Devotees offer namaz at the ancient Ferozshah Kotla mosque on Id ul-Zuha in New Delhi on Monday. — BUNNY SMITH

BJP president Nitin Gadkari’s recent statement that four senior leaders would lead the party’s campaign from the front in Uttar Pradesh has generated a new controversy in party circles.

While the stage is all set for a mega-cultural event to be organised on an unprecedented scale by the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state capital on Tuesday to mark the fifty-sixth Foundation Day of Madhya Pradesh, the main Opposition Congress has come down heavily criticising the costly extravaganza.

Senior BJP leader L.K. Advani’s “Janchetana Yatra” will make its way into Mumbai on November 4. Interestingly, apart from several BJP leaders slated to speak at the rally, Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray and RPI leader Ramdas Athawale will also be amongst the people who address the crowd.

Union home minister P. Chidambaram on Monday said that a movement towards a decision on controversial Telangana statehood demand would take place after the Id-ul-Zuha festival, which falls on November 7. The announcement has been welcomed by Telangana Congress MPs.

The Opposition is planning to keep the government on tenterhooks by moving a no confidence motion against it during the Winter Session of Parliament to expose the “fence sitters” ahead of crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Jarbom Gamlin on Monday submitted his resignation in order to authorise Congress president Sonia Gandhi to take a final decision in resolving the political stalemate in the state.

An elderly woman was found strangulated to death at her Jangpura Extension residence in southeast Delhi on Monday morning. The K-7 residence of the woman was found ransacked and robbed, allegedly by a Nepalese domestic

A four-year-old boy, who had gone missing from Keshavpuram in northwest Delhi Sunday evening, was found dead on Monday with his throat slit and multiple injuries on his body. The police is suspecting that the victim was sodomised.

The Delhi high court on Monday upheld the life sentence to two persons for murdering their homosexual partners, including a UNDP officer, in south Delhi in 2004.