It seems that Narayan Tripathi, the rebel Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA in Madhya Pradesh, has lost faith in the Congress. In a ghar wapsi of sorts, he landed up at the BJP headquarters on Tuesday and said, "I never left the party. Yes, during the voting on a Bill in the Assembly, I voted against the party. But that was due to some confusion. I thought both the BJP and the Congress were united in their vote but unfortunately that was not the case." He was accompanied by state BJP chief Rakesh Singh when he reached the BJP office to clear the air. Tripathi, along with colleague Sharad Kol, had stunned the party by voting in favour of the Congress government during voting on the Criminal Law (Madhya Pradesh Amendment) Bill, 2019, in the Assembly in July. Both have returned to the fold.

Open door policy

In a surprise move, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi on Wednesday ordered that the doors to his courtroom be kept open for the day to let in fresh air. This was after the courtroom was found filled to capacity because it was the last day of hearing in the contentious Ayodhya land title dispute case. The security personnel seated outside the CJI's court had a tough time controlling the crowd as the doors were opened. The doors to the CJI's court are usually kept shut and also have heavy curtains to shut out the noise from the corridors.

Give plastic, get rice

A district collector in Telangana's Muludu district has found a novel way of tackling the problem of plastic waste in the town. On Wednesday, district collector C Narayana Reddy announced that the administration will give one kilogram of rice for every kilogram of plastic returned. "Over the next 10 days, we want to collect all the plastic, clear the place and send the plastic bags to cement factories while the bottles to recycling units," Reddy told a local news channel. Donors including NRIs, local politicians, traders and NGOs have come forward to donate rice. So far 335 quintals (a quintal is 100 kg) of rice have been collected by the district administration in addition to a grant of ~5 lakh from an NRI. Reddy expects that by October 26, close to 500 quintals of plastic would be handed over at the 174 gram panchayats that have been declared as collection points.