Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren expanded his cabinet on Thursday, inducting 11 new ministers, including six first-timers and two women. The swearing-in ceremony was held at the Raj Bhavan in Ranchi. The new ministers include six from the JMM and four from the Congress. One minister is from the RJD. The expansion comes after the JMM-led alliance won the recent assembly elections with a comfortable majority. The cabinet expansion is expected to give the government a fresh impetus to push its agenda and accelerate development in the state.
Notwithstanding the ruling Congress remaining undecided on who should be its presidential candidate, Congress members of Parliament and members of Legislative Assembly have come out in open demanding the post for Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah expressed concern about the lack of clarity regarding the INDIA bloc's leadership and agenda, suggesting the alliance should be dissolved if it was only formed for parliamentary elections. He called for a meeting of the alliance members after the Delhi Assembly elections to discuss the bloc's future and decide on a collective strategy. Abdullah also highlighted the need for a clear vision and leadership within the INDIA bloc. His remarks come amid speculation about the alliance's future and its ability to effectively challenge the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
Elections to the nine council seats which fell vacant on April 24 were postponed in view of the coronavirus outbreak, but last week the Election Commission set May 21 as the poll date.
The bill was passed without discussion as the Opposition had staged a walkout over the alleged scam in the Teachers' Eligibility Test.
With 103 members belonging to the BJP, the Karnataka assembly will witness a balance it has never seen.
Parliament's approval of the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, a contentious piece of legislation aimed at reforming Waqf bodies, has sparked strong reactions from the opposition, who allege that the bill was "bulldozed" through Parliament. The bill, considered the government's most consequential legislation in its third term, was passed with comfortable majorities in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha despite opposition claims of a lack of consultation and an intrusion into religious affairs. Other notable bills approved during the session included the Finance Bill, Appropriation Bill, Immigration and Foreigners Bill, and Tribhuvan Sahkari University Bill. The session, which saw high productivity, also witnessed debates on issues such as economic distress, delimitation, and the three-language policy. While the government touted its achievements, the opposition criticized the government's approach and vowed to challenge the Waqf bill in court.
Assembly Speaker Ramanlal Vora suspended Congress MLAs Paresh Dhanani and Baldevji Thakor on the charges of trying to attack BJP MLAs and two ministers -- Vallabh Kakadiya and Nirmala Wadhwani.
Former chief minister Jai Ram Thakur, who was on Sunday elected the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party legislative party in Himachal Pradesh, hit out at the Congress, alleging its government was failing to deliver on poll promises and leaders were moving in different directions.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi will lead a delegation of Congress MPs to meet President Pranab Mukherjee, over developments in the Arunachal Pradesh assembly.
After 16-hour-long bitter and tedious debate in the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly, the Telugu Desam sponsored no-trust motion against the Kiran Kumar Reddy government was defeated squarely.
A section of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leaders in Odisha are expressing discontent over the party's decision to support the Waqf (Amendment) Bill. The issue has sparked internal turmoil, with young leaders submitting a memorandum to party president Naveen Patnaik, urging him to address the situation. Patnaik has held meetings with senior leaders, assuring them that necessary action will be taken to mitigate the fallout and maintain the party's secular image.
Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Asim Azmi, suspended from the Maharashtra assembly over his remarks praising Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, will be '100 per cent' put in jail, Chief Minister Minister Devendra Fadnavis said in the legislative council.
Terming the defection of four Samajwadi Party Members of Legislative Assembly as 'betrayal' on the part of the Congress, party general secretary Amar Singh has said that the party has broken his heart."Congress party has betrayed us by engineering the defection of four MLAs of our party. They have not only broken my party, but also my heart," Singh said while addressing a tribal convention ahead of assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh.
The MLAs -- Ramesh Jarkiholi, Mahesh Kumtalli, Umesh Jadhav, and Nagendra -- did not ascribe any reason for not attending the opening day's session.
The Telangana Rashtra Samithi is all set to move a No-Confidence Motion against the ruling Congress government in Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday.
The protesters torched tyres and old furniture in the middle of the road in Kwakeithel and Uripok, demanding the release of the leader. The situation remained tense on Sunday morning.
The ruling BJP-led coalition ended Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan's over four-decade dominance in Rampur with its ally Apna Dal-Sonelal winning the Suar assembly by-election by a margin of 8,724 votes.
