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.
The counting of votes in Mizoram will take place on December 4, a day after it was originally scheduled, the Election Commission said on Friday.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday declared its first list of 58 candidates for the forthcoming Jharkhand assembly elections and said the remaining names would be finalised after details of seat-sharing with ally Janata Dal-United are completed.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to project senior leader Dharmendra Pradhan, 40, as its chief ministerial candidate in Orissa after its alliance with the Naveen Patnaik led Biju Janata Dal came to an end on March 7.The BJP's central election committee on Friday cleared its six sitting MPs to seek re-election, with the exception of Pradhan's constituency Deogarh, leading to speculations that he will be the party's CM candidate for the assembly elections.
After a three-and-a-half-hour meeting, which was stormy at times, the Congress Working Committee, the party's highest policy making body, authorised incumbent chief Sonia Gandhi to schedule the internal elections after the conclusion of assembly polls in five states due to be held in April-May.
Electoral setbacks and thwarted ambition can have an unpredictable effect on leaders,, observes Aditi Phadnis.
Former union minister Shatrughan Sinha, will be the Bharatiya Janata Party's candidate for the Patna Saheb seat in Bihar in the Lok Sabha elections, a top functionary involved in selection of candidates disclosed on Friday. He was not nominated to the Rajya Sabha and so it is logical that the party will field him in the Lok Sabha elections, the functionary said adding that the final decision would be taken by the party's central election committee.
At a time when none in Kerala's Left politics questioned the chief minister's authority, MLA P V Anvar hurled a series of accusations against Pinarayi Vijayan's government, notes Shyam G Menon.
'Just think about it. She's a prosecutor, he's a convicted felon. I love that juxtaposition.' 'She's a woman, and she's black and South Asian. He's a white guy who grew up with enormous [wealth].' 'She grew up in a very average, lower middle class/middle class kind of setting with a single mother.'
After a meeting of its working committee in New Delhi, the board adopted a resolution which stated that the recent judgment of the Supreme Court on the maintenance of Muslim divorcee women is "against the Islamic law (Shariah)".
The Congress has pinned its hopes on many of the old-timers and also given representation to some new faces in its first list of candidates announced for the Chhattisgarh assembly polls scheduled next month.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has announced a list of 22 candidates for the forthcoming Goa polls. The list, which was announced on Sunday night, includes names of its prominent leaders except its Member of Parliament Sripad Naik, who has refused to contest. The party's central election committee, which met in Delhi on Sunday night with party national president Nitin Gadkari, finalised the list.
The BJP has dropped 20 sitting MLAs. There are 13 women candidates in the list, 6 Scheduled Caste and 17 Scheduled Tribe candidates.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday chaired a meeeting of the party's Central Election Committee to finalise candidates for the upcoming Bihar assembly polls.
Sonia will likely be assisted by two vice presidents: Ashok Gehlot in charge of party affairs in north India with probably P Chidambaram doing likewise for south India.
The Congress in Madhya Pradesh seems to be finding it tough to find women candidates for coming Lok Sabha elections even as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be in a comfortable position on this. Both the parties had announced that they will name their nominees much before the polls and some discusssions have also been held on probable candidates but so far the names have not reached the respective central election committees.
In instructions for polling issued on Saturday, Congress central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry had said Pradesh Congress Committee members 'will mark '1' on the ballot paper against the name of the candidate and fold the ballot paper to put it into the ballot box'.
Besides the bills, the government has listed the first batch of supplementary demands for grants for 2023-24 for presentation, discussion and voting during the session.
No government in the past initiated the process of policy making for its next tenure even before going in for elections. Once the Model Code of Conduct is enforced by the Election Commission, should the government of the day refrain from taking an active interest in policy making for the next five years and let that be the function of the new government?, asks A K Bhattacharya.
Gujarat Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday decided to recommend the name of veteran leader L K Advani to contest the Lok Sabha election from his Gandhinagar constituency.
