the issue after the Indian Statistical Institute submits a report on it.

Facing reverses in their traditional stronghold, Naxals in Chhattisgarh's Bastar have come up with a new strategy, apparently based on the Vietnamese model of guerrilla warfare, wherein effigies with fake guns are positioned strategically in the forest to take on the troopers.

BJP chief Amit Shah Saturday alleged that Congress president Rahul Gandhi was insulting slain Army soldiers by claiming that the 2016 surgical strike across the LoC was conducted to win the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

Moderate Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was put under house arrest on Saturday as a precautionary measure and his outfit's one-day session was foiled, a police official said.

 A moderate intensity earthquake measuring 3.8 hit Himachal Pradesh's Kullu district Saturday, the Meteorological Department said.