With days to go before Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh go to polls, the Congress is struggling to make an impact in the two key heartland states which have been ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party for two successive five-year terms.
The results of bypolls to three Lok Sabha and 29 assembly seats spread across 13 states and a union territory have been a mixed bag for the BJP as its fortunes continue to nosedive in West Bengal against the might of Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee while bad tidings have also come from states like Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Barring stray incidents of violence like stone pelting, the shutdown called by the MVA allies Shiv Sena, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party was largely peaceful.
The Nishad Party also demanded 160 seats for the 2022 state elections.
Most of the 40 MLAs in the Shinde camp don't have enough legislative experience to conduct business in the House and so the first ministry expansion needed induction of veterans.
Superintendent of Police Neeraj Kumar Jadaun confirmed the incident on Wednesday and said the condition of Rajiv Tomar (40), who ran a shoe-shop, is serious.
The Aam Aadmi Party has nominated former cricketer Harbhajan Singh, Lovely Professional University founder Ashok Mittal, AAP MLA Raghav Chadha, IIT Delhi faculty Sandeep Pathak and industrialist Sanjeev Arora for the March 31 Rajya Sabha polls.
Channi's nephew Bhupinder Singh alias Honey was arrested in this case by the agency.
'...if elections were to be held today.' 'The problem is Akhilesh is not very aggressive.' 'Had he started his campaign aggressively six months ago, the picture in UP would have been very different.'
At many places, where the voters had entered booths before 6 pm and were standing in queues, they were allowed to cast their votes.
Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister and former state BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya had also dropped a hint in a recent tweet, saying Yaduvanshi (Yadavs), Ravidasiyo (Jatavs) and Pasmanda Muslims will be brought closer to the BJP so that the lotus 'blossoms' in every booth in UP.
Further, 110 people have been arrested in connection with the incident at Pulakeshi Nagar in Bengaluru. Scores of persons, including around 50 policemen, were injured in the violence that erupted on Tuesday night and continued till the wee hours of Wednesday, apparently prompted by the 'communally sensitive' online post.
Hitting back at the Shiv Sena, Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party leader Devendra Fadnavis on Monday said the Uddhav Thackeray-led outfit's Hindutva is merely on paper and finds mention just in speeches, while it was his party men who faced bullets and lathis during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
The ED on Wednesday said it has seized cash amounting to over Rs 10 crore, including about Rs 8 crore from a relative of Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, during raids conducted in connection with an anti-money laundering investigation against illegal sand-mining operations in the poll-bound state.
Prohibitory orders under Section 144 has been clamped in Hubballi city, the police added.
AAP's Atishi, who had unsuccessfully contested last year's Lok Sabha polls from the East Delhi constituency, was fielded from Kalkaji in place of sitting MLA Avtar Singh Kalka. She won the seat by a margin of over 11,300 votes.
The polls for 70-member assembly will be held on February 8 and results will be declared on February 11.
RLD sources said that the party chief was "taken aback" by the SP's delay in announcing his name as the candidate for the Rajya Sabha elections.
The Congress party's first list of 194 Lok Sabha candidates released on Saturday night has no major surprises. Anita Katyal reports
As many as 623 candidates, including 73 women are in the fray in the first phase and around 2.28 core voters, including 1.24 crore men and 1.04 crore women are eligible to caste their francise, election officials said.
Replying to a question on the Enforcement Directorate raids at many places including at the premises of Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi's nephew, Sidhu slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre over the raids and said the ED took action after nearly four years of the registration of the case.
He had along with three other ministers rebelled against Amarinder Singh while choosing to side with the camp of state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu.
Polling was held for over hundred civic bodies in Punjab on Sunday amid stray incidents of skirmishes at some places.
Amethi's former Congress MP Rahul Gandhi has sent five trucks each of rice and wheat besides one truck of pulses, cooking oil, spices and other material for distribution among people, said party's district unit president Anil Singh.
Talking to reporters Khatkar Kalan, he also suggested that Pakistan's spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence will use farmers' unrest over the new farm laws and will try to foment trouble in the border state of Punjab.
The Central Crime Branch probing the August 11 violence in Bengaluru over an alleged inflammatory social media post, has filed a preliminary chargesheet in a local court, naming former Congress mayor R Sampath Raj as an accused.
The counting will begin at 8 am, and as per the Election Commission's COVID-19 guidelines, a candidate, his poll agent and counting agent can remain present in the counting hall, officials said, adding various measures have been taken to ensure social distancing and avoid crowding.
The list, which was released by Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari, also included former AAP MLA Kapil Mishra and has 11 SC and four woman candidates.
Banerjee and Kejriwal have shared a cordial relationship over the years, with the Delhi CM coming out in support of his West Bengal counterpart during the general elections in 2019 and also during her face-off with the Centre over Kolkata police chief Rajeev Kumar.
A 42-year-old man was found dead at the residence of former Union minister and Congress leader Kumari Selja in Sunehri Bagh in New Delhi on Monday morning, police said.
In his weekly column 'Rokhthok' in the party mouthpiece Saamana, Raut said state Chief Minister and Sena president Uddhav Thackeray in his address to Shiv Sainiks on January 23 had turned the tables on the BJP, which was criticising him over his illness.
"Crores of Muslim women had always demanded that triple talaq should be banned, as it is also banned in Islamic countries," he said.
Manish Sisodia, Satyender Jain, Gopal Rai, Kailash Gehlot, Imran Hussain, and Rajendra Gautamas took oath as the ministers in Delhi.
According to the results announced on Thursday, 25 Samajwadi Party candidates were defeated by less than 5,000 votes while a similar fate awaited three nominees of the Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Vikram Joshi was returning home in Vijay Nagar area with his two daughters on a motorcycle when he was waylaid by over half a dozen armed men at around 10.30 pm on Monday.
One more ruling Congress legislator A John Kumar, a close confidant of Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy, resigned his MLA post on Tuesday, in yet another jolt to the ruling Congress dispensation ahead of the assembly polls due in few months.
As Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party registered a thumping victory in the Delhi assembly polls, take a look at how the heavyweights fared.
Murli Manohar Joshi makes a rare public appearance.
Aam Aadmi Party Chief Arvind Kejriwal has kicked up a controversy by asking voters in Delhi to take "bribes" from the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress but to vote for his party in the upcoming Delhi assembly election.
"Our party is stronger than the Congress in the state. While the Congress won 40 seats in panchayat polls, we scored a victory in 83 panchayats. AAP got over 40 lakh votes in these polls, where 1600 party candidates contested," Singh, AAP's UP in-charge and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said.
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