Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar supremo Sharad Pawar were among the famous faces who queued up at the polling booths on Tuesday to caste their votes in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
Five people died in rain-related incidents in Delhi Friday as Monsoon arrived with a fury early in the morning, lashing the city with its highest rainfall in a single day of June in 88 years which brought it to a standstill with streets flooded, traffic in chaos and some commuters stranded on roads.
The Congress said the ECI finally released the voter turnout data late last night after a completely unacceptable delay of 11 days for Phase I and 4 days for Phase 2.
'The good governance which the Congress government claims has resulted in a regime where women in Rajasthan are afraid to go out of their homes.'
Baseless allegations are being made against Pune MLA Sunil Tigre linking him to the Porsche crash that left two software engineers dead, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said on Saturday.
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 constituency of Mumbai South, home to industrialists as well as high-ranking government officials, fared the worst with 47.7 percent voting.
A voter turnout of 60.19 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in 93 constituencies spread over 11 states and Union Territories on Tuesday with sporadic incidents of violence in West Bengal.
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).
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).
The BJP, which won the Samajwadi Party strongholds of Rampur and Azamgarh in 2022 bypolls, hopes to wrest Mainpuri too.
Majority of these constituencies are in Uttar Pradesh and the party that is on the third slot even as the counting is still underway on several seats is the Bahujan Samaj Party, a party neither with the National Democratic Alliance nor the opposition INDIA bloc.
'They were very vocal on the defence of the Constitution, reservation, SC/ST Act and democratic rights.'
The trigger for the stone pelting incident was not yet known, he said, adding further details were awaited.
Both the teenager's father, realtor Vishal Agarwal, and Dr Taware have been arrested in related cases following the accident of May 19 where two IT professionals were killed when the car allegedly driven by the drunk 17-year-old crashed into their motorbike.
As Chandigarh braces for a fierce contest between Congress candidate Manish Tewari and the BJP's Sanjay Tandon, its industry leaders harbour a fervent wish: Replicate the success of the National Capital Region model in this Union Territory.
Prime Minister Narendra D Modi on Tuesday paid floral tributes to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at the Statue of Unity at Ekta Nagar in Gujarat's Narmada on the birth anniversary of the country's first home minister which is celebrated as National Unity Day. In New Delhi, Congress MPs Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi paid homage to Indira Gandhi on the 39th anniversary of the late prime minister's assassination.
While at some places people who had turned up at polling booths early in the morning left without casting their vote after waiting in line for a long time, Sena-UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray alleged that the process was slowed down deliberately.
The share of candidates who were successful among the BJP was 56.5% in 2019. It was 5% for the Congress.
National politics will have a bearing on the RK Nagar byelections, and even in the state elections whenever they are called, says R Rajagopal.
As Telangana voters queued up to exercise their franchise in the assembly polls on Thursday, they were pleasantly surprised by finding some of the well-known actors and politicians around them.
Gujarat has witnessed the steepest decline in the number of contestants in the fray for its 26 seats, from 371 five years ago to 266 in 2024.
Coincidentally, the two first-term members got seats adjacent to each other in the House.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's first list of 24 candidates for Lok Sabha from Madhya Pradesh featured former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, while Bhopal MP Pragya Singh Thakur was replaced by another candidate.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
A three-member committee conducting inquiry into alleged manipulation of the blood samples of the juvenile driver involved in the Porsche car crash on Tuesday visited the Sassoon General Hospital in Pune, and also met the police officials who are probing the case.
'There cannot be an alliance with Congress that does not honour the coalition dharma'
The MLAs inducted into the Rajasthan cabinet are Meena, Madan Dilawar, Rathore, Gajendra Singh Khimsar, Babulal Kharadi, Jogaram Patel, Suresh Singh Rawat, Avinash Gehlot, Joraram Kumawat, Hemant Meena, Kanhaiya Lal Choudhary and Sumit Godara.
The Mahagathbandhan's seat-sharing announcement comes a day after the filing of nomination papers for the first phase of Lok Sabha polls was over.
No matter how smug they sound on the surface about the potential of the dissenters to disturb the proverbial applecart, the Congress and the BJP know that their electoral calculations are precariously hinged in a seemingly tight contest.
On the eve of the counting of votes in Rajasthan, both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have started reaching out to independent candidates, including rebels, and smaller parties.
Former Rajasthan minister Babulal Nagar was on Friday arrested by CBI on charges of raping and assaulting a 35-year-old woman last month.
A revolt by 22 MLAs had led to the collapse of the Kamal Nath-led Congress government in March 2020.
As results were declared for assembly elections in four states -- Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana -- here are how some of the prominent candidates fared.
The notable names in the BJP's first list include Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Hema Malini from Mathura, Ajay Mishra Teni from Kheri, Smriti Irani from Amethi, Lallu Singh from Faizabad (Ayodhya) and Mahendra Nath Pandey from Chandauli among others.
A 17-year-old boy, who allegedly crashed his high-end car into a motorbike killing two persons in Pune, was granted bail on a surety of Rs 7,500 and an assurance from his grandfather to keep him away from bad company, as per the order.
Dhami said several acres of land were freed from encroachment during the demolition drive in the 'Malik Ka Bagicha' area of Banbhoolpura.
In a major organisational rejig ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress on Saturday appointed Avinash Pande the general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, replacing Priyanka Gandhi Vadra while Sachin Pilot was made the general secretary in-charge of Chhattisgarh.
Sources in the Raje camp said she would be meeting the party high command on Thursday.
BJP leader Diya Kumari, who was elected deputy chief minister of Rajasthan along with Prem Chand Bairwa, is a member of erstwhile Jaipur royal family and a two-time MLA.