The Bharatiya Janata Party government in Gujarat on Tuesday announced 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in local bodies like panchayats, municipalities and civic corporations on the basis of a commission's report, paving the way for polls in these self-governing institutes.
Once people throw out the Congress, they do not let it come back. They put 'no entry' boards for the Congress, he said. It always thought power was its birthright but it has now been exposed, the prime minister said
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is contesting 88 seats out of the total 89, tops this list among major political parties in the fray with 36 per cent of its candidates having criminal cases. Thirty per cent of its candidates are facing serious cases such as murder, rape, assault, kidnapping, among others, the ADR said in its report. The number of candidates having criminal cases fielded by the AAP is 32.
'I do not want to get into the number game. This time, the BJP will get unprecedented seats and vote percentage in Gujarat.'
Without naming any party, Prasad said he thought cut and commission was the legacy of only one political party.
For renomination to the Rajya Sabha, Nadda will have to look for a seat outside his home state of Himachal Pradesh as the Congress is in power there.
'There was a 77 per cent chance that electorates in India voted for the same party for both the state and Centre when elections were held simultaneously.'
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.
A total 2.51 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise for the second phase of elections, including 1.29 crore men and 1.22 crore women.
As per norms, a minister who is not a member of Parliament has to be elected to either House within six months of his or her swearing in.
Gujarat witnessed seizures of Rs 71.88 crore in just a few days after the announcement of the election
During a review, the EC found that the performance of some officers was "unsatisfactory" and they were found "complacent, if not complicit" in various matters, including the illegal supply of liquor as a possible poll inducement, sources said.
Gujarat has witnessed the steepest decline in the number of contestants in the fray for its 26 seats, from 371 five years ago to 266 in 2024.
The Election Commission has convened a three-day conference of electoral officers in Delhi from April 10 to discuss the upcoming Presidential election and the assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The conference may also help the commission decide if it should club the elections in three other states where the assembly terms are ending in March, along with Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, sources in the Election Commission said.
Though the election officials were yet to make formal announcement, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani informed the media about the victory.
He could have blazed a trail that few Indian judges had. It was a missed opportunity of a lifetime, notes Ramesh Menon.
Bharatiya Janata Party candidates Dineshchamdra Jemalbhai Ananvadiya and Rambhai Harjibhai Mokariya won both Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat on Monday.
After the Gujarat and Himachal elections and the municipal polls in Mumbai and Delhi, Karnataka, Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh will elect new assemblies next year leading up to the Lok Sabha election in April-May 2024, points out Virendra Kapoor.
The Congress won 77 seats or 42% of seats in the 2017 polls. How then can Gujarat be called a BJP bastion, asks Sanjeev Nayyar.
The party claimed 16 lakh votes were polled in the last one hour of polling on December 5.
In a letter to Ramesh, the poll panel has asked him to share details regarding his claim by 7 pm on Sunday.
Hemant Shivsaran lists the number of projects the Modi government has announced since August to woo Gujarat voters.
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 delegation demanded that those responsible for the act should be brought to book as the issue was serious.
The BJP could surpass its previous best showing of 127 seats in 2002 when Modi was the chief minister.
The poll panel said the seizures made since the polls were announced on October 9 are over seven times (Rs 239.15 crore) the seizures made in the previous assembly elections in these states in 2018.
Eleven states and Union territories -- Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Telangana, Gujarat, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand -- had a voter turnout lower than the national average of 67.40 percent in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The commission said enforcement authorities have seized Rs 4,650 crore even before polling begins for the Lok Sabha elections and it is the "higher than total seizures" made in the 2019 polls
Among the major parties, out of the 25 BJP candidates, four, or 15 percent, have criminal cases against them, with two facing serious charges, as per the data of ADR.
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.
The schedule for Gujarat will be announced separately.
The Election Commission will dispatch a team to Gujarat to probe allegations of "bogus voters" being included in the electoral rolls. A three-member Congress party delegation including Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee chief Siddharth Patel, leader of opposition Shakti Singh Goel and general secretary in charge of Gujarat, Sidharath Reddy on Friday called on the Election Commission, complaining against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Narendra Modi government.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Sunday raised questions on the genuineness of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's degrees and claimed that they would turn out to be fake if a probe is conducted.
A voter turnout of 60.19 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in 93 constituencies spread over 11 states and Union Territories on Tuesday with sporadic incidents of violence in West Bengal.
The Association for Democratic Reforms, an non-government organisation working for electoral reforms, while supporting Election Commission's order to seize unaccounted cash in poll-bound states, has noted that legitimate business transactions based on cash should not suffer.
Oberoi is playing the role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a biopic.
Dropping references to the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the killing of Muslims in Gujarat riots and Hindutva, and tweaking the reference to Manipur's merger with India are among the latest set of revisions made public by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in its textbooks.
Voicing concern over the announcement of direct cash transfer scheme after the Model Code of Conduct had been implemented, the Election Commission has directed the government to keep in abeyance its implementation in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh where the poll process is going on.
'Can we force somebody to contest and fight an election when they don't want to contest an election?'
A commission of inquiry is likely to be ordered by the Centre into the alleged "snooping" on a woman in Gujarat allegedly at the behest of Amit Shah, a close aide of the Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances