The Election Commission of India has announced that elections for 10 Rajya Sabha seats in Goa, Gujarat, and West Bengal will be held on July 24.
The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, trouncing its main rival SP, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
Former Goa's Inspector General of Prison, Elvis Gomes will be AAP's chief ministerial candidate for 2017 polls.
The party is less forthcoming about who the chief minister will be if it stays in power.
Even if the BJP gets 60, 70, or even 100 per cent of the votes in the seats where it scored more than 50 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, these will still add up to only 224 seats, argues Shekhar Gupta.
The 'black paper', titled '10 saal anyay kaal' also alleged that issues such as rising prices, unemployment, subversion of institutions and farmers' 'distress' had plagued the country.
All 'important' issues will be up for deliberations, a BJP leader said of the meeting, adding the party is also likely to laud the central government for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the vaccination drive, and hail Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his development initiatives and successful foreign visits.
The Congress won 17 seats in Goa, only four short of the magic figure to form the government. Soon after the results threw up a hung assembly, Independent candidate Rohan Khaunte had extended support to the party.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Madhya Pradesh Governor Mangubhai Patel, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar and Jyotiraditya Scindia, among others, were present on the occasion.
With polls to elect the 18th Lok Sabha approaching, district poll panels are fixing the rates for expenses as part of the election expenditure monitoring process.
Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary Sushma Swaraj indicated that the NDA would stall proceedings in the Budget session in the Parliament on the issue.
Thackeray also condemned the collapse of a girder of an overbridge which was being constructed on a section of the Mumbai-Goa highway in Chiplun city on Monday.
The alliance, which is contesting in all 35 out of the 40 seats in the Goa assembly has announced Sudin Dhavalikar as their chief ministerial face.
Independence Day was celebrated across states and Union territories on Thursday, as several chief ministers announced job schemes while some others vowed their support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of a Viksit Bharat by 2047.
Jairam Ramesh said the Congress has to be the "fulcrum" of any Opposition alliance to take on the BJP in the 2024 general elections as it is the only political force with a pan-India presence.
In an interview with PTI, Chidambaram also stressed that no Congress MLA elected in the upcoming assembly polls can be poached by the Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa this time, saying 'our house is well-guarded' and though the 'thief' is still out there, the people 'will teach him a lesson'.
Have you done it? Why be afraid to flaunt it!
However, the action is not going to have any impact as the arithmetic still favours the Congress, which has 17 MLAs in a House of 34. The BJP has 16.
Stepping up its attack on the Narcotics Control Bureau, the Nationalist Congress Party on Friday alleged that the anti-drug agency let off two persons after a raid on a cruise ship off Mumbai coast recently, with one of them being the brother-in-law of a 'high-profile' BJP leader.
Speaker Pratapsingh Rane will play a major role in Monday.
Senior BJP leaders, including L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj, will attend the oath taking ceremony that is being held at the Sports Authority of Goa ground.
The state police so far arrested five people in connection with the case. These include two associates of Phogat who have been charged with murder.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf lists seven states where the Grand Old Party suffered a severe setback.
The run-up to the polls, which should have been a humdrum affair, became a cause celebre after it was marred by violence, arrests, sit-ins in far-away Delhi and a Supreme Court intervention asking officials to ensure peaceful polling.
Goa's Rural Development Minister Fransisco Miccky Pacheco, whose conviction for assaulting a government servant was upheld by the Supreme Court, resigned from the cabinet on Friday saying he did not want to cause further embarrassment to the BJP-led government in the state.
If the Cauvery water-sharing dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu -- dating back to 1892 between the erstwhile Madras Presidency under the British Raj and the princely Mysore state -- has exploded again into a war, the discord between Karnataka and Goa over dividing the water of the Mahadayi river simmers under the surface.
From steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal to billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal's Airtel, Anil Agarwal's Vedanta, ITC, Mahindra and Mahindra, and a lesser-known Future Gaming and Hotel Services were among the prominent buyers of the now-scrapped electoral bonds for making political donations.
The BJP cited the amendments to the Representation of People Act, 1951 and the relevant portions of the Reserve Bank of India Act and the Income Tax Act for not revealing its donors.
Sources said that Velingkar was planning to float a new political outfit to fight the ruling BJP in the state which has not gone down well with the RSS.
The leaders of the two parties discussed the possibilities of seat sharing but did not divulge any details.
'We will fight for removing the de-classification of coconut trees.' 'We are going to have our own Sound Act so that Goan people are not hounded by the police when they get married.' '80 per cent jobs for locals in the private sector, 100 per cent in government.'
A day after a Goa minister spoke against young girls visiting pubs in short dresses, Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik on welcomed the statement saying it showed that several important people shared his views.
"We have decided to approach the Supreme Court to get justice despite having numbers on our side. The floor-test was bulldozed by the Speaker," Manohar Parrikar, GDA leader, told PTI on Monday night.
Mamata asserted that she has not spoken to anyone in the Congress on seat-sharing in the state for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
With their high-decibel campaigns so far, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party may appear to be locked in a direct fight in Uttar Pradesh.
Eleven chief ministers of the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states will offer prayers at the makeshift temple at Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya on Wednesday.
There are 202 candidates in the fray, including Chief Minister Pratapsingh Rane for the 40-member House, which will go to polls on June 2.
