Campaigning in his assembly constituency, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Tuesday recalled the attempt to topple his government in 2020 and said those who tried it, “did not know who they were dealing with”.

“I have been the chief minister of the state three times. I completed all these three terms which is a big thing.

“It is not just that I completed all these three terms… they tried to topple my government this time but they failed. They thought that they would succeed here as well, but they had no idea who they were dealing with” Gehlot said.

The Congress leader was speaking while campaigning in his constituency Sardarpura for the second day. He held road shows and corner meetings in various localities of the constituency.

Mr Gehlot’s then deputy Sachin Pilot and 18 other Congress MLAs had revolted against him in July 2020. The month-long crisis ended after the intervention of the party high command. Mr Pilot was then removed as the deputy chief minister and state Congress president.

While Gehlot-Pilot ties have been strained since, with both openly taking pot-shots at each other, the party has been putting up a united face in the state in the run-up to the November 25 Assembly polls.

Mr Gehlot expressed gratitude to the people and sought their blessings for the upcoming election.

On Tuesday, his campaigning was focused on Mandore – a Mali-dominant area.

Mr Gehlot, who belongs to the Mali community, also attended a felicitation programme organised by the community in which 836 meritorious students were honoured.

While addressing various gatherings, Mr Gehlot said that it was his duty to come to his constituency immediately after getting the ticket and express his gratitude to them.

“You have always blessed me. So it was my duty to come to you first. Now, with your permission I would leave to take care of the remaining 199 seats,” he said.

Delhi’s air quality improved marginally on Tuesday but remained in the ‘poor’ category, according to monitoring agencies.

The city’s 24-hour average Air Quality Index (AQI) stood at 220, improving from 263 at 4 pm on Monday.

The 24-hour average AQI settled at 218 in neighbouring Ghaziabad, 179 in Faridabad, 158 in Gurugram, 170 in Noida and 248 in Greater Noida.

An AQI between zero and 50 is considered ‘good’, 51 and 100 ‘satisfactory’, 101 and 200 ‘moderate’, 201 and 300 ‘poor’, 301 and 400 ‘very poor’, and 401 and 500 ‘severe’.

On Sunday, Delhi’s air quality turned ‘very poor’ for the first time since May, mainly due to a drop in temperature and wind speed, which allowed pollutants to accumulate. A few incidents of firecracker burning were also reported from parts of Delhi on the occasion of Dussehra on Tuesday.

In accordance with the practice of the last three years, Delhi had last month announced a comprehensive ban on the manufacture, storage, sale and use of firecrackers within the capital city.

A public awareness campaign, ‘Patakhe Nahi Diye Jalao’, will be soon reintroduced to discourage burning of firecrackers.

Unfavourable meteorological conditions and a cocktail of emissions from firecrackers and paddy straw burning, in addition to local sources of pollution, push Delhi-NCR’s air quality to hazardous levels around Diwali every year.

On Monday, Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai said the government has identified eight more pollution hotspots in addition to the existing 13 in the national capital and special teams will be deployed there to check pollution sources.

Rai said the government has also decided to use suppressant powder to prevent dust pollution in the city.

Dust suppressants could include chemical agents like calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, lignosulfonates and various polymers. These chemicals work by attracting and binding fine dust particles together, making them too heavy to become airborne.

The minister also said the government will relaunch a campaign to curb vehicular pollution on October 26, a year after Lieutenant Governor (LG) V K Saxena put it on hold, questioning its effectiveness.

Sources in the city government’s environment department said the LG’s permission will not be required for the “Red Light On Gaadi Off” campaign this year as the participants will not receive any honorarium, unlike in previous seasons.

A woman who left Britain to marry an Islamic State jihadist fighter when she was a teenager began her appeal against the revocation of her citizenship in a UK court Tuesday.

A lawyer for Shamima Begum, 24, told the Court of Appeal in London that the Home Office had failed to consider its legal duties owed to her client as a potential victim of trafficking. 

“The appellant’s trafficking was a mandatory, relevant consideration in determining whether it was conducive to the public good and proportionate to deprive her of citizenship, but it was not considered by the Home Office,” Samantha Knights said in a written submission to the court.

“As a consequence, the deprivation decision was unlawful.”

Shamima Begum was 15 when she left her east London home for Syria with two school friends in 2015. 

While there, she married an ISIS fighter and had three children, none of whom survived. 

In February 2019, Begum said she was left stateless when Britain’s interior minister at the time, Sajid Javid, revoked her British citizenship on national security grounds after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp. 

A UK tribunal ruled in 2020 that she was not stateless because she was “a citizen of Bangladesh by descent” when the decision was made, by virtue of her Bangladeshi mother. 

Earlier this year, Begum lost a challenge against the decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC). 

The SIAC said that while there was a “credible suspicion that Begum was recruited, transferred and then harboured for the purpose of sexual exploitation”, this did not prevent Sajid Javid from removing her citizenship. 

The ruling meant that Begum could not return to the UK from her current home, a refugee camp in northern Syria. 

Lawyers for the Home Office, which is set to begin oral arguments on Wednesday, told the court that SIAC’s conclusion was correct. 

“The fact that someone is radicalised, and may have been manipulated, is not inconsistent with the assessment that they pose a national security risk,” James Eadie said in written submissions for the department. 

The hearing is set to conclude on Thursday, with a decision expected at a later date. 

Shamima Begum is one of hundreds of Europeans whose fate has challenged governments following the 2019 collapse of the Islamist extremists’ self-styled caliphate. 

Knights told the five-day SIAC hearing last November that her client had been “influenced” along with her friends by a “determined and effective” IS group “propaganda machine”. 

Around 900 people are estimated to have travelled from Britain to Syria and Iraq to join the IS group. Of those, around 150 are believed to have been stripped of their citizenship, according to government figures.