The Election Commission is mulling a proposal to increase the polling hours during the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in light of a jump in the cumulative number of voters in the country and the trend of bigger turnout at recent elections.
Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas on Sunday questioned the clean chit given to Rahul Gandhi by the Election Commission on the allegation that he had violated secrecy of voting by entering the enclosure of EVM in one of the polling booths in Amethi.
The much-awaited schedule for the Lok Sabha polls was announced by Chief Election Commissioner VS Sampath on Wednesday at a press conference at the Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, instead of Nirvachan Bhawan, the EC headquarters.
The Election Commission today announced by-polls to three assembly constituencies in Delhi which fell vacant after Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs were elected to the Lok Sabha in the recently-held general elections.
The full bench of the Election Commission will visit West Bengal on Thursday to oversee the poll preparedness for the last three phases of the assembly polls. Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi and the other two Election Commissioners V.S. Sampath and HS Brahma will arrive in Kolkata in the morning and hold meeting with the representatives of the political parties.
Accusing Union Ministers Beni Prasad Verma and Kapil Sibal of vitiating the election campaign, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday approached the Election Commission seeking strong action against them for making "baseless" allegations against its leaders.
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Congress on Monday approached the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi as it accused him of "misusing state machinery" and "abusing authority" over the broadcast of his 'Mann ki Baat' address on All India Radio ahead of Assembly polls later this month.
In a move that is bound to generate controversy, the election expenditure for both Parliamentary and assembly constituencies is likely to jump by one-and-a-half times before the coming Lok Sabha polls. Anita Katyal reports
The EC is perhaps the only body in the country still untarnished and commanding universal respect round the world. It has often been savaged by the ruling political dispensations in the past also, but the EC has come out with flying colours in every case including the latest one against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, says B S Raghavan.
