When electoral alliances are cooked and tested in the blender of political endurance, all in prep for April-May 2024.
President Droupadi Murmu, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and several other famous faces were seen at polling booths, exercising their franchise in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha polls on Saturday.
Opposition parties targeted the Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann-led state government over the law and order situation and demanded that he step down on moral grounds.
Badal's mortal remains were taken to the family's farmland, around a kilometer from his residence, on a flower-decked tractor-trolley with his son Sukhbir Singh Badal and other family members standing with folded hands as the vehicle moved past the mourners on the route.
If everything goes according to plan, a resuscitated SAD could emerge as a central player in Punjab in three years, notes Aditi Phadnis.
A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna, Dipankar Datta and Augustine George Masih told the petitioners, who pointed out that a meeting for the selection of ECs was pre-poned, to file a separate application pointing out the fact.
'If, as happened in Baramulla during the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the youth in the Valley get triggered enough to jump into the wider fray, the end result would be difficult to predict, especially as the state's post-August 5, 2019 political format remains substantially fragmented and foggy,' points out Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the veteran commentator on Kashmir affairs.
The Election Commission Wednesday directed the leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to refrain from making speeches on religious and communal lines, and opposition Congress from potentially divisive statements on the socioeconomic composition of the armed forces.
The matter is being investigated, they said and added that so far, there is no evidence that the "Khalistani" slur was used.
The bench said it was not questioning the credentials of the election commissioners appointed but the procedure.
The elections will begin on April 19 followed by subsequent phases on April 26, May 7, May 13, May 20, May 25 and June 1.
Thousands of farmers from around 100 villages of Noida and Greater Noida on Thursday took to the streets seeking hiked compensation, bringing traffic to a standstill in several parts of Delhi-NCR as they made an unsuccessful bid to march towards Parliament.
The Aam Aadmi Party has fielded Karamjit Anmol, while the BJP has named North West Delhi MP Hans Raj Hans from Faridkot, a reserved parliamentary constituency.
The first time the Election Commission has taken cognisance of a model code of conduct complaint against a sitting prime minister.
Amritpal Singh, the chief of the 'Waris Punjab De' outfit, who is lodged in Assam's Dibrugarh jail under the National Security Act, has thrown his hat into the ring as an Independent.
Addressing reporters at his residence soon after the meeting ended, Chowdhury said six names came up before the panel for the selection of the two ECs and the names of Sandhu and Kumar were finalised by a majority of members of the high-powered panel.
Other prominent candidates among the 904 in the fray are Union minister Anurag Thakur, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad's daughter Misa Bharti.
The Punjab government has declared a holiday on Thursday as a mark of respect to the former chief minister.
Lok Sabha polls will be held in seven phases beginning from April 19 and the counting of votes will take place on June 4 for the world's biggest election exercise in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi will bid for a third consecutive term.
Several candidates, including Taranjit Singh Sandhu, the BJP's Amritsar candidate, are promising resumption of India-Pakistan trade via the Attari-Wagah land route.
Bypolls are due in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Saturday accused the Congress of fomenting trouble in the state by encouraging secessionist forces.
The five-time former Punjab chief minister died at a private hospital in Mohali near Chandigarh on Tuesday, nine days after he was admitted there with breathing problems. He was 95.
A delegation of Congress leaders met the Election Commission and handed over complaints against the prime minister, alleging that he has trampled upon and violated the model code and directions of the poll body.
'One of the principles of the MCC that you should not make hate speeches and create hatred between communities on the basis of religion was violated on a scale that was never seen before.' 'Religious symbols were very liberally used and speeches were made to polarise people on the basis of religion.'
In an affidavit filed in the apex court, the Union law ministry rejected the petitioner's claim that the two election commissioners were hastily appointed on March 14 to "pre-empt" the orders of the top court the next day, when the matters challenging the 2023 law were listed for hearing on interim relief.
For Sikhs, they say, honour is the bottom line; and whatever the state of the SAD's political fortunes today, arrogance will not be helpful in the negotiation.
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.
Sources said the duo attackers -- Rohit Rathore of Jaipur and Nitin Fauji of Haryana's Mahendragarh -- had planned to flee the country and had been allegedly promised Rs 50,000 each to kill Gogamedi.
Flooding in Jummagad river flowing near Jumma village on the Joshimath-Niti highway, about 45 km from Joshimath, continued till late night on Monday evening, during which the bridge collapsed.
The Shiromani Akali Dal on Friday announced sweeping organisational reforms, saying it will now follow the one family, one ticket principle at elections and ensure that half of its contestants are below 50.
It will be for the first time in three decades that the Badal family will have no representation in the 117-member Punjab assembly.
The Badals and Cheema had moved the top court challenging the August 2021 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court refusing to quash the summons against them by additional chief judicial magistrate, Hoshiarpur in a private complaint filed by Social activist Balwant Singh Khera on the charges of forgery, cheating and concealing facts.
It was not that differences did not crop up over other issues between the two erstwhile allies, but Parkash Singh Badal always ensured that these were amicably resolved and the ties remained intact.
The Punjab police arrested Jasvir Singh after the incident and booked him for hurting religious sentiments and attempt to murder.
Abhay Chautala said that Banerjee has told him that she had some preoccupation on that day and she will depute a senior leader of her party for the event while Thackeray told him that if he is unable to attend due to some reasons he will send a senior leader for the event.
However, the Army, in a statement, said since Singh's cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot injury, no guard of honour or military funeral was provided, in accordance with the existing policy.
'My two daughters are in Canada and I am tensed. They have gone there to study. Governments of both countries should find a solution'
'Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given a commitment to the Sikh community on the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev in 2019 that the sentence of all Sikh detainees serving life sentences would be commuted and that the death sentence of Bhai Rajoana would be commuted to life.'
The BJP senior leadership believes the YSRCP is a more reliable potential ally post-2024 Lok Sabha election than the TDP.
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