Kumar had also made it clear that he was in the process of uniting the non-BJP leaders.
Biju Janata Dal member of Legislative Assembly Jhina Hikaka was kidnapped as his party did not honour a "secret deal" struck with the Maoist-backed Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangha during the recent Zilla Parishad elections, opposition Congress Chief Whip Prasad Harichandan alleged on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has honoured Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain refugees by giving them citizenship through Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), Union home minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday and maintained there is no provision of stripping of anyone's citizenship in the new law.
The Odisha government and the Maoist-nominated mediators on Monday resumed negotiation to free the abducted Italian as Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik made a fresh appeal to the Naxals to release him.
The National Democratic Alliance's presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu swept the floor of a Shiva temple in her locality in Rairangpur, in this nondescript, tribal-dominated town in Odisha's Mayurbhanj district at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, ahead of her journey to Delhi.
'Forget stones & eggs, they can't cow me down even if they use bullet,' Panda tweeted.
Hitting out at the Biju Janata Dal government over the abduction of a tribal MLA, the opposition Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party in Odisha on Saturday accused it of being hand in glove with Maoists and pushing the state into anarchy by ignoring Centre's advisories.
The only occasion when the BJP had 100 seats in the Upper House was in 2022.
The BJP is focusing determinedly on the seats it lost in 2019, with the hope of winning these either independently or with the aid of its allies.
Brajendra Singh Yadav of the Congress defeated his BJP rival Baisahab Yadav by a margin of 2,124 votes to win the Mungaoli seat while in Kolaras, Congress candidate Mahendra Singh Yadav prevailed over Devendra Jain of the BJP by 8,083 votes.
Besides Defence Minister Singh (Lucknow), Minister of Women and Child Development Irani (Amethi), those in the fray are Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishor (Mohanlalganj) and Minister of State of Consumer Affairs Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur).
Union ministers Ravneet Singh Bittu and George Kurian were elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha Tuesday along with senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi and former minister Upendra Kushwaha.
The Congress on Tuesday suffered a major upset in Himachal Pradesh at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya Sabha elections which were marred by cross-voting in all the three states though it won three seats in Karnataka while the saffron party pocketed an extra seat in Uttar Pradesh.
A win for SP could provide some consolation for Akhilesh Yadav after the defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early this year and the loss of Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in June bypolls.
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 seven seats which witnessed a stiff contest between the BJP and the regional parties, the saffron party held three and the Congress two, while the Shiv Sena and the RJD had one each.
The CBI has been probing the activities of 44 ponzi companies in the state which allegedly duped thousands of investors of their hard earned deposits.
iyush Goel, Dharmendra Pradhan, Pralhad Joshi, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Biseswar Tudu are the 5 Union minsters.
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.
Chief ministers and other senior leaders made last-minute appeals to voters for their support in Mokama and Gopalganj of Bihar, Adampur of Haryana, Manugoda of Telangana, Gola Gorakhnath of Uttar Pradesh and Dhamnagar of Odisha.
Rampur Sadar and Khatauli in Uttar Pradesh, Padampur in Odisha, Sardarshahar in Rajasthan, Kurhani in Bihar and Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh are the assembly seats where the bypolls are being held.
Maoists have released abducted Biju Janata Dal Member of Legislative Assembly Jhina Hikaka on Thursday morning. The release comes after captivity of over a month. Media reports said that Hikaka was released at an undisclosed location into the custody of his wife, and Nihar Ranjan Patnaik, a lawyer.
The bypolls were conducted for two Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, one each in Meghalaya and Odisha and the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency in Punjab.
The ruling BJP in UP, however, lost Khatauli to Samajwadi Party ally Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Voting began on Thursday in the by-election to seven assembly constituencies in six states -- a contest symbolic of the fierce turf war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties.
Odisha's Health and Family Welfare Minister Naba Kishore Das died of bullet injuries on Sunday, Apollo Hospital officials said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's bypoll win in four of the six seats it contested has invigorated the party ahead of assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
The survey will encompass various indicators of backwardness such as occupation, educational qualification along with the type of educational institutions attended by members of the households to gauge the social and educational conditions of the backwardness in Odisha, the official said.
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's 'rashtrapatni' remark snowballed into a major political row on Thursday with the Bharatiya Janata Party accusing the opposition party of insulting President Droupadi Murmu and demanding that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi should apologise to the nation.
At 64, the woman who will be India's 15th president, taking over from Ram Nath Kovind, will also be the youngest and India's first President to be born after Independence.
Patnaik, won his his home turf Hinjili by over 60,000 votes, while he was leading from Bijepur till early on Friday morning.
CBI has registered three FIRs in West Bengal against Saradha group and 44 FIRs in Odisha against chit fund companies allegedly operating on the lines of Saradha.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday won four seats in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha, while the Rashtriya Janata Dal retained the Mokama assembly seat in the bypolls to seven assembly constituencies in six states.
Droupadi Murmu scripted history on Thursday by becoming India's first tribal President in the one-sided contest, defeating Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
There were many people who wanted to seek favours from her by offering lakhs and crores of rupees even through her family members when she was Odisha's transport minister. She never allowed any kind of corrupt practices to touch her department officials, family members or the supporters who have stood by her.
With the Biju Janata Dal backing the National Democratic Alliance's presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu, the vote share of the ruling dispensation has now crossed 50 percent, virtually paving the way for her election as the first tribal President and the youngest too.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
The opposition is likely to put up a joint candidate for the July 18 presidential election despite not having numbers on its side, and consultations in this regard have already begun.
Prime Minister Modi saw a reflection of himself -- she does not come from a political background, has no lineage, and had a lifetime of personal struggle and sacrifice.
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