In a protests against the decision of Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala to invite BJP to form the government despite falling short of the required numbers, the Congress has been demanding they be called to form the government in Goa and Manipur as it had emerged as the largest party in the 2017 assembly election.
The 288-member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly constitutes the electoral college Rajya Sabha elections, scheduled on June 10, and a candidate needs 42 votes to win a seat.
Brijesh Merja is the third Congress MLA to have resigned since Wednesday and the eight since March.
The Congress has decided to shift its MLAs in Rajasthan to a Udaipur hotel, with party sources saying they fear that the Bharatiya Janata Party will poach them ahead of the June 10 Rajya Sabha elections.
The BJP has the cadres, organisation, and extensive funding. But in the absence of a towering political personality like Manohar Parrikar, the Goa outcome is hard to predict.
Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav on Tuesday said he was in favour of extending reservation benefits to Muslims but emphasised that it should be based on social backwardness and 'not on the basis of religion'.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
The council of ministers discussed the showcause notice, and alleged that it was a "gross misuse of the constitutional office' of the governor and said that a concerted effort is being made to destabilise a lawfully elected majority government in Karnataka for political considerations.
Haryana's Adampur MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi, who was expelled from all party positions by the Congress after he cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha polls in June, is all set to join the Bharatiya Janata Party on August 4, sources close to him said.
Vishnu Deo Sai, a prominent tribal face of the Bharatiya Janata Party, will be the next chief minister of Chhattisgarh where the saffron party returned to power after a gap of five years following the recently-concluded assembly polls.
It looks like he struck an instant chord with the people, with the voters rewarding the Congress with a comfortable majority of 136 seats in the 224 member Karnataka Legislative Assembly for which elections were held on May 10, and the votes counted on Saturday.
The assembly session comes days after the top leadership of the Congress announced the return of Pilot and 18 other dissident MLAs to the party-fold. Referring to Pilot's open rebellion while addressing the legislators, the CM asked them to 'forget what has happened'.
"The situation has become irretrievable", Azad, 73, said in his parting shot to Sonia Gandhi, whose trusted confidante he remained right from the time of Sitaram Kesri's unceremonious exit as the party's chief in 2000.
Besides 11 members from BJP, three each from the Goa Forward Party, the MGP and independents supported Sawant during the head count conducted in the House.
Creating a positive reform that does away with an official who constitutes a flawed aspect of Indian democracy will allow the BJP to rightfully claim this as one of its positive legacies, suggests Karan P Shah.
The ruling Congress in Karnataka on Monday wrested the Bellary rural seat from the Bharatiya Janata Party and was ahead in another constituency as counting of votes for the prestigious bypolls held on August 21 was taken up on Monday morning.
The BJP often forgets that in Dravidian Tamil Nadu, the voter does not mix religion, which is personal, and politics that is in the public sphere, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
In 2023, this number has dropped to 90, nearly 39 per cent of the 230-member House, an ADR report said.
BJP candidate and minister Kunvarji Bavaliya defeated his nearest rival Congress nominee Avsar Nakiya by a margin of 19,979 votes, officials said.
He said had the alliance with Goa Forward gone through, the Congress would have got majority in the state and that it was unfair to now make him a "villain".
Bharatiya Janata Party president J P Nadda has appointed Union minister Mansukh Mandaviya and party general secretary Vinod Tawde as central observers for the election of the leader of opposition in the Karnataka assembly.
Defence Minister A K Antony, who has been briefing the Congress high command about the steps to be taken to create the state of Telangana, has stated that the party needs to make its intentions clear for the people of Andhra Pradesh.
Legislative Assembly election-bound Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand will be exempted from this exercise
Kayande claimed she waited for a year to see if the Thackeray-led faction would introspect over why party workers were leaving Shiv Sena-UBT.
In a similar move in July 2019, 10 Congress MLAs had switched over to the BJP.
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 Congress had moved the motion on Wednesday, targeting the Chouhan government over law and order, unemployment, inflation, corruption, 'discrimination' against the opposition legislators, atrocities against women and tribals, farmers' problems and other issues.
The 'Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill' was passed by the Legislative Assembly in December last.
Extending its winning run in the south, the Congress on Sunday won 64 assembly seats to form government in the Bharat Rashtra Samiti-dominated Telangana, with the southern solace coming in the midst of a saffron sweep of the Hindi heartland where the Bharatiya Janata Party wrested two states from the grand old party and retained one.
Stating that matters of utmost public importance are coming up for discussion next week, the Whip issued by the Opposition's Chief Whip in the assembly Ajay Dharam Singh has asked all the members to mandatorily participate in the proceedings from December 20-24, from the beginning till conclusion.
Leader of opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Eknath Khadse on Tuesday rubbished allegations levelled against him by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena President Raj Thackeray of 'settlement' with the government saying that he was prepared for a probe by a House committee.
Saini, who is an MP from Kurukshetra, was unanimously elected as the leader of the state BJP legislature group and will be sworn in later in the day, party MLAs Subhash Sudha and J P Dalal told reporters.
The results for the bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tripura were announced on Tuesday.
The BJP retained power in MP in the November 17 polls emphatically winning 163 seats in the 230-member assembly, leaving the Congress a distant second with 66 seats.
Facing a truncated strength caused by the en masse resignation of 16 ruling coalition MLAs, Kumaraswamy moved a one-line motion, saying the House expressed confidence in the 14-month old ministry headed by him.
Aiming to breach the Bharatiya Janata Party's Gujarat bastion, the Aam Aadmi Party fielded its candidate to contest all 182 assembly seats and carried out a high decibel campaign in the run-up to the polls in Gujarat.
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Tuesday sought to give credit to his party for the women's reservation bill but Home Minister Amit Shah refuted his claim, saying that the legislation brought by the Manmohan Singh government had lapsed following the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha.
Jharkhand Governor C P Radhakrishnan on Thursday nominated Jharkhand Mukti Morcha legislative party leader Champai Soren as the chief minister and invited him to take the oath, capping a day of fast-paced developments.
The Nationalist Congress Party on Saturday declared the candidature of Sunetra Pawar, wife of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, from Baramati Lok Sabha seat, pitting her against sister-in-law and Sharad Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule from the home turf of Pawars.
The development assumes significance as Congress' ally Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar group) had named Jitendra Awhad as the new LoP in the assembly following a split in the party due to Ajit Pawar's rebellion last month.
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