Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, former chief minister B S Yediyurappa, IT industry veteran N R Narayana Murthy along with wife Sudha Murty, and Mysuru royal family member 'Rajamate' Pramoda Devi Wadiyar, were among the early voters who cast their ballot in the Karnataka Assembly polls.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said there are courts to ensure that criminals get the harshest punishment but 'playing with law and order only gives birth to anarchy'.
The third phase of Lok Sabha elections scheduled for Tuesday will see the maximum number of seats going to the polls in a single phase -- 117 across 15 states and Union Territories. It will also be a test for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which will aim to defend the maximum number of seats at 62. This time the BJP will be tested in its bastion Gujarat -- where polling will be held for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state -- apart from Karanataka, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, where the party had done well in 2014. Here are some of the big political leaders' who await their fate on Tuesday.
On the first day of winter session, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to the Opposition.
Denying rumours that he may opt out of the presidential race due to meagre support, Tharoor said he was very much in the fray and has been receiving support from various quarters.
All political parties were asked at the dinner meeting on Monday night to suggest names for the alliance and the same would be discussed and consensus would be arrived at during the deliberations.
Opposition parties continued their protest over the suspension of 12 MPs on Tuesday with a 'dharna' in Parliament premises that saw several leaders holding up placards demanding revocation of the action taken.
Earlier, Vijay Wadettiwar questioned the recent meeting between Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar, who heads the rival faction of the party.
"The Congress in a way is in the grip of urban Naxals. That is why its thought has become negative," Modi alleged in his 90-minute speech.
The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal demanded Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's resignation over the horrific triple train crash in neighbouring Odisha.
Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, speaking on the Motion of Thanks on the President's address, charged the government with not delivering on its various promises, including generating two crore jobs per year.
The Congress has not released a poll manifesto but a declaration of appeasement.
For the BJP, Telangana is a sunrise state in the South, while Karnataka is a southern success despite the ups and downs.
The TMC also announced it would hold talks with other regional parties in their bid to take on the BJP in the crucial 2024 elections but at the same time denied that it was planning a third front, separate from the Congress-led front.
Five Congress legislators on Wednesday threatened to resign if senior party leader and minister K H Muniyappa's son-in-law Chikka Peddanna was given a ticket to contest from Kolar in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, bringing into open the divisions in the outfit.
Besides the national capital, polling for the sixth round of the marathon seven-phase elections will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Congress is gearing up to demonstrate a political show of strength on Monday when the party leader Rahul Gandhi will appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection in connection with a money laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday embarked on the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Thoubal in Manipur with a promise to bring peace and harmony in the ethnic violence-hit state.
The Congress party continues to be racked by arbitrary decision-making and the absence of accountability.
Expressing surprise over Congress fielding a second candidate 'all of a sudden', senior JD-S leader and former Minister H D Revanna requested the national party for support to keep the 'communal forces' out of the race.
Punjab Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu met party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday morning, and is learnt to have discussed his role in the revamp in the party's state unit ahead of assembly polls.
In his letter to the Congress National President, Mallikarjun Kharge, Lovely said that all unanimous decisions taken by the senior Delhi Congress leaders have been unilaterally vetoed by the AICC general secretary (Delhi in-charge).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday vowed to thwart alleged attempts to rob Dalits and backward classes of reservations by the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) which he accused of 'enslavement' and performing 'mujra' for Muslim vote bank.
The Opposition party asked whether the prime minister will take responsibility for the 'deadliest rail tragedy' of this century.
The Congress also asserted that the opposition INDIA bloc had been formed for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections at the national level and was not state specific.
For now, the DMK can be expected to sound the bugle for Opposition unity at the national level, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Proceedings in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were disrupted as Opposition members raised slogans demanding a discussion and a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the fraud-allegation-triggered rout.
Congress leader Sachin Pilot on Friday stressed that the party would fight the Rajasthan assembly polls "unitedly" and said that a decision on who would lead the next government would be taken by the high command after consultations with the newly-elected MLAs.
The Congress on Sunday made it clear that it will not support the Centre's ordinance on the control of administrative services in Delhi and will oppose any such attempt of the central government to 'sabotage federalism' in the country.
The ruling Congress, voted to office in 2018 after 15 years in opposition, and the Bharatiya Janata Party are the main contenders for power in the state, where the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and some regional outfits are also in the fray.
The Bharatiya Janata Party rejected this was any sort of demonetisation and instead reminded the Congress that even during the rule of Manmohan Singh, old currency notes were taken off circulation.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
The Opposition on Sunday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party over the killing of gangster-politician Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf Ahmad in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj district, alleging that 'jungle raj' and 'mafia raj' were prevalent under its rule.
'Money power was deployed like an army in a war.' 'None of the MVA parties had that kind of money.'
The party has contested the reassessment proceedings, claiming they were barred by limitation.
'BJP has lot of money. Even a rich person like me is scared of taking on the financial muscle of the BJP.' 'What is the point of throwing money? Result toh aane wala nahi hai.'
Rajya Sabha proceedings were adjourned for the day on Tuesday after repeated stoppages as opposition members continued to protest demanding the revocation of suspension of 12 members.
In the last six assembly elections, the state voted the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress to power alternately.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal for 'one nation, one Election' as recommended by the Kovind panel, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday.
The fourth day of questioning was deferred from June 17 to this day after Gandhi requested the agency for postponing the session as he wanted to be with his mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi in hospital, where she is admitted for post-Covid issues.
