Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will hit the campaign trail in poll bound Karnataka at Bellary, Raichur and Bijapur on April 23.
Parliament met for a brief special session on Saturday to announce the vacancy in the presidency following the resignation of Rajapaksa.
Campaigning for the fifth phase ended on Friday evening, and all necessary arrangements have been completed, state Chief Election Officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said in Lucknow on Saturday.
Though the Congress, AAP and other Opposition parties may have high hopes and some positive takeaways to seize on from the results, it is the BJP which has a big headstart and is firmly in the lead.
In contrast to the inertia in the SP camp, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party showed no complacency in the run-up to the polls this month.
The latest trend issued by the State Election Commission showed the BJD had already won or was leading in 762 Zilla Parishad seats, as compared to BJP's 46 and Congress's 36 seats.
Voting will be held on Thursday in bypolls to seven assembly seats in six states -- a contest symbolic of the fierce turf war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties.
This marks the entry of the 8th member from the Gowda family into politics.
The Bharatiya Janata Party was on Thursday poised for a landslide victory in Gujarat to retain power for a record seventh straight term but was behind the Congress in Himachal Pradesh which could go with the trend of alternative governments in the hill state.
During the 13-minute special session, Dhammika Dassanayake, ecretary general of Parliament, announced the vacancy for the post of president.
Naturally, the West Bengal chief minister is not leaving anything to chance, reports Ishita Ayan Dutt.
The BJP, which has emerged as the main opposition party in West Bengal after winning 77 seats in the assembly polls last year, failed to win even a single civic body.
A Congress leader said that party president Sonia Gandhi and MP Rahul Gandhi have decided to organise the yatra 'to remind our new generations about the sacrifices made by our leaders in achieving freedom from the British Raj'.
It was curtains down on the high-decibel campaigning for the fourth phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls as sparring among political rivals intensified during the last-minute canvassing on Monday.
Shiromani Akali Dal-Amritsar's Simranjit Singh Mann on Sunday won the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat after defeating his nearest rival, Aam Aadmi Party's Gurmail Singh, by a margin of 5,822 votes.
Counting of votes for the bypolls in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand will be taken up on Sunday.
'They know Sharad Pawar will be playing a huge role in unifying the Opposition.'
Oommen Chandy said the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee has requested Gandhi to contest from Wayanad but he has not commented on the proposal.
The party bagged 11 of the 25 seats, from 20 Local Authorities' constituencies in the state, for which the biennial election was held on December 10, and counting was taken up today, poll officials said.
In a jolt to the Bharatiya Janata Party, its candidate on Thursday lost the mayoral election in the Jalgaon Municipal Corporation as 27 party corporators cross-voted.
'Is the idea of a committed judiciary once again being floated, though surreptitiously, unlike in the past when it was direct?'
Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com reports from Shivaji Park and the MMRDA ground to sense the mood of Shiv Sena workers -- from the Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde camps.
One of the high-profile contests in the high-stakes Bengal polls is likely to be a direct fight between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her former confidant and now BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram seat.
The central election committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party will meet on Thursday to finalise its first list of candidates for five assembly polls, with top party leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expected to attend the meeting.
The court directed the Congress to explain whether they were adhering to COVID norms such as wearing face masks, and maintaining social distancing.
What is the lure of a government job? The answer is India's worst kept secret: Job security. And among the many government jobs desperately sought after is in the armed forces. Which is why the riots by aspiring armed forces job seekers against the government's Agnipath scheme should not really be surprising, points out Harishchandra.
Nothing exemplifies this Sikh khundak (revenge) better than the fact that all the tallest names in the state lost their election to novices fielded by AAP.
The combativeness reflects her insistence not to meekly acquiesce to what has been going on in Raisina Hill for years or decades, observes Kartikeya Tanna.
'The message the BJP is sending is that they are in no way responsible for Uddhav's downfall and it was only Shinde who is to be blamed.'
With their high-decibel campaigns so far, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party may appear to be locked in a direct fight in Uttar Pradesh.
West Bengal minister and veteran Trinamool Congress leader Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay is all set to vacate the Bhabanipur assembly seat on Friday as party supremo Mamata Banerjee is likely to contest bypoll from the constituency, party sources said.
The cover features India's only woman Lieutenant General Madhuri Kanitkar, champion racing driver Alisha Abdullah and Harmanpreet Kaur, captain of India's ODI/T20 women's cricket teams.
A little over a year after it retained power in Kerala with a massive victory, the CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front suffered a huge setback on Friday in a bypoll held to Thrikkakara assembly constituency, with Congress candidate Uma Thomas winning with a historic margin of 25,016 votes, giving a boost to the morale of the party-led United Democratic Front in the southern state.
If the Opposition has any chance at the prime minister's job, it can happen only if they all stop dropping names and work at the grassroots-level, state-wise, suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
The fulcrum of victory or defeat of parties attempting to form a government is held by smaller players and those willing to defect.
The voluminous report has proposed redrawing of the Anantnag Parliamentary seat by including Rajouri and Poonch from the Jammu region, besides carrying out massive changes in the Kashmir division, they said.
Thushar is the son of Vellappally Natesan, who is the general secretary of the influential Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, which works for the welfare of Ezhava community, a backward caste with sizeable population in the state.
The party also declared sitting MP Praveen Nishad as its candidate from Sant Kabir Nagar
Walking around Amethi barely gives the feel of a VVIP constituency. Could years of neglect cost the Gandhi Parivar its bastion? Sharat Pradhan finds out.
Nandigram, 126 km south of Kolkata, is Suvendu Adhikari's bastion, where he has vowed to defeat Mamata Banerjee by 50,000 votes or quit politics.
