Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh is set to travel to Islamabad on 3 August to attend a meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) conference.

The meet will be attended by the interior and home ministers of SAARC member states.

Singh will be the first senior Indian leader to visit Pakistan since the terror strike at the Pathankot Indian Air Force base on 2 January this year. His visit comes even as tension continues to brew over the Kashmir issue. Pakistan has criticised the Indian government over the handling of the violence in the Valley in the wake of Mujahideen leader Burhan Wani's death. Islamabad has also called for plebiscites on Kashmir.

Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar met several senior functionaries of the right wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliated organisations on Wednesday to discuss the new education policy.

Javadekar was shifted from the ministry of environment and forests to HRD earlier this month.

The closed door meeting, held at Gujarat Bhavan for about six hours, reportedly discussed measures to "instil nationalism, pride and ancient Indian values in modern education", sources told The Indian Express.

Indian troops faced off for 40 minutes with Chinese soldiers who intruded into Uttarakhand last week, said the government on Wednesday.

Soldiers of the two armies came face to face in Barhoti in Chamoli district, which both India and China claim is their territory. Uttarakhand has a 350 km long border with China, says NDTV. However the situation was soon defused.

About 250 Dalit families from two villages in Tamil Nadu plan to convert to Islam because caste Hindus do not let them enter local temples.

Six families from Pazhangkallimedu village in Nagapattinam district have already converted.

About 180 families in the village want to perform rituals for one of the five days of the local temple's annual festival, but have been refused permission to do so, says The Indian Express.

Elsewhere, in Nagapalli village in Karur district, about 70-odd Dalit families believe converting to Islam is the only way to "end discrimination".

Though the Rajasthan high court on Monday acquitted actor Salman Khan of charges that he shot endangered chinkara, Harish Dulani, his driver on the day in question, stands by his statement that the actor did shoot the deer.

Dulani had been reported missing for much of the 18 years since the case was filed against Salman Khan, and said he had been in hiding out of fear, according to NDTV. He claimed that every time he tried to attend a hearing of the case in court, he was threatened.

Migrants to India from persecuted non-Muslim minority communities in Bangladesh and Pakistan will now be allowed admission to engineering, medicine and pharmacy colleges, says the ministry of external affairs.

In a statement, the MEA said on Wednesday: "It has been decided to include persecuted religious minority migrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan based in India within the purview of this scheme. The candidates will be selected on the basis of academic merit."

The Indian government is working on several steps to help integrate Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian and Parsi migrants from other sub-continental countries into India faster, says The Telegraph.