A major controversy erupted on Wednesday with the Bharatiya Janata Party threatening a showdown with the Election Commission after Narendra Modi was denied permission for holding a rally in a crowded area in Varanasi on Thursday.
A decision on the seats from where Narendra Modi and L K Advani will contest in Gujarat will be taken on Wednesday when the Bharatiya Janata Party's Central Election Committee considers the party's another list of candidates for Lok Sabha polls.
Lavasa, a career bureaucrat, joined as Election Commissioner on January 23, 2018, and being senior most on the poll panel would have become CEC in April next year after the term of incumbent Sunil Arora ends.
Amid a debate on the freebies, the Election Commission on Tuesday proposed amending the model code to ask political parties to provide authentic information to voters on the financial viability of their poll promises.
The generational shift in the Bharatiya Janata Party was complete on Tuesday with its founders Atal Behari Vajpayee, L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi being dropped from the Parliamentary Board, the highest decision-making body, which has the stamp of Prime Minister Narendra Modi all over now.
Apart from Chamkaur Sahib assembly seat which comes in Maajha region of Punjab, Congress is all set to field CM Channi from Adampur assembly constituency which falls in the Doaba Region.
Opposition leaders believe this entire plan has been put in place to ensure that Mamata Banerjee is kept out of office in West Bengal.
The Election Commission sought a detailed report from the district poll authorities in Bhind, where a bypoll is due on April 9.
Chronological order of events leading up to Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami recommending the removal of Election Commissioner Navin Chawla.
Sensing conspiracy in the delay in Narendra Modi's flight from Delhi, BJP on Tuesday approached the Election Commission on the issue and sought directions to the Civil Aviation authorities for early clearances to its prime ministerial candidate.
62-year-old Sampath will take over as CEC after incumbent S Y Quraishi demits office on June 10.
It all started to go from bad to worse when controversial former All India Football Federation (AIFF) president Praful Patel, whose third term in office ended in December 2020, stayed in office citing a pending Supreme Court case.
"We have submitted a petition to the CEC as per the directions of the Supreme Court seeking removal of Navin Chawla, as he has been favouring a particular party in his decisions," Arun Jaitley said.
A Trinamool Congress delegation met the Election Commission (EC) on Friday and demanded a high-level probe into an alleged attack on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram and claimed it was not an 'unfortunate incident', but a conspiracy.
The Election Commission on Thursday justified the decision to deny permission to Narendra Modi's rally in Varanasi city and came to the defence of the district magistrate whose removal is being demanded by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
BJP 'specially-trained' anti-Rahul brigade... Pachauri's jaadu ki jhappi... CEC Quraishi's troublesome travels... Manmohanji's women woes... All this and more in this week's Dilli Gupshup.
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 schedule for Gujarat will be announced separately.
The election is likely to witness a three-cornered contest involving the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.
'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.
The EC issued a show cause notice to CM and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee for allegedly violating the model code of conduct.
'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 counting for all five states will be held on March 11.
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.
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