The Delhi high court on Thursday sought response of the Centre and the Election Commission on a plea seeking to ensure that masks are worn mandatorily by everyone involved in poll campaigns during the ongoing elections in various states and union territories.
the Congress too petitioned the Election Commission for action against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for addressing an event organised by an industry body on the eve of the final phase of the Gujarat polls where he attacked the main opposition party.
What the INDIA alliance needs is neither a counter to Modi's tall personality and undiminished charisma nor a counter-narrative to his Hindutva agenda, now centred on the Ayodhya temple consecration on January 22, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
Green-coloured ballot papers will be there for members of Parliament and pink for MLAs who vote in the election.
The BJP is not taking the AAP challenge lightly. Amit Shah has cautioned party insiders to ensure that AAP does not cross a vote share of 24%. He has always seen AAP as a much more significant challenge than the Congress, observes Ramesh Menon, author, Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister.
'...it gets a survey report that they are going to lose elections.' 'The fear of losing elections will make them immediately conduct a caste census.'
'By manipulating India's electoral laws, the aim of the Modi government is to weaken democracy to such an extent that it ultimately crumbles.'
Most candidates of the Arvind Kejriwal-led party secured less than 1,000 votes in the two states and were set to lose to their security deposits.
Cash collections accounted for a whopping 63 per cent of total funds or over Rs 2,100 crore garnered by various political parties during all state assembly polls between 2004 and 2015, a study showed on Monday.
Vinai Kumar Saxena's current job as lieutenant governor of an Opposition-ruled state will raise the bar -- not just for him, but also for the Aam Aadmi Party government, which never says no to a fight with the representative of the central government in India's capital.
While Modi had a party and an organisation that supported him, all Mulayam, a self-made man with no inheritance in politics, had was a set of (fairly flexible) beliefs.
Simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state assemblies can help reduce difficulties in terms of expenditure and management, President Pranab Mukherjee said on Wednesday and asked the Election Commission to take the initiative in bringing political parties on one platform to discuss the issue.
The assembly elections in Delhi, where the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party are raring for another face off, are likely to be held by the middle of February.
'By design or default, the BJP's election strategy militated against the very essence of Karnataka politics and the idea of Karnataka.'
While Twitter had taken down one of his controversial tweets on Friday following directions of the EC, a first information report was lodged against him under Section 125 of the Representation of the People Act dealing with creating enmity among classes.
The bench said it has to balance the equity and it was not against any policy of the government or the scheme.
The new chief minister, if from the Congress, will have little or no time for political administration, to ensure that he does not lose the voter's goodwill even before the Lok Sabha polls. He can count only on one thing. That the BJP may not want to upset him too early lest an early failure should become an added problem for the party in all the polls to follow, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
All 41 candidates from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Telangana were elected unopposed on Friday after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.
Bhupender Yadav's entry to the Modi government as a Cabinet minister is seen as his just reward after serving as a party office-bearer for the longest term among all current occupants.
Goa's poll panel chief has already taken cognisance of similar remarks allegedly made by the Delhi CM.
BJP candidate and former chief minister Bhajan Lal's grandson Bhavya Bishnoi on Sunday defeated his nearest rival and Congress nominee Jai Prakash in the Adampur assembly seat by-election, retaining the family bastion.
As per a letter sent to the MLAs by the assembly secretariat, the chief minister has expressed his willingness to move a motion of confidence to prove his majority.
'The over-reaction by the BJP to District Magistrate Pranjal Yadav's decision will prove a double-edged sword.' 'On May 16, if the BJP gets a handsome number of seats and if Modi wins from Varanasi and Vadodara, his opponents can repeat Modi's scathing remarks against the Election Commission, that it was not 'impartial'.'
He also lamented that EVMs are being used as a 'football' and some sections are doing a 'motivated slugfest' over their use.
The fear that Mamata might snatch the mantle of Opposition leadership which the Gandhis firmly believe to be theirs by birthright seems to have persuaded Sonia and Rahul to give up their hoity-toity ways, observes Virendra Kapoor.
The fresh charges against Chandrashekhar pertain to Rs 3.5 crore that Malvinder Singh's wife Japna is alleged to have paid after she was conned that this money would be used to bail her husband out.
The byelections are of critical importance to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who lost the assembly poll to Bharatiya Janata Party's Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram.
Saharanpur recorded a turnout of 71.13 per cent, Bijnor 65.91, Moradabad 67.26, Sambhal 62.87, Rampur 64.26, Amroha 71.98, Budaun 59.24, Bareilly 61.67 and Shahjahanpur 59.34 per cent, a statement issued by the election office said in Lucknow on Tuesday.
The poll body also termed as "scurrilous" the AAP leader's claim that the Commission is encouraging bribery by restraining him from uttering such statements.
Though the wily TRS supremo, credited with achieving the separate state of Telangana, stopped short of saying he was about to declare dissolution of the assembly, none doubted its imminence.
In a series of tweets, BJP chief J P Nadda said people of the country and Delhi today have seen the 'dirty face' of AAP. The AAP hit back, questioning the police investigation.
The father of the man arrested for allegedly raping a 12-year-old girl in Ujjain on Friday demanded capital punishment for his son, while the local bar association appealed that no lawyer should defend him in the court.
'He should not come to Kerala and fight against the CPI which is an integral part of the INDIA alliance'
Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath said on Tuesday that the Election Commission would "dispassionately" examine Rahul Gandhi's speech made at Indore on October 24, stating that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence was in touch with victims affected by the Muzaffarnagar riots.
What transpired between O Panneerselvam and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi? R Rajagopalan reveals.
Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Addressing the meeting in support of BJP candidate from Rithala, Manish Chaudhary, Singh raised the pitch of nationalism as he linked opposition parties with anti-CAA protests in Shaheen Bagh and with alleged anti-India slogans, and then asked the crowd to raise the controversial slogan.
'Economic issues do not matter during elections; it is the emotional connect that helps swing votes.'
The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction on Monday approached the Delhi high court seeking quashing of the order of the Election Commission of India (ECI) freezing the party name and election symbol.
Political parties were bracing for the assembly election results on Thursday in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and politically volatile Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, sending out feelers for possible post-poll tie-ups.
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