In a similar move in July 2019, 10 Congress MLAs had switched over to the BJP.
The Sena-UB has fielded popular wrestler Chandrahar Patil from Sangli despite the Congress announcing Vishal Patil's name from the same seat.
Amid the ongoing tussle between Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole and party veteran Balasaheb Thorat in the wake of recent legislative council elections, both the leaders came face to face at the party's state executive committee meeting in Mumbai on Wednesday, with both of them later claiming that everything was fine between them.
Zoram People's Movement (ZPM) leader Lalduhoma was sworn in as the chief minister of Mizoram on Friday.
Political sources say Modi is 'keen' on getting the NCP (SP) over to the Mahayuti to counter Eknath Shinde's 'demands' and to act as a cushion against his present allies, Nitish Kumar and N Chandrababu Naidu, 'in case their relationship became untenable'.
The PDP looks a distant third in the race, observes Mohammed Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir politics.
With Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar both staking claim to the top post, they are lobbying hard for it with supporters of each one raising the pitch in support of their leader.
According to sources in the Congress, eight legislators are likely to be sworn in as ministers along with them.
The Haryana victory will be a morale booster for the Bharatiya Janata Party and increase its bargaining power in the Mahayuti's seat-sharing talks for the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections, according to political analysts.
The Andhra Pradesh Congress legislature committee unanimously passed a resolution on Friday, requesting the Congress president Sonia Gandhi to choose the Congress Legislature Party leader. The resolution moved by Kadapa member of Parliament YS Jaganmohan Reddy was supported by 150 MLAs and 49 members of legislative council.
With party observers slamming some actions of loyalists of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, sources said decision on issuing show cause notices to miffed MLAs, who have been vocal in public, will be taken after interim chief looks Sonia Gandhi into the report by the observers sent to the state.
Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and chief ministers of Congress-ruled states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Chhattisgarh are among those named by the party as its star campaigners in Uttar Pradesh.
Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Rahul Narwekar was on Monday elected unopposed as the speaker of the 15th Maharashtra legislative assembly.
According to party sources, the Congress Legislature Party meeting lasted for about an hour and a half.
Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar MLA Jitendra Awhad arrived in handcuffs at the Vidhan Bhavan complex in Mumbai on the first day of the Maharashtra legislature's budget session on Monday to highlight 'growing attack' on freedom of expression and protest the deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States.
While Opposition MLAs in other states are dumping their parties to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, Tripura is seeing a reverse trend.
Chief Minister-designate Mohan Yadav, an OBC leader and three-time Bharatiya Janata Party MLA, started his political career when he was a student and rose to become higher education minister of Madhya Pradesh where he announced to make Hindu epic Ramcharitmanas as an optional subject in colleges in 2021.
Congress in-charge for Rajasthan Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa on Wednesday started one-to-one meetings with state ministers and MLAs amid attempts by the party's central leadership to broker peace between Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and dissident leader Sachin Pilot ahead of assembly polls due later this year.
'Mamata needs to address the anger and resentment among various sections of the Hindu community because low-scale communal violence has always paid richer electoral dividends for the BJP.'
Both the eight-time MLA Shivakumar and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah have made no secret of their ambition to become CM and had been involved in a game of political one upmanship in the past.
"It is just that Fadnavis and I have swapped our chairs. Only Ajit Pawar's chair is fixed," said Shinde, who was the CM before the assembly elections with Fadnavis and Pawar as his deputies then.
This is the first time both the leaders met after Pilot openly rebelled against Gehlot a month back.
Devendra Fadnavis, a veteran politician from Maharashtra, is set to become the state's chief minister for the third time following a decisive victory by the BJP in the recent assembly elections. Fadnavis' political journey has been marked by resilience, strategic manoeuvring and a string of successes, including becoming the youngest mayor of Nagpur. He is known for his articulate speeches and effective governance, but his tenure has also been marked by challenges, including the Maratha reservation issue and the irrigation scam. He faces a new set of challenges, but his ability to adapt and make tactical decisions could prove crucial for him and his party in the coming days.
"I have seen Pilot's statement in the media that he will not join the BJP. If you do not want to go to the BJP, stop accepting the hospitality of the BJP immediately," Congress general secretary Randeep Surjewala said.
Pilot said rules and discipline of the party apply to all, adding that he hoped Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge would take a decision in the matter soon.
Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Asim Azmi was on Wednesday suspended from the Maharashtra legislative assembly till the ongoing budget session ends on March 26, over his remarks eulogizing Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
Eighteen BJP MLAs were suspended for six months from the Karnataka Legislative Assembly for disrupting the budget session and disrespecting the Speaker. The incident occurred on the last day of the budget session, when the opposition BJP MLAs staged a massive protest over the allocation of a four percent reservation to Muslims in public contracts. The MLAs climbed onto the podium where the Speaker's chair is situated and threw papers at him.
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.
Congress leader V Narayanasamy on Monday called on Puducherry Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi and formally staked claim to form government in the Union Territory.
'The southern states will have no voice.' 'Political parties in future need to focus only on one region, the northern region, to win the general election.'
A group photo taken at the Bharatiya Janata Party office in Jaipur ahead of Tuesday's legislature party meeting showed Bhajan Lal Sharma in the very last row.
'There cannot be an alliance with Congress that does not honour the coalition dharma'
Former state minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil was on Monday elected as the Congress legislature party leader in Maharashtra, where the party has lost power.
The unlikely power sharing agreement between the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress had fizzled out in June following large-scale dissidence in the Sena ranks.
Yashpal Arya and his son, along with their supporters, joined the Congress in the presence of senior party leaders Harish Rawat, K C Venugopal and Randeep Surjewala in New Delhi.
There are concerns within the Congress with respect to the articulation of the party's demand for the caste census, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently accusing the grand old party of attempting to divide Hindus through its push for the Other Backward Classes.
'The Congress should have played a more active role to take care of the needs of regional parties. It failed.' 'Taking this into account, Nitishji took the final decision with the full support of the JD-U.'
As trends indicated a comfortable win for the grand old party in Himachal Pradesh, Shukla said the party was happy that it is getting an opportunity to form the government in the state and asserted that the party will do everything to fulfill the 10 guarantees made to the people of the state and would provide better governance to people.
Mr Pradhan's understanding of realpolitik and organisational dynamics makes him the ultimate party man, notes Aditi Phadnis.
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