'Nitish may take such a decision because he was the first person who was with the INDIA front.' 'He went back only because he did not get proper encouragement from the Congress.' 'Nitish will take a decision provided there is a strong alternative.' 'If he feels ours is a weak coalition, he will not come.' 'Then, this government will continue for five years.'
The parliamentary panel, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party's Sushil Kumar Modi, has also decided to examine remote voting and e-postal ballots for Indians residing abroad.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's plan to pip other parties in declaring candidates for the Lok Sabha elections by the end of January has come a cropper. The party on Monday declared 18 candidates, including former union finance and foreign minister Yashwant Sinha from Hazaribagh and former Union minister Karia Munda from Khunti in Jharkhand.
Maratha activist Manoj Jarange on Wednesday suspended his indefinite fast, which he began five days ago over the quota issue, stating that his community members say they want him alive to fight for the cause.
Bharatiya Janata Party's national secretary in-charge of Kerala, Muralidhar Rao, on Monday said that the national leaders of his party, including the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushama Swaraj, will be camping in the state for the electioneering of the BJP candidates.
Amritpal Singh, the chief of the 'Waris Punjab De' outfit, who is lodged in Assam's Dibrugarh jail under the National Security Act, has thrown his hat into the ring as an Independent.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is unlikely to cut the benchmark interest rate at its upcoming monetary policy review meeting, taking place soon after the announcement of the Lok Sabha election results, amid inflation challenges, said experts. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) may also refrain from rate cut as economic growth is picking up, notwithstanding the elevated interest rate of 6.5 per cent (repo) prevailing since February 2023. The meeting of the Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das headed MPC is scheduled for June 5 to 7.
The Lok Sabha elections in 2024 are not a consideration when it comes to monetary policymaking, said Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das to underscore the central bank's commitment to controlling inflation. "It's not possible for me to comment what we do in the next MPC (Monetary Policy Committee), but one thing I can tell and I would like to make it very clear-that the fact of elections coming up in 2024 is not a factor at all so far as monetary policymaking is concerned. "Monetary policymaking is for checking (and) controlling inflation," Das said at the Business Standard, BFSI Insight Summit.
'We are not secessionists, we want to coexist with our countrymen but not on the terms that will strip us off our dignity and a right to peaceful existence.'
They said that as Congress MPs, they are concerned about the transparency and fairness of the election process for the president of the party.
The leaders of the Opposition INDIA bloc are meeting on Monday morning ostensibly to redraw their strategies to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP both inside the Parliament and in the electoral arena.
'I hope that Macho Man agrees to debate her, because I think she will do spectacularly well in the debate.'
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was re-nominated on Sunday by the Congress from the Jangipur seat in West Bengal for the coming Lok Sabha polls
While the BJP wants a bigger share, on the back of its spectacular performance in the April-May Lok Sabha polls, the Sena is not willing to play ball, said sources from both parties.
The leaders would meet again later in the day to clear the remaining eight names.
After a marathon meeting of its Central Election Committee, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday announced the names of some senior women leaders, who will contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. The names include Sushma Swaraj from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, Yashodhara Raje from Gwalior, Sumitra Mahajan from Indore, Karuna Shukla from Korba, Kamla Patle from Jangir-Champa, J Shanthi from Bellary and Bindu Chaudhary from Nagpur.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday released its first list of 189 candidates for the May 10 Karnataka assembly polls, fielding Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai from his traditional Shiggaon constituency.
Shivakumar also said that the central observers have spoken to Sukhu, party MLAs and state unit chief Pratibha Singh and all differences have been ironed out.
The opposition's Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition in Maharashtra on Tuesday announced its seat-sharing arrangement for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections with the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray securing a substantial portion with 21 seats, while the Congress will contest 17 seats, and the Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar 10 seats.
Addressing media persons after launching an email system that would link the party to every booth as envisaged by him, Rajnath said: "Last time too we had tied up with JD-U, which went on to win five out of the 25 seats that were allotted to them." The BJP Central Election Committee will meet on April 10 to clear the names of candidates, who would be given tickets to contest elections.
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