CEC gives views on Chawla debacle
The AAP will approach EC to put up banners outside polling booths.
Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal, Odisha and Sikkim will also be held simultaneously, the Election Commission said.
'The message has gone loud and clear (among the people of Assam) that the BJP is only interested in polarising (the country) and they are basically interested in (capturing votes in) the Hindi heartland and they don't bother much about rest of India.'
The voting will be held on November 30, December 7, 12, 16 and 20.
For successive governments the Election Commission remains a 'holy cow', where unhealthy precedents are allowed to be nurtured since Independence, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Breaking his silence over the reported row in the Bharatiya Janata Party over a move to field Narendra Modi from Varanasi, Murli Manohar Joshi on Sunday said he would accept any decision the party takes like a "disciplined soldier" and hoped it would neither dent the PM candidate's prestige nor hurt party's electoral chances.
Bihar will have five-phase assembly elections between October 12 and November 5 and counting of votes will take place on November 8.
The term of the 224-member Karnataka assembly ends on May 28 this year.
The elections to legislative assemblies of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Odisha will be held simultaneously along with the Lok Sabha polls
The election is likely to witness a three-cornered contest involving the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.
The schedule for Gujarat will be announced separately.
'Just as the monkey god needed a Jambavan to prod him into realising his superpowers, so did the poll panel need a poke from the Supreme Court into remembering it had an armoury of powers at its disposal to stop the infractions,' notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Parties including the Congress, Left, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have written to the Election Commission and the President opposing the advancing of the budget presentation to February 1 before the polls.
The President is bound by the recommendation of the Commission.
Kargil observed it as a 'black day' and leaders in Leh seeing it as an opportunity for development.
What Saisuresh Sivaswamy learnt about the election from television and the newspapers. A must read column, folks!
Denying violation of the Model Code of Conduct, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi has pleaded not guilty to such a charge and sought to justify his controversial remarks that Pakistan's ISI was in touch with Muzaffarnagar riot victims and BJP was indulging in politics of hatred.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani appeared to be on the same page as Narendra Modi, a rarity since the acrimony over naming PM candidate, as he endorsed the Gujarat chief minister's view that there that there should be compulsory voting along with the 'none-of-the-above' option.
'With the Election Commission wisening up to the practice, which strikes at the very root of electoral democracy, the practitioners of cash for votes have been getting more and more ingenious,' points out Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
The EC issued a show cause notice to CM and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee for allegedly violating the model code of conduct.
The counting for all five states will be held on March 11.
Did we miss the DeepState's Brazil Model in action in India in 2004 and 2009, asks Rajeev Srinivasan.
Assembly elections in Bihar, where the Bharatiya Janata Party is set for a battle against a united Janata Parivar, are likely to be held sometime in September-October when extensive central forces and a reworked expenditure monitoring system will be deployed to curb money and muscle power.
The EC's actions remain to be seen on 'money-hoarding and transportation' for poll-time use. The question remains if the polity in the state would push the EC so far as to use the countermanding option. Even then EC would have to push its constitutional powers to find a way to prevent 'money-power' in the state's elections, says N Sathiya Moorthy
By calling the Congress demand for covering lotus ponds absurd, ridiculous, the EC has done well. After all, even despite occasional lapses, there are wise men around, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
Faced with a dilemma over handing tickets to leaders facing allegations of corruption, Congress on Wednesday gave indications that while former Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal could be re-nominated from Chandigarh, Pune MP Suresh Kalmadi may not be fielded in the upcoming polls.
Narendra Modi stoked a controversy yet again on a polling day by releasing a video message seeking votes for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which an angry Congress decried as a violation of the electoral law and demanded that the Election Commission take action against him.
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