The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday announced Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fight again from Varanasi in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as it named 34 Union ministers in the first list of 195 candidates.
Amid confusion over the continuation of Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren as an MLA, Governor Ramesh Bais on Friday went to Delhi, a day after ruling United Progressive Alliance MLAs urged him to clear the air over the EC's recommendation on the matter.
'They want to snatch the land and give it to their friends'
It was a mixed bag for 11 seats with more than 35 percent Muslim voters, where six candidates of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi emerged victorious in the Maharashtra assembly polls on Saturday, while four seats went to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance.
'Party workers sit outside polling booths and they know everything that is happening.' 'Besides, as a voter when you push the EVM button to vote there is a paper slip that comes out showing you who you voted for.'
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and former party chief Rahul Gandhi will be visiting Jammu and Srinagar on August 21 and 22 for key meetings in preparation for the upcoming assembly elections.
Asked about the BJP-JMM formula to run the government and if the chief minister's post would be rotated, Hussain said "as of now the government will be formed under the leadership of Arjun Munda. There are no conditions to forming this government."
The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha on Tuesday decided to share power on rotational basis for the remaining term of the Jharkhand assembly, with the saffron party to be the first to take over.
West Bengal CID claimed that two of its teams in New Delhi and Guwahati were restrained on Wednesday morning by the local police in the respective places from carrying out investigations into the cash seizure from three Jharkhand MLAs.
Soren losing to Jharkhand Party candidate Gopal Krishna by a margin of 9000 votes clearly shows that the people of Jharkhand have rejected him to continue as the chief minister, BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad told media persons in New Delhi on Thursday.
Newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party legislature party leader Raghuvar Das on Friday staked claim to form the new government in Jharkhand, three days after the BJP-All Jharkhand Students Union party alliance won a majority in the assembly election.
Paswan said he was willing to contest the upcoming Bihar assembly polls as an NDA partner "if the BJP so desires", and made light of estranged uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras' recent meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
A party statement said the new national executive members are Bandi Sanjay Kumar, Deepak Prakash, Satish Punia and Sanjay Jaiswal, former BJP presidents in Telangana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Bihar, respectively.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati, and Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray were among the famous faces who queued up at the polling booths on Monday to caste their votes in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday mocked Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray for "handing over the remote control" of the party to the Congress as he took poll battle to Mumbai with less than a week left for voting in Maharashtra.
Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said Singh was 'not fully committed' towards the party's ideology and that is why he left this fight midway to join the saffron party.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday appointed observers for Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir a day after the party's good show in the assembly elections in the two states.
With challenges such as raising the legal age of marriage for women, combating malnutrition among women and children, and addressing women's safety issues, the new ministers face a formidable agenda.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday accused NIA officials of attacking villagers in Purba Medinipur district, the BJP hit back at her saying that the attack on the NIA officials is Sandeshkhalli 2.0 orchestrated by the state.
The juggernaut of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, which triumphed in three of the four east and north-eastern states that went for assembly bypolls on Saturday, was halted yet again in West Bengal where Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress registered a six-on-six clean sweep.
'You can attack and conspire to weaken us, but you cannot destroy the Congress permanently.'
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Raghubar Das was on Sunday sworn-in as the new chief minister of Jharkhand, becoming the first non-tribal leader to rule the state.
Shinde had retained most of the sitting MLAs, who chose to be with him when he led the rebellion two years ago. They delivered for him on Saturday when votes for the state polls were counted.
Opposition parties on Wednesday opposed the 'one nation, one election' proposal by calling it impractical and a 'cheap stunt' by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Various constituents of the INDIA bloc condemned Kejriwal's arrest and claimed that the BJP is scared of the outcome of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls and acting out of panic to create problems for the opposition.
Nayab Singh Saini on Wednesday staked claim to form the next government in Haryana, hours after he was unanimously elected as the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party legislature party in the state.
Development economist Jean Dreze said the Indian democracy is currently navigating a crisis that is not only limited to the 'recent wave of authoritarianism' but also suppression of opposition voices by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The party has fielded Parvati Das for the by-election to the Bageshwar assembly seat in Uttarakhand and Lijinlal G for the Puthuppally assembly seat in Kerala.
Amit Shah wants to increase the party's nationwide vote share by at least 10 per cent from the 37.7 per cent it secured five years ago and ensure above 50 per cent vote share in the states where it came close to that benchmark, but couldn't cross it.
The PM said the Congress and its allies should not encourage the "Pakistan agenda" and speak the language of separatists.
Jharkhand mining secretary Pooja Singhal, earlier arrested and remanded to the custody of the ED in a suspected money laundering case, was suspended by the Jharkhand government on Thursday, an official said.
Jharkhand: BJP to form co-ordination committee
The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led government in Jharkhand was reduced to a minority on Wednesday after the BJP withdrew its support, as it was reportedly upset with Soren for voting with the UPA government on the cut motion.
In her maiden speech at a political rally, Sunita also asked people whether Kejriwal should resign as Chief Minister.
Other prominent candidates among the 904 in the fray are Union minister Anurag Thakur, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad's daughter Misa Bharti.
'Leave aside the negative fallouts of phraseology like 'urban Naxals' and 'terrorists', both the BJP and the Congress have to re-discover themselves in the context of the 2024 election results, including those of the upcoming ones for Maharashtra and Jharkhand,' observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Congress's Jharkhand unit on Friday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of 'greed for power' which, it said, has led the saffron party to put on hold withdrawal of support to the Shibu Soren government in the state.Alleging that the BJP was again 'playing the game of numbers', a Congress release said "Frequent change of decisions among the BJP and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha has not left Jharkhand reeling under a political crisis".
A two-member committee, comprising senior IAS officer Amitabh Kaushal and Additional Director General of Police Sanjay Latkar, was formed to investigate the violence that left two persons dead and at least 24 people injured, the official told PTI.
The election campaign was one of the most vitriolic in the state, but you would not have guessed it from the smiles and selfies from the politicians.
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