The Bharatiya Janata Party remained a house divided as the party went ahead and named Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 general polls in the meeting of its parliamentary board on Friday evening.

The four men convicted of the gruesome gangrape and murder of the 23-year-old physiotherapy student inside a moving bus last December were awarded the death sentence by a city court on Friday. The court had held all four guilty on Tuesday and reserved the order on the quantum of punishment for Friday.

With the anointment of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, saffron corridors are agog with speculation over the fate of BJP patriarch L.K. Advani — the man who fought till the last to prevent the inevitable.

“We will all sleep peacefully today,” the 20-year-old brother of the Delhi gangrape victim said on Friday,
expressing his happiness after a Delhi court sentenced the four convicts to death for the brutal attack.

Eight people, mostly daily wage workers, were killed and more than five critically wounded when a powerful bomb exploded at Nagamapal area in Imphal West district of Manipur on Friday.

Friday the 13th lived up to its reputation. On the same day that the four adult accused in the December 16 gangrape horror were given the maximum punishment, those involved in spot-fixing in IPL Season 6 were also brought to book by a cricket board panel.

The Uttar Pradesh government has withdrawn permission for a BJP rally that was to be addressed by senior party leader L.K. Advani and Varun Gandhi in Akola in Agra on September 15.

With the situation in Muzaffarnagar returning to normal, curfew was relaxed for 12 hours on Thursday. People came out of their houses for their daily work and normal traffic was seen on roads.

The Defence Acquisition Council of the ministry of defence on Friday cleared defence acquisitions worth a total of `10,000 crores for acquisition of six more C-130 J Hercules transport aircraft from US firm Lockheed Martin that will cost `4,000 crores and for manufacture of 235 Russian-origin T-90 tanks in India that will cost about `6,000 crores.

After more than 40 people have lost their lives in the communal clashes in Muzaffarnagar, the government has convened a meeting of the National Integration Council (NIC) on September 23 to discuss how to combat communalism and casteism.