Tokyo -- the songs Japan, Love In Tokyo and Sayonara from the 1966 Hindi film automatically pop up in the mind -- is buzzing and crowded like any other metropolis, discovers Deepa Gahlot. The modern apartment blocks are built cheek by jowl, so close together that one can open the window and borrow sugar from the neighbour in the next building. One of the fears of the Indian traveller is the unavailability of vegetarian food. Every city and town in Japan has an array of Indian restaurants that serve every variety of cuisine, right from Gujarati to Punjabi to Andhra and Kerala meals.
>The ABVP has put the onus on Delhi University to verify Ankiv Baisoya's degree and is defending its leader. But there's not a single word of support from its political masters.
Telangana and Rajasthan are the last states to go to the polls in the current round of assembly elections, which also covered Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram.
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.
As per the final tally, of the total 81 seats, the Congress won 73, followed by the BJP which bagged six seats. The Shiv Sena just about managed to open its account with one seat, and an independent candidate won one seat.
High voter turnout was recorded in the assembly polls in Assam and West Bengal where an estimated 82.02 per cent and 79.51 per cent of the voters cast their ballots till 5 pm.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday slammed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for seeking en bloc voting by Muslims for the Trinamool Congress and said had his party made a similar appeal to Hindus, it would have been criticised and censured.
On Tuesday, the Congress had approached the EC against NOTA in RS polls.
The first phase of UP polls in 73 assembly constituencies on Saturday witnessed an "exemplary" 64.22 per cent voter turnout.
A formal invitation for the rally had been sent to Kishor, a senior TMC leader told PTI.
Reacting to the statements, the Shiv Sena said it was ready to take on whoever challenges it.
Pakistan's Election Commission on Friday disqualified former prime minister Imran Khan for five years in the Toshakhana case for hiding proceeds from the sale of gifts he received from foreign leaders.
Mukherjee had lost the Lok Sabha elections twice earlier and it was third time lucky for him, much to the delight of the Congress leader's supporters.
The election is likely to witness a three-cornered contest involving the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.
Allegations of electronic voting machines malfunctioningreturned to haunt the Election Commission as four Lok Sabha seats and nine assembly constituencies went for bypolls on Monday across 10 states with moderate-to-heavy voting amid prestige at stake for the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as opposition parties ahead of the 2019 general elections.
The Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal and some smaller parties will contest the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls together, and an announcement in this regard would be made soon, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said on Tuesday.
Among the major political parties, chief minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United is contesting in 35 of the 71 seats, followed by its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (29), while the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal has fielded its candidates in 42 and its coalition partner Congress is in the fray in 20 assembly segments.
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
Counting of votes will be held today in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand which witnessed a record turnout in the multi-cornered contests to elect their assemblies.
When it comes to the winning strike rate, Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal has emerged victorious on eight of every ten seats it contested while only one of the every three Bharatiya Janata Party candidates managed to win.
Against the backdrop of the Lok Sabha results, a much larger scale of desertion was anticipated from the TMC. 'It seems, people don't believe that the ship is sinking.'
Leaders of 23 political parties met Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, seeking redressal of the issue of alleged tampering of electronic voting machines before Lok Sabha polls.
Political parties on Friday reacted cautiously to a Supreme Court verdict holding that citizens have the right to reject candidates contesting polls, while the Communist Party of India - Marxist said that the judgment has led to an "abnormal situation" that needs to be corrected.
It would be far more sensible for AAP to build on what they have achieved than to destroy what credibility they have by floating wild conspiracy theories, says Sankrant Sanu.
The high court dismissed the party's plea, saying since the electronic voting machines would now carry photographs of the candidates.
The meeting at SP headquarters was attended by Akhilesh, his uncle Shivpal Yadav, senior leader Azam Khan and party office bearers.
BJP candidate and minister Kunvarji Bavaliya defeated his nearest rival Congress nominee Avsar Nakiya by a margin of 19,979 votes, officials said.
Opposition leaders will also meet the Election Commission and raise the issue of tallying the paper trail of votes with the electronic voting machine figures as directed by the Supreme Court.
Chief Minister Harish Rawat lost both seats he contested.
If the BJP falls sizeably short of the 115 mark -- the seats it won in 2012 -- it will be hard to deny the party hasn't suffered a telling reverse.
'I am also concerned over Chinese ambitions in the Maldives and wider Indian Ocean,' former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed tells Rediff.com contributor Rajeev Sharma in an exclusive interview.
Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Javed Ahmad Qadri from Shopian in Jammu and Kashmir allegedly thrashed a voter inside a polling station, claiming that the latter had entered the booth without a voter slip.
70 per cent voting was recorded across 18 constituencies of Bastar and Rajnandgaon till 3 pm in the first phase of assembly election in Chhattisgarh, where violence by Naxals who have called for a poll boycott left a Central Reserve Police Force jawan dead.
Opposition parties demanded that all elections in the future be held through ballot papers.
The emphatic victory in all three municipal corporations in Delhi will enthuse the party to keep its winning trajectory for the next polls, reports Sahil Makkar.
A direct contest between nominees of the BJP-led NDA and Congress-headed Grand Alliance is on the cards in 20 constituencies
The Samajwadi Party national executive is also of the view that elections should be held through ballot papers and not through electronic voting machines,
Tamil star Suriya's 7aum Arivu was about a virus from China sent to Chennai to wreak havoc while Kaappan was about a locust attack the hero prevents in time -- both films in a sense foresaw what was to come, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
While the BJP emerged as the single largest party in 12 municipal bodies, it has majority in five of these bodies.
The term of the 243-member Bihar legislative assembly comes to an end on November 29.
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