New IPL rules Ahead of the 2025 season, BCCI has made some major changes in the rules in the all-captains meet. A look... Saliva ban revoked TIRUNELVELI l Friday l march 21, 2025 l `9.00 l PAGES 12 l CITY EDITION The usage of saliva on balls had been banned since covid pandemic, but it has been lifted for the IPL from hereon. This came after appeals from several star bowlers including Mohammed Shami. slow overrate ban The IPL will enforce demerit points for captains if they fail to adhere to optimal over-rate. Mandatory ball change after the 11th over in second innings for night games cwg 2030: india send Expression of interest India have formally submitted Expression of Interest to host the Centenary Commonwealth Games at Ahmedabad. The letter of interest was sent by PT Usha as the chief of Commonwealth Games Association of India on March 13 | P11 CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI ‘malpractice’ Do not release NIRF rank list: HC to ministry E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Madurai THE Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Thursday in , an interim stay order, restrained the Union Education Ministry and the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) from publishing the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rank list for 2025. A bench of Justices J Nisha Banu and S Srimathy passed the order on a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by C Chellamuthu of Dindigul alleging malpractices and lack of transparency in calculation of scores for the rank list. Chellamuthu, in his petition, said the NIRF ranking, launched to evaluate higher education institutions nationwide, is arrived at merely based on the data provided by the institutions concerned without any verification or auditing. Many institutions submit false data to boost their ranking to lure students and MNCs, the petitioner said. Chellamuthu submitted comparative data of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council’s (NAAC’s) AQAR (Annual Quality Assurance Report) reports and the NIRF reports, posted by some institutions on their websites. He pointed out that the figures corresponding to the number of PhD students, faculties, R&D funds, consultancy project funds received, and the like are higher in the NIRF reports, than for the same parameters in the AQAR reports. P5 30 more Naxals killed in C’garh E J A Z K A I S E R @ Raipur At least 30 members of the banned CPI (Maoist) were killed in two separate encounters in Bastar division on Thursday, as security forces intensified operations against left-wing insurgency in south Chhattisgarh. “A joint team of the District Reserve Guards (DRG) from Bijapur and Dantewada, Special Task Force, CRPF and elite CoBRA force was out on search operations based on specific intelligence inputs. Around 7 am, an encounter broke out in the dense forest along the inter-district border area of Bijapur-Dantewada, where 26 Naxalites were neutralised. During the exchange of fire, DRG jawan Raju Oyami lost his life,” said Jitendra Yadav, Bijapur district police chief. In another gunfight at Kanker district in the north Bastar region, a combined team of the Border Security Force, Bastar Fighters and DRG gunned down four Maoists close to the Abujhmad jungle of Narayanpur. No security personnel sustained injuries in the Kanker encounter. The recovered bodies of Maoists are yet to be identified and the casualty count of the red rebels may rise further, the officer said. The forces also recovered 21 weapons, including an AK-47, two Self-Loading Rifles, one INSAS rifle, three BGL rocket launchers, and explosives among Jawans returning from the encounter site in the forest area at Bijapur-Dantewada border, in Bijapur on Thursday | ANI others from the encounter site. Union Home Minister Amit Shah stated that the security forces had achieved another big success in the mission to eliminate Naxalism under the ‘Naxal Mukt Bharat Abhiyan’. Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai praised the commitment of the security personnel. “We are achieving historic success in the fight against the Maoists,” he said. So far this year, 113 Maoists have been eliminated in various encounters in the state. Last year, Maoists lost 219 of their fighters in anti-insurgency operations. The series of encounters during the last one year are part of the renewed strategy to eliminate Maoist influence in Chhattisgarh by March 2026. Bijapur, Dantewada, Kanker and Narayanpur are among the seven Maoist-affected districts of Bastar division. US detains Indian student for alleged Hamas support A g e n c ies @ Washington, D.C. US federal authorities have detained an Indian citizen who came to the country legally on a student visa and threatened to deport him claiming he posed risk to American foreign policy . Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, was detained by masked agents from outside his home on Monday, US media reports said. His visa was revoked due to his alleged ties with Hamas. Suri was being targeted because of the Palestinian heritage express read Tasmac case: HC tells ED to halt all proceedings Chennai: Acting on a petition filed by the state government, the Madras HC on Thursday directed the Enforcement Directorate to put on hold all proceedings related to searches conducted at Tasmac and related entities and asked the agency to file a reply by March 24 explaining the basis on which the raids were carried out | P2 Murders peaked under AIADMK govt in 2012: CM Chennai: After opposition leader Edappadi K Palaniswami on Thursday blamed the DMK government for rising cases of murder, CM M K Stalin said that between 2012 and 2024, the number of murder cases was the highest at 1,943 under AIADMK rule in 2012, and was lowest under DMK regime at 1,540 in 2024 | P4 of his wife Mapheze Saleh, a US citizen, his lawyer said in a lawsuit seeking his immediate release. Some reports said Saleh’s father served as a senior political adviser to the Hamas leadership. Confirming Suri’s detention, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson claimed Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.” The incident comes days after another Indian student, Ranjani Srinivasan, ‘self-deported’ following cancellation of her visa over her alleged support for Hamas. Elon Musk’s X sues Indian govt over content blocking, misuse of IT rules R akes h K u m ar @ New Delhi ELON Musk-led-social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has filed a petition in the Karnataka High Court against the Centre, accusing it of illegally blocking content on the platform. The petition, filed on Thursday, alleges the government is circumventing established legal safeguards and procedures in its bid to censor online content. According to X, the government is improperly using Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act to issue content blocking orders. It argued that this section is not intended for such purposes and that the government is deliberately bypassing the more stringent requirements of Section 69A of the IT Act and the associated Blocking Rules. Section 69A is the legally defined route by which the government can restrict access to online content that is deemed harmful to the nation’s interests. However, this process is regulated by the 2009 IT (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, which require a structured review process before blocking decisions are made. Section 79(3)(b) says if a government agency flags illegal content, the platform must take it down within 36 hours or risk being liable for third-party content. Safe harbour Non-compliance of a takedown order under Section 79(3)(b) may strip platforms of safeharbour protection that shields them from being liable for content posted by third parties Sahyog portal X also refused to join govt’s Sahyog portal, set up to streamline takedown requests under Sec 79(3)(b), terming it a ‘censorship tool’ that pressures platforms to remove content without proper legal review