The Congress on its 135th foundation day on Saturday said India has always come first for it through the ages and sacrifice for the nation stands above all else for the party.

On the occasion, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi hoisted the party's flag at its headquarters here at 24, Akbar Road.

Attacking the government over the issue of the National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said these exercises will be more disastrous than the note ban in November 2016.

The basic idea of these exercises is to ask all poor people whether they are Indian or not, he told reporters on the sidelines of the flag-hoisting ceremony at the AICC headquarters here on the occasion of 135th foundation day of the party.

A population database will be the start of work for a register of citizens, said Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, rejecting the central government’s statements.

Owaisi, president of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, spoke about the National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC)—two exercises which have sparked attracted criticism over alleged religious profiling.

The Indian Army has rescued about 1,500 tourists who were stranded in Nathu La in East Sikkim, an official release said on Saturday.

Some 1,500 to 1,700 tourists travelling in about 300 vehicles from Gangtok got stranded at various stretches of the Jawahar Lal Nehru Road between 13th Mile and Nathu La on Friday evening due to heavy snowfall, it said.

The government should consider using the Aadhaar database to build a population register, K N Govindacharya, a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue, has said in a letter he wrote to Home Minister Amit Shah as nationwide protests continue against a new citizenship law.

Aadhaar numbers of about 1.25 billion citizens can be used to integrate with the last National Population Register data, Govindacharya has suggested in the letter, a copy of which was seen by Business Standard.

Delhi’s temperature fell to 2.4 degrees Celsius Saturday morning, making it the city’s coldest day this winter, said the weather office.

A dense fog prompted Delhi airport to reschedule four flights as visibility at the runway reduced. "Four flights have been diverted from the airport till 8.52 am today," an airport official told news agency PTI.

The annual growth in all-India housing price index (HPI) continued to moderate and stood at 2.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2019-20 (Q2FY20) as against 3.4 per cent in the previous quarter and 5.7 per cent a year ago.

The index is based on transaction-level data received from housing registration authorities in 10 major cities — Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow and Mumbai.

A Kazakhstan plane with 100 people aboard crashed shortly after takeoff early Friday, killing at least 14 people while at least 35 others survived with injuries, officials in Almaty said.

The Bek Air aircraft hit a concrete fence and a two-story building after takeoff from Almaty International Airport. It said the plane lost attitude at 7:22 a.m. (0122 GMT).

The railways may cut freight rates in a bid to boost economic growth, besides rationalising passenger fares. While Railway Board Chairman V K Yadav refused to say if passenger fares would see an increase, he hinted that freight rates might be reduced.

We are going to rationalise the fares and freight rates. Something is being thought about. I cannot divulge more as this is a sensitive subject. While freight fares are already high, our target is to draw more traffic from road to railways in this regard, Yadav said on Thursday.

Shares of HG Infra Engineering jumped over 10 per cent to Rs 269 apiece on the BSE on Friday, a day after the company said it has bagged a highway project worth Rs 522 crore in Haryana from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).

At 10:44 am, the stock was trading over 6 per cent higher at Rs 259. In comparison, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading 267 points or 0.65 per cent higher at Rs 41,431 levels.

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