The MVA government had planned to arrest Devendra Fadnavis and when he objected, they planned to arrest him as well, said Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde
Proving wrong his detractors' claim of being sidelined after denial of chief minister's post for fifth time last year, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan won Madhya Pradesh's Vidisha Lok Sabha seat for the sixth time by a record margin of 8.21 lakh votes.
The Congress, which had held its sway in these two Muslim majority districts during the Left Front rule of 34 years and the following 10 years of the TMCs reign since 2011, has not been able to open its account in this election.
'Has the BJP not announced its candidates in Raebareli?'
A part of the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat, Raghopur assembly segment in Vaishali district will vote in the second phase on November 3. The 31-year-old, the younger son of Lalu Prasad, had taken the electoral plunge from Raghopur in 2015, when he had barely reached the qualifying age of 25 for fighting polls.
Ending days of suspense, the Congress on Friday announced that Rahul Gandhi will contest the Lok Sabha elections from Rae Bareli, the constituency held by his mother Sonia Gandhi for the last two decades, and Kishori Lal Sharma, a close aide of the Gandhi family, will fight from Amethi.
'We put the seed of BJP's ideology in Jammu, watered it, nurtured it for four decades and when it was time to reap the fruits of those efforts, the fruits are being sold out to the very same people who worked hard to uproot this tree.' 'Shockingly, our own people are letting this happen and nobody from Delhi bothers to even listen to us.'
Rahul Gandhi may also contest from Amethi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from Rae Bareli, a seat which was previously held by Sonia Gandhi.
Barring 2004 and 2009 when Navjot Singh Sidhu won the Amritsar seat as a BJP MP and 1998 when Daya Singh Sodhi from BJP was elected as the MP, it has essentially a Congress bastion.
The BJP was unable to win any seat in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala besides Puducherry in 2011.
Announcing candidates for the remaining four seats in Kerala, the Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded its state chief K Surendran in the high-profile Wayanad constituency against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
But as voters gear up for crucial assembly and parliamentary polls on May 13, all eyes are on the high-stakes battle in Pulivendula, an assembly constituency that has been a Reddy family stronghold for over four decades.
The party's prime mover in West Bengal and the state Pradesh Congress president was stunned by Trinamool Congress's star candidate and cricketer-turned-politician Yusuf Pathan who comprehensively defeated Chowdhury by a margin of over 85,000 votes.
Majority of these constituencies are in Uttar Pradesh and the party that is on the third slot even as the counting is still underway on several seats is the Bahujan Samaj Party, a party neither with the National Democratic Alliance nor the opposition INDIA bloc.
Despite the upbeat statement, the party is expected to reflect on what caused the sharp fall in its numbers. It is expected to win about 240 seats against the 303 it had won in 2019.
Three battalions of the Border Security Force comprising more than 3,000 personnel will move across the border from Odisha to Chhattisgarh and an equal number of Indo-Tibetan Border Police units will further move into the Naxal stronghold of Abujhmad as part of a strategy to intensify anti-Maoist operations in their last bastions, official sources said.
Manjhi's son Santosh Suman, who is a minister in the Nitish Kumar cabinet, made the statement a day after reports emerged that a seat-sharing formula has been arrived at in the National Democratic Alliance, and the HAM was likely to get only one of the state's 40 constituencies.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) on Sunday elected its first Dalit president from the Left-backed groups after nearly three decades.
Two-time chief minister and five-time MLA Janata Dal-Secular leader H D Kumaraswamy has once again demonstrated his political acumen by bagging a seat in the union council of ministers, despite his party joining the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance just last year.
Now, with the INDIA bloc putting up an impressive show in the Lok Sabha polls and managing to stop the BJP juggernaut, opposition leaders will be looking at the senior Pawar for guidance in navigating the political space against the saffron party post-elections.
Thackeray also declared the candidature of Satyajit Patil, Bharti Kamdi and Karan Pawar from Hatkanangale, Palghar, and Jalgaon constituencies, respectively.
Does India's first political family see some serious threat to its own bastions? The question was doing rounds in Uttar Pradesh, where lie Rae Bareli and Amethi -- the respective parliamentary constituencies of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president son Rahul Gandhi. Sharat Pradhan reports.
A number of high-profile electoral battles, starring veterans and debutants, formidable opponents and unlikely contestants, feature in Tuesday's outcome.
The suspense over whether Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will contest the polls from Amethi and Raebareli respectively continued.
Priyanka Gandhi in large part was at the centre of the Congress's action, giving a number of enduring images from this election campaign.
Counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections has begun across states and Union Territories, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar told PTI.
'What matters is policies, not personalities like Priyanka, Rahul or Modi.'
Exit polls on Saturday predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain power for a third straight term, with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance expected to win a big majority in the Lok Sabha polls.
Sule said the intra-family duel in the Lok Sabha polls will not waver her respect for Sunetra Pawar as she is her "elder brother's wife and like a mother".
There is a growing unease among Lok Sabha ticket aspirants in the Shiv Sena amid its decision to drop three sitting MPs and the ongoing seat-sharing talks between the Mahayuti partners, party sources said.
'If the Congress loses this time, Rahul Gandhi will not look back at Amethi ever again.'
Rather than contesting the state elections from Ganderbal, the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister will be contesting the state elections from Sonwar and Beerwah, reports Mukhtar Ahmad.
Continuing its winning streak in Maharashtra, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday won Latur and Chandrapur municipal corporations, out of three civic bodies that went to polls on April 19.
The campaign vehicle carried a banner with photographs of Sunetra Pawar and Ajit Pawar with the symbol of the Nationalist Congress Party.
Doddamani has maintained a low profile; he has always worked actively behind the scenes in managing and strategising for Kharge's successive electoral campaign.
The two major parties offer the United States choices that are basically unacceptable and the bench strength, such as it is, is not entirely capable of winning popular acclaim, notes Shreekant Sambrani.
Campaigning for May 13 elections in 96 Lok Sabha constituencies across 10 states and Union territories including all seats in Andhra Pradesh, where assembly elections are also being held concurrently, and Telangana concluded on Saturday evening.
The former Union minister also said the people in Maharashtra are looking for a change.
'As a police officer, I had gone on deputation to the prison department; on both occasions (the hanging of Ajmal Kasab and Yakub Memon), the government said that I should remain present.' 'I was not mentally prepared for these sensitive operations and had to work on myself to lead the teams.'
