He was exasperated over the demands for suspending the Question Hour as the House met for the day.
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
'The nuns were subjected to abusive language and all types of mental torture.'
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and other UDF MPs protest the arrest of Catholic nuns in Chhattisgarh, alleging religious persecution by the BJP government and demanding their immediate release.
Known for his jovial and kind nature, Neeraj left a lasting impression on his neighbours in Akola, which is why the news of his passing devastated the entire town, even though many had not seen him in years.
The arrest of two Catholic nuns from Kerala in Chhattisgarh on charges of human trafficking and forced religious conversion has ignited a political controversy, with opposition parties criticizing the arrest and the Chief Minister defending the police action.
As an IAS officer in Kerala, Gyanesh Kumar -- who the Congress described as Amit Shah's 'right hand man' -- had a good working equation with the state's Congress and Left leaders.
The states and union territories where the elections are being held in this phase are Assam (4), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (7), Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu (2), Goa (2), Gujarat (25), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (11), Madhya Pradesh (8), Uttar Pradesh (10) and West Bengal (4). The BJP has bagged the Surat seat unopposed.
Akhilesh Yadav's stock rose dramatically on Tuesday with his Samajwadi Party cutting the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party down to size in Uttar Pradesh.
The BJP had registered a one-sided victory on all the 17 SC-reserved seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But in 2019, out of these 17 seats, it lost Nagina and Lalganj seats to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
A voter turnout of 60.19 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in 93 constituencies spread over 11 states and Union Territories on Tuesday with sporadic incidents of violence in West Bengal.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
The outcome of the polls to the Rajya Sabha is likely to have an impact in the politically crucial state just ahead of the general elections in the country.
According to an agreement reached after the telephonic conversation between Priyanka Gandhi and Yadav, the Congress has now got seats such as Sitapur and Barabanki.
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief J P Nadda and new party entrant Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan were among the 41 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will witness polling on February 27.
Among the cities that have fully implemented their projects are Agra, Varanasi, Madurai, Coimbatore, Udaipur, Pune, Surat, and Vadodara
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday named 14 candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls including former Union minister R P N Singh and Sudhanshu Trivedi -- the only outgoing MP renominated by the party.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Sunday declared her nephew Akash Anand as her 'uttaradhikari (heir)', a party office-bearer said.
In the past five years, UP's Opposition remained passive and defensive against the BJP, a trend that does not augur well for the impending battle.
S P Singh Baghel and B L Verma who made it to the Union council of ministers on Wednesday are two prominent Other Backward Classes leaders from Uttar Pradesh.
A senior SP leader requesting anonymity said that the party chief had called a meeting to brief the MLAs about the voting process of the Rajya Sabha elections.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has decided to cut short his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Uttar Pradesh by skipping western part of the state and saving five days, a party leader said on Monday while citing board exams.
Amid the political blame game over Bengal's potato ban, which led to shortages in Jharkhand and Odisha, Uttar Pradesh farmers are the unlikely winners.
Babbar was elected from Agra as its Lok Sabha MP twice -- in 1999 and 2004. However, following delimitation in 2008, the Lok Sabha seat became reserved for the scheduled castes.
Chaudhary Charan Singh, who on Friday was conferred with India's highest civilian award Bharat Ratna, is popularly known as a champion of farmers.
Action will be taken against such MLAs, he said.
This is the first time that the House is meeting after the BJP's overwhelming victory in the recent series of assembly elections held in February-March.
The Modi government is learning to deal with the reality that it does not have a majority in the Rajya Sabha.
Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister and former state BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya had also dropped a hint in a recent tweet, saying Yaduvanshi (Yadavs), Ravidasiyo (Jatavs) and Pasmanda Muslims will be brought closer to the BJP so that the lotus 'blossoms' in every booth in UP.
Meanwhile, the Congress said that that it is ready to go it alone in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha election.
The alleged forced reconversion of about 100 people to Hinduism in Agra by a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh affiliate set off a chorus of criticism against the government today by the opposition inside and outside Parliament with its leaders calling it illegal and demanding 'strict' action.
'There might be some internal tussles that can be expected between any two persons in any party.' 'But I do not see any tussle which might weaken the possibility of dictatorship.'
The stampede took place as people headed home after a satsang in the district's Phulrai village, conducted by a preacher known as Bhole Baba. Twenty-seven bodies were brought to a hospital in neighbouring Etah district. Senior Superintendent of Police Rajesh Kumar Singh said 23 of them were women. And 89 lay dead in Hathras itself.
The BSP chief's brother Anand Kumar has been appointed as the party's national vice president and her nephew Akash Anand as its national coordinator.
"If you get employment, you will watch Reels for half an hour and work for 12 hours," the Congress leader said.
The Samajwadi Party on Tuesday suffered a major setback when it lost the prestigious Firozabad Lok Sabha seat, with party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law losing to actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar of the Congress, by a huge margin of over 85,000 votes. Babbar, a former Member of Parliament from Agra who rebelled against the SP and joined the Congress before the Lok Sabha elections in May, secured 3,12,728 votes while Dimple Yadav got 2,27,385 votes.
The new candidates fielded from these constituencies by the BJP are: SP Singh Baghel (Agra), Parameshwar Lal Saini (Sambhal), Raj Kumar Chaher (Fatehpur Sikri), Jai Prakash Rawat (Hardoi-SC), Ashok Rawat (Misrikh-SC) and Arun Sagar (Shahjahanpur-SC).
It is not in the Lok Sabha, where the BJP has a clear majority, but the Rajya Sabha that the Opposition has ganged up to checkmate Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious plans.
Anger cannot be an end in itself to Rahul Gandhi's politics -- it must instead catalyse a new political strategy, argues Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
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