Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig indianexpress.com. NS
Answer
indianexpress.com. 5 NS a13-64.akam.net.
indianexpress.com. 5 NS a8-67.akam.net.
indianexpress.com. 5 NS a1-48.akam.net.
indianexpress.com. 5 NS a5-66.akam.net.
indianexpress.com. 5 NS a10-67.akam.net.
indianexpress.com. 5 NS a24-65.akam.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0