From The Newsroom: Dream11 bags IPL sponsorship

In your evening news brief, From the Newsroom, Fantasy sports platform Dream11 has bags the Indian Premier League's title sponsorship rights after a winning bid of Rs 222 crore; Rohit Sharma, star wrestler Vinesh Phogat, TT player Manika Batra and Paralympic gold-winning high jumper Mariyappan Thangavelu picked for this year's Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award; Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office has asked officials to speed up the process of trimming government stakes in at least four primarily state-owned banks within the current fiscal year.

Here are the top news of today, Tuesday: August 18, 2020:

Fantasy sports platform Dream11 has bagged the Indian Premier League's title sponsorship rights after a winning bid of Rs 222 crore. Learning platforms Byju's and Unacademy lost out after bids of Rs 201 crore and Rs 171 crore respectively. BCCI had invited bids for the title rights of the delayed 13th edition after the Chinese mobile manufacturers Vivo and the Indian Board mutually suspended their contract for 2020 after the "boycott Chinese" calls following border clashes between the Indian and PLA troops.

India's limited-overs vice-captain Rohit Sharma, star wrestler Vinesh Phogat, TT player Manika Batra and Paralympic gold-winning high jumper Mariyappan Thangavelu were on Tuesday picked for this year's Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award by the sports ministry's selection committee. This is the second time since 2016 that four athletes have been finalised for the country's highest sporting honour.

With more and more BJP lawmakers coming out in the open to corner their own government over law and order, corruption and other issues, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his cabinet colleagues are likely to have a tough time in Uttar Pradesh Assembly during its brief session beginning from Thursday. Several saffron party legislators have raised a question mark on the state government's ability to fight corruption, provide succour to the common people and tame, what they termed an 'unbridled' bureaucracy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office has asked officials to speed up the process of trimming government stakes in at least four primarily state-owned banks within the current fiscal year, according to two officials familiar with the discussions. The sources said the four lenders are Punjab & Sind Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, UCO Bank and IDBI Bank, in which the Indian government owns majority stakes through direct and indirect holdings.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said there was no need to transfer contributions made to the PM cares Fund to the National Disaster Response Fund for the purpose of fighting Covid-19 pandemic. A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, R Subhash Reddy and M R Shah said that there was no statutory impediment for any individual or corporate to make contributions to the NDRF. It also said that anyone could contribute to the PM Cares Fund, which was a separate fund. There was no need to transfer money from PM Cares Fund to the NDRF.

Congress on Tuesday shot off a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, asking him to set up a high-level inquiry in the company’s leadership team in India in the wake of a media report alleging the social networking giant’s interference in the electoral democracy in the country. “Set up a high-level inquiry by Facebook headquarters into Facebook India's leadership team and their operations in a time-bound manner, and publish and make transparent all instances of hate speech since 2014 that was allowed on the platform. Facebook India should appoint a new team so that the investigation is not influenced,” Venugopal said in a three-page letter to Zuckerberg.

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