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.
Senior Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday asserted that her party, if voted to power in Assam, will bring a new law to 'nullify' the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the state.
Obama in an interview to CNN on Thursday had said that India may "pull apart" if the rights of the religious and ethnic minorities are not upheld.
More than 750 constituencies spread across four states and one union territory will go to the polls on Tuesday
Of the 20,831 voters in this assembly constituency, an overwhelming majority of around 18,000 are not tribals.
The Lok Sabha witnessed a display of linguistic diversity on Monday, with the newly-elected MPs taking their oaths in English and Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Dogri, Bengali, Assamese and Odia.
Banerjee also appealed to the people of West Bengal not to get provoked over matters concerning the current situation in Bangladesh.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said he replaced India with Bharat in his Twitter bio to reflect his 'journey' from the Congress to Bharatiya Janata Party, in a dig at the opposition coalition.
'If there are provocations and people try to exploit and manipulate the situation along linguistic, religious lines, then Assam might relapse into its troubled past.'
Both the BJP leaders asserted that Gandhi's disqualification was a natural outcome of the law as the Supreme Court has made it clear that a lawmaker stands disqualified from the time of his conviction.
Doctors have advised the 85-year-old politician to stay in home isolation.
"Sometimes Sachin Tendular scored a century, sometimes he got out for Zero," Biswa said while reacting to party's loss in Karnataka.
Independence Day was celebrated across states and Union territories on Thursday, as several chief ministers announced job schemes while some others vowed their support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of a Viksit Bharat by 2047.
In a major setback to the opposition INDIA bloc, Banerjee announced that her party has decided to go alone in the state in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
They warned that the 'prime minister and his cabinet colleagues will be stopped from entering the state' if their interests were harmed.
The resignation also signals a continuing saga of unaddressed concerns of young leaders, once considered close to former Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
As BJP leaders went all out to project the event as a moment of national pride, some leaders were directly critical of the ceremony with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, belonging to the Communist Party of India-Marxist, slamming the state's role in the Ram Temple consecration, saying the line that demarcates religion and state seems to be 'getting thinner and thinner'.
Moitra's electoral triumph not only secures her seat in Parliament, but also serves as a defiant retort to attempts to sideline her from the political arena.
PM Modi's assurance came against the backdrop of violent protests against the CAB.
However, the saffron party's hold of the landmark may be tenuous as polls to around 52 more seats will be held soon, and it is expected to suffer reverses in states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Jharkhand.
As Election 2024 hurtles towards result day in a medley of mangalsutra, mujra, mutton, machli and other barbs, these may sound like character names from Hindi comics of yore. Instead, these are the mocking, sometimes vicious monikers given by political rivals to each other.
'We are pleased to announce the candidature of @sagarikaghose, @SushmitaDevAITC, @MdNadimulHaque6 and Mamata Bala Thakur for the forthcoming Rajya Sabha elections,' the party said in a tweet.
'In enacting the citizenship law, the BJP's focus has been so much on consolidating its Hindu vote bank all over the country to divert attention from the economic downturn that the party forgot that there are Hindus and Hindus and that one group of Hindus may not always be warmly embraced by another,' notes Amulya Ganguli.
The first time the Election Commission has taken cognisance of a model code of conduct complaint against a sitting prime minister.
The meeting, which lasted for over four hours, was attended by chief ministers and deputy chief ministers of 18 states.
Addressing a big rally in Kolkata to launch the Bharatiya Janata Party's Lok Sabha campaign, Shah launched a blistering attack on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the issues of appeasement, infiltration, corruption and political violence, alleging she has "destroyed" the state.
'As soon as the violence broke out, they should have stepped in and sent a message that the state is there to stop this violence.' 'Had they done it right there, the situation would not have gone out of control.'
Electioneering for the third and the final phase of polling in Assam to be held on April 24 in six constituencies - Gauhati, Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Barpeta, Mangaldoi and Nowgong -- came to an end on Tuesday afternoon with the election department expecting a high turn out on the basis of overwhelming response of voters in the last two phases of polling in the state.
The rules for the CAA are likely to be issued before the MCC comes into effect, sources privy to the development said.
The list showed the total number of applicants was 3,29,91,385 out of which 40,07,717 names, which is 12.15 per cent, were not included.
Cricketer Yusuf Pathan will contest from the Baharampur Lok Sabha seat, whereas Kirti Aazd will fight from the Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency.
Separately, the poll panel also issued a notice to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, asking him to respond to the complaints filed by the BJP against him and the main opposition party's senior leader Rahul Gandhi regarding their remarks.
Campaigning ended on Wednesday evening for 102 Lok Sabha seats across 21 states and Union territories which will go to polls in the first phase on April 19 with top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance and the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) making a last-gasp effort to woo voters.
The police, however, denied the charge saying they were only investigating a case of alleged terror links of two persons, now absconding, who were teaching at the seminary.
A day after total shutdown in Assam to protest against the CAB, fresh protests erupted in the state and neighbouring Tripura and other parts of the nation.
Given the depleting mass base of the regional Asom Gana Parishad led by former chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, a section of senior leaders of the party are waiting in the wings to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is gaining ground in Assam.
West Bengal had witnessed violence and arson from December 13 to 17 during protests against the new citizenship law.
A total of five FIRs have been registered against Banerjee in Assam since the publication of the NRC final draft on July 30.
Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal suggested that the NRC be implemented across India.
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
