New Delhi, Apr 14 : Campaigning for first phase of Lok Sabha elections will come to an end this evening.

The polling will be held on Thursday.

In the first phase, the election will be held for 124 seats in seventeen states and union territories.

The states going to the polls in this phase include Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and some seats in Orissa in the east, Jammu and Kashmir, 16 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 13 in Bihar, 6 in Jharkhand in north India, 13 seats in Maharashtra and Chattisgarh in the west and Andhra Pradesh, Kerala Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep in the south.

New Delhi, Apr 14 : The nation on Tuesday paid rich tribute to Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar on his 118th birth anniversary.

Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate L K Advani came together at a function and paid homage to Ambedkar.

Several functions are being organised in different parts of the country to mark the occasion.

Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, scholar, Bahujan political leader and a Buddhist revivalist.

Ambedkar spent his life fighting untouchability and the Indian caste system.

New Delhi, Apr 14 : Loud applause greeted members of the Indian hockey team on their arrival here on Monday night after their resplendent win at the Azlan Shah Cup tournament in Malaysia.

Crediting the victory to team effort, Sandeep Singh, the team''s captain said, "It is the hard work put in by our team which we are seeing now. It is a joint effort of our coaches and the team members."

The coach of the team termed the victory a good beginning for Indian hockey.

New Delhi, Apr 13 : Around ten Tibetan students stripped and locked themselves on the barbed wire fencing surrounding the Chinese embassy here on Monday in protest against Chinese oppression inside Lhasa.

Chanting slogans of ''Free Tibet'', the protesters stood in the scorching sun outside the Chinese embassy demanding independence for their homeland, before being led away by the police.

New Delhi, Apr 13 : The Supreme Court on Monday postponed the hearing on the petition filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Varun Gandhi challenging the Uttar Pradesh Government''s decision to slap the National Security Act (NSA) against him for his alleged hate speeches.

The Bench headed by Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan, who heard the matter, postponed the hearing till April 16.

On April 2, the Bench had sought an explanation from the Uttar Pradesh Government and the Pilibhit District Magistrate for slapping of the NSA against Varun.

After prolonged illness, the 97-year-old Vishnu Prabhakar, a famous Hindi literateur, died in a hospital in New Delhi on Saturday.

Prabhakar, who’s survived by two sons and two daughters, had been suffering from cancer for last one and half year.

Prabhakar had decided to donate his body to Organ Retrieval Banking Organisation, a division of All India Institute of Medical sciences (AIIMS) at New Delhi for good cause of best use of his corpse for medical research.