The Supreme Court Monday stayed till further orders the local body election in Maharashtra on 27 per cent seats reserved for the Other Backward Classes (OBC).
'Amit Shah had promised Ajit Pawar and Praful Patel that even if there were only one third of MLAs with them, they would be given the party symbol.' 'He promised them that the Election Commission would not take a decision against them and that they would get the party name and symbol.'
'How can the EC then deduce that 76 per cent of the people who voted for the united Shiv Sena's MLAs voted for Eknath Shinde?'
The Election Commission of Pakistan stripped Imran Khan's party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, of its electoral symbol -- a cricket bat -- on technical grounds on Sunday January 14, 2024.
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said the EC was very enthused by the voter turnout in Jammu and Kashmir during the Lok Sabha elections, which showed the eagerness of the people to participate in the democratic process.
It asked the Maharashtra deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar-led faction to issue a public notice in newspapers in English, Hindi and Marathi saying that the 'clock' symbol is sub-judice and its use is subject to adjudication.
The EVMs are based on a technology where they work as aggregator of votes in direct elections such as the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
The Gujarat high court on Tuesday declared state Bharatiya Janata Party minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama's election in 2017 as void on grounds of malpractice and manipulation.
'This mega corruption scandal, as certified by the Supreme Court, will expose the unholy nexus between the BJP and its corrupt corporate masters'
A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha said the matter is listed for hearing after advocate Amit Anand Tiwari sought urgent listing of the plea.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the inclusion of the Chief Justice of India in the consultative process for the appointment of chief election commissioner would ensure independence of the poll panel.
A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta took note of the submissions of lawyer Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGOs 'Common Cause' and the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, that the plea needed to be listed for hearing at the earliest.
His tenure was till December 5, 2027, and he would have become Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) after incumbent Rajiv Kumar retired in February next year.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to stay the Election Commission's decision to conduct an election on May 4 to fill up the sole vacancy in the Maharashtra Legislative Council for which Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan is contesting. A three-judge bench of justices J M Panchal, Deepak Verma and B S Chauhan, however, allowed the petitioner, Shiv Sena Member of Legislative Council Anil Dattatray Parab, to implead the chief minister and issued a notice to the EC.
The timeline of the Shiv Sena-centric political crisis in Maharashtra.
Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be held in three phases from September 18 while Haryana will go to polls in a single phase on October 1, the Election Commission announced on Friday.
The bench said it was not questioning the credentials of the election commissioners appointed but the procedure.
Taking potshots at the Bharatiya Janata Party, some opposition leaders also wondered if Goel resigned to contest the Lok Sabha polls on its ticket like former Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay.
The bench said it would be difficult for the poll panel to mobilise manpower for uploading the voter turnout data on its website.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta issued notice to the Centre on a plea filed by an NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms, and listed the matter along with other pending petitions on the issue for hearing in April.
Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar convened the meeting of leaders of opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha, which was attended by Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, independent Rajya Sabha member Kapil Sibal, Samajwadi Party leader Ramgopal Yadav, Shiv Sena (Thackeray faction) member Anil Desai and Bharat Rashtra Samithi member K Keshav Rao among others.
The deadline set by the Supreme Court for delivering the verdict was December 31, 2023, but some days before that, on December 15, the apex court gave a 10-day extension and set January 10 as the new date for a decision.
As many as 624 candidates are in the fray in this round of voting being held in Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Sitapur, Hardoi, Unnao, Lucknow, Rae Bareli, Banda, and Fatehpur districts.
In view of the Supreme Court empowering voters with the right to reject, forthcoming Madhya Pradesh assembly elections will see electronic voting machines having a new and separate button for electorate not wishing to vote for any of the candidates in the fray.
The court said that after casting his vote, he would be immediately taken back to Siwan jail.
The Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) on Thursday stayed the elections to 92 municipal councils and four nagar panchayats in view of the next week's hearing on OBC reservations before the Supreme Court.
Sharif, 67, had to step down as the chief of the PML-N after he was disqualified as the prime minister by the Supreme Court on July 28 in the Panama Papers scandal.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin has announced the formation of a panel headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to study the relationship between the Union and state governments and ensure state autonomy. The panel, which will submit its interim report in January 2026 and its final report in two years, will examine the transfer of subjects from the State List to the Concurrent List, citing the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) as an example of a subject outside state purview.
The Supreme Court of India has sought a response from the Election Commission of India (ECI) regarding pleas seeking verification of burnt memory and symbol loading units in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The court directed the ECI to refrain from erasing or reloading data during the verification process and to explain the procedure adopted for verification. The bench also expressed concerns over the high cost of verification and directed the ECI to reduce the fee. The court's directive comes following its previous judgement where it allowed aggrieved candidates to seek verification of EVMs.
Freebies promised by political parties in their election manifestos shake the roots of free and fair polls, the Supreme Court on Friday said and directed the Election Commission to frame guidelines for regulating contents of manifestos.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to pronounce its verdict on Friday on a batch of pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using electronic voting machines (EVMs) with voter verifiable paper audit trail, or VVPAT.
Chastising the State Bank of India, the Supreme Court on Monday ordered it to disclose the details of the electoral bonds encashed by political parties to the Election Commission by the close of the business hours on March 12 and warned the country's largest public sector lender that the court may proceed against it for 'wilful disobedience' if it failed to comply with its directions and deadlines.
The Centre said as a matter of judicial review, the court could declare the provisions to be unconstitutional, however, the relief sought by the petitioner effectively sought to read "life-long" instead of "six years" in all sub-sections of Section 8 of the Act.
The National People's Party, which rules Meghalaya, is another national party which received no donations through electoral bonds.
The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the disqualification of Janata Dal-Secular MLA D C Gowrishankar Swamy from the Tumkur Rural constituency in Karnataka and allowed him to contest the upcoming assembly polls in the southern state.
The Maharashtra State Election Commission on Friday said polls to local bodies from other backward class reserved constituencies, which were scheduled on December 21, will now be held on January 18 and these seats will be converted as general category ones.
"The voter turnout data for the first two phases of the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections published by ECI on April 30 has been published after 11 days of the first phase of polling... on April 19 and four days after second phase of polling... on April 26.
The apex court bench, also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, will assemble at 10.30 am to hear the two petitions.
'My suspicion is that most of the bonds were given by companies who had got contracts or who had benefited from policy changes by the government.'
The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the election of Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan for the state Legislative Council which he won unopposed as the opposition parties did not field any candidates against him. A bench of justices R M Lodha and H L Gokhale dismissed the plea of Shiv Sena Member of Legislative Council Anil Dattatray Parab who had challenged the Election Commission's decision to hold the election.
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