The INDIA opposition bloc meeting to take place in Delhi tomorrow has been postponed, sources told NDTV this afternoon. The postponement comes shortly after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Samajwadi Party boss Akhilesh Yadav both said they plan to skip the meet. On Monday, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she too would not attend. All three are senior members of the bloc; in fact, Nitish Kumar is widely seen as a founding member of the opposition grouping.

Earlier today sources told NDTV Nitish Kumar and Akhilesh Yadav would send representatives instead; the Janata Dal (United) leader was expected to send party President Rajiv Ranjan and senior figure Sanjay Jha, while Mr Yadav, a former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, was expected to send his uncle, and Rajya Sabha MP, Ramgopal Yadav.

READ | Akhilesh Yadav, Nitish Kumar To Skip INDIA Meet, May Send Representatives

Sources, however, indicated that the other half of the Bihar government – the Rashtriya Janata Dal – would have been represented by its top leaders – party patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav and his son Tejashwi Yadav, who is the Bihar Deputy Chief Minister.

Anumula Revanth Reddy, Telangana Congress chief credited with leading the party to a thumping win in the November 30 Assembly polls, is the Congress high command’s choice for Chief Minister, sources have said. The sources have said the Congress central leadership, led by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, has taken the decision. The final announcement will be made after an ongoing meeting between Mr Kharge and Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, who oversaw the Congress campaign in Telangana.

The 54-year-old leader, who was the face of the Congress’s winning campaign, has faced stiff resistance from within the party in his journey to the top post. The swearing-in ceremony, which was to take place last afternoon, was called off after a section of state Congress veterans opposed the choice of Mr Reddy for the Chief Minister post.

These detractors include former state Congress chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy to Bhatti Vikramarka, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy to Damodar Rajanarasimha. They reportedly opposed the outright candidature of Revanth Reddy, pointing to pending corruption cases and the Congress’s poor show in Mr Reddy’s Lok Sabha constituency.

A recent report by Meta has highlighted the growing menace of fake Facebook accounts originating from China spreading fake news about India. The report sheds light on the sophisticated strategies employed by these accounts to manipulate public opinion and influence discourse. Meta, in its quarterly threat report, revealed that it dismantled a large network of fake accounts originating from China earlier this year.

The accounts, pretending to be Indians, were actively involved in spreading misleading information on Indian politics and other issues of national security.

“This network operated fictitious personas on Facebook posing as journalists, lawyers and human-rights activists. The network posted mainly in English, and to a lesser extent in Hindi and Chinese, about regional news, culture, sports and travel in Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh. Notably, the Tibet-focused accounts posed as pro-independence activists who also accused exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and his followers of corruption and pedophilia,” the report said.

“The Arunachal Pradesh-focused accounts posted positive commentary about the Indian army, Indian athletes and Indian scientific achievements, and accused the Indian government of corruption and supporting ethnic violence in the Indian state of Manipur,” Facebook’s parent company added in its report.  

The tech giant said that in order to make the content look authentic, the accounts would comment on and share each other’s posts.

Meta claimed that the network has been successfully dismantled from all their platforms.

The report also stated that another set of 4,700 fake accounts from China also targetted US politics, making posts on topics like abortion, presidential candidates and US-China relations.

Some of these accounts posed as Americans and shared links to articles from mainstream US media like HuffPost, Breitbart, the Wall Street Journal, and Fox News, the report said.