He said, the fresh budget of the new Congress government, which he will be presenting on July 7, is likely to be of the size Rs 3,35,000 crore.
In what has turned out to be an embarrassment for the ruling Congress party in Assam, three absconding persons accused in June 30 mob attack on Congress Member of Legislative Assembly Rumi Nath, 33, and her second husband Zakir in a Karimganj hotel in South Assam, were arrested from the official residence of another Congress MLA in the state assembly complex in Guwahati on Thursday night.
Members of the Legislative Council asked how some former legislators could enter the Vidhan Bhavan premises amid COVID-19-related restrictions and sought a report on the matter.
Indications are that the polls could be held sometime in October-November.
If the Congress is contesting fewer seats than ever before, the BJP is set to contest its highest-ever number of Lok Sabha seats.
Congress legislators spent the whole night inside the Karnataka Legislative Assembly and Council, escalating demand for the dismissal of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister K S Eshwarappa over his statement regarding the national flag.
For the first since the formation of Chhattisgarh in 2000, the new assembly will not have any MLA belonging to erstwhile royal families as all seven candidates fielded by the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Aam Aadmi Party bit dust.
After Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, discontent is brewing among Congress MLAs in Manipur.
EPS' acceptance of Amit Shah's proposal for an electoral alliance with the BJP is being interpreted to mean how the AIADMK has signed up the NDA national leader as a junior partner. Not many have appreciated EPS for this strategic move that has now forced the BJP to play second fiddle to the AIADMK. This has meant that the BJP has buried its ambitions of capturing power in Tamil Nadu now, and is willing to wait until after the 2029 Lok Sabha polls, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
After getting feelers from the Congress, Haryana Janhit Congress, which won six seats in the recent assembly elections in the state, has decided to be part of the next government in the state."At the first meeting of the Members of Legislative Assembly (after the results were announced), we have decided not to sit in the Opposition. We will be part of the government to work for the people of Haryana," HJC leader Kuldeep Bishnoi said.
The old Parliament building will now be known as 'Samvidhan Sadan', Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said on Tuesday as the functioning of Parliament shifted to its new building in New Delhi.
The bodies of a teenager and his two relatives were found near a waterfall in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district three days after they went missing. The Jammu and Kashmir Congress has demanded a high-level investigation into the incident. The police have ruled out any terror angle, but the exact cause of death is unknown and will be determined by a postmortem.
The Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party on Friday released its second list, comprising seven candidates including MLA Zeeshan Siddique and two former Bharatiya Janata Party MPs, for the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections.
Congress workers too lodged a complaint with the police that some of their members suffered injuries during the clash.
In Maharashtra's 288-member assembly, the share of legislators with college degrees increased over the past decade.
A notification in this regard was issued on Thursday evening which further said that these six MLAs ceased to be members of Himachal Pradesh legislative assembly with effect from February 29.
The BJP MLAs, who had staged a demonstration outside the assembly during the first half and marched to the Raj Bhavan during the lunch hour, were summoned by the speaker when the House reassembled at 2 pm.
In a significant administrative reshuffle, Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha ordered the transfer and posting of 48 J-K Administrative Service (JKAS) officers, potentially creating friction with the National Conference-led government in the Union Territory. The move, seen by many as an attempt by the LG to assert control over the bureaucracy, includes the transfer of 14 additional deputy commissioners and 26 sub-divisional magistrates. The timing of the order, coinciding with the elected government's wait for approval on business rules, raises concerns over power dynamics in the region.
More than 60 Congress Members of Parliament, Members of Legislative Assembly and Members of Legislative Council from Telangana region on Wednesday met Home Minister P Chidambaram and demanded urgent steps for the creation of a separate state. The law makers, however, expressed "unhappiness" over getting "very little" time to meet the home minister and sat for more than two hours at a conference hall of the home ministry, apparently as a mark of protest.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin has announced the formation of a panel headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to study the relationship between the Union and state governments and ensure state autonomy. The panel, which will submit its interim report in January 2026 and its final report in two years, will examine the transfer of subjects from the State List to the Concurrent List, citing the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) as an example of a subject outside state purview.
In another display of the politics of threat in West Bengal, a ruling Trinamool Congress Member of Legislative Assembly openly threatened to "behead" a Congress leader in Birbhum district.
