Haryana has recorded a voter turnout of 67.90 per cent with Ellenabad assembly seat in Sirsa district witnessing the highest polling percentage at over 80 per cent, according to the updated figures of the Election Commission on Sunday.
The 23-year-old has not surfaced after he and his friend were arrested by a police patrol team and let off on bail on Saturday.
The monthly Rs 2500 payment for poor women is expected to cost Rs 11,000 crore while the pension scheme of Rs 2000 for every senior citizen will cost around Rs 4100 crore. The Yamuna clean up will cost over Rs 10,000 crore while a similar amount is required to upgrade Delhi's hospitals. Ultimately, the new BJP government will have no choice but to ask the centre for financial support, notes Rashme Sehgal.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) distanced itself from the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) on Friday, saying it is not part of the opposition alliance anymore and questioning the Congress party's role in leading it.
Besides Hooda, his son Deepender Singh Hooda, Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala are also being seen as chief ministerial aspirants.
Babaria said he offered his resignation to the high command soon after the result of the Haryana assembly polls came out last week but no decision has been communicated to him over the matter.
Sharma's remark came a day after Grover and some other BJP leaders were held up for hours inside a temple complex in Rohtak's Kiloi as several villagers and farmers staged a protest outside.
The prolonged delay over electing J P Nadda's successor possibly stems from the RSS leadership wanting a person who is at least equidistant from the Sangh as well as the Modi/BJP edifice, observes BJP-RSS watcher Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
A blame game began in the Congress on Tuesday as it failed in its bid to come back to power in Haryana after 10 years, with senior party leader Kumari Selja saying the party high command should assess all reasons that led to the disappointing result and identify the people responsible.
The Congress top brass headed by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge held a review meeting on Thursday on the party's shock defeat in the Haryana assembly polls and discussed the possible reasons for the 'unexpected' results.
The AAP suffered a humiliating defeat in Haryana with most of its candidates set to lose their security deposit.
Congress leaders, on their part, are confident that the mobilisation of voters away from the BJP will gain more momentum in the state elections, scheduled for October 1, in the absence of national issues and the 'Modi factor'.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi intensified his attack on the Election Commission, accusing them of 'vote chori' and warning of action if the INDIA bloc forms the government. He alleged a 'new special package' for Bihar, named SIR (Special Intensive Revision), is a 'new form of vote theft'.
'Every Haryana assembly seat has its own unique problems to earn victory for a political party and you as a politician need to know what are those issues and tackle it.'
Vadra has been questioned multiple times by the federal probe agency in a different money laundering case.
'It is evident that the BJP govt in Haryana no longer commands a majority,' former Deputy Chief Minister and JJP leader Dushyant Chautala said in his letter to the governor on Wednesday.
Political parties and leaders wait with bated breath for the Haryana and Jammu-Kashmir assembly poll results on Tuesday.
What piques the narrative is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah decide on crucial matters, they play it close to their chest, and revel in springing a surprise.
'The Congress will have to go deep into it and find the reasons for its defeat'
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party has done 'grave injustice' to the youth of the country, including in Haryana, by snatching employment opportunities and forced them to undertake a 'journey of torture' to foreign countries.
Congress leader Kumari Selja ruled out the possibility of an alliance with the AAP for the Haryana assembly polls.
The police decided on Wednesday to press attempt to kidnap charge against Vikas Barala and another person, who had allegedly stalked and tried to abduct Varnika Kundu, daughter of an IAS officer.
Hours after, however, firing from the Pakistani side was reported in Akhnoor sector in Jammu and Kashmir. Drones were also seen in the Pir Panjal area.
The BJP will hold a legislature party meeting on Wednesday evening to decide the new chief minister of Delhi. The party won the February 5 assembly elections, ending the Aam Aadmi Party's five-year rule. The meeting will be held at the party's Delhi unit office and is expected to begin around 7 pm. The 48 BJP MLAs will choose the Leader of the House in the Delhi Assembly, who will become the chief minister. The meeting will be held in the presence of BJP's central observers, whose names are yet to be declared. The new chief minister, after being chosen by the party MLAs, will meet Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena at the Raj Niwas to stake claim to power. A grand swearing-in ceremony of the new government is scheduled for Thursday afternoon at Ramleela Ground. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other dignitaries are expected to attend the ceremony. The names doing the rounds for the new chief minister include Parvesh Verma, Vijender Gupta, Satish Upadhyay, Pawan Sharma, Ashish Sood, Rekha Gupta, Shikha Rai, Ravinder Indraj Singh, and Kailash Gangwal. Many within the party believe that the BJP leadership could choose a "dark horse" as Delhi's next chief minister.
With Haryana going to polls on October 13, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday came out with a list of 'broken promises' in the Congress' 2005 manifesto, alleging that the state government had failed on all fronts. BJP General Secretary and party's in-charge for Haryana affairs, Vijay Goel, told reporters that the Congress had 'befooled' the people of the state and failed to keep the promises it had made during the previous assembly poll campaign.
The BJP coined a new word for AAP, 'Aapda (crisis)', which Modi repeated constantly during the election campaign to show how Delhi residents's lives had become miserable under AAP's 11-year rule.
The Congress has said the assembly polls results were "unexpected" and have alleged discrepancies in the EVMs in some seats.
'They want to keep the pot boiling all the time.' 'The BJP wants to set a political narrative that the Gandhis are doing wrong things.'
Independent MLA Balraj Kundu, who has been vocal against the BJP-led government on several issues, remained firm in his decision to abstain from voting.
Quraishi asserted that India has, is and will always stand up and fight for its constitutional institutions and principles.
In the run-up to the Delhi assembly elections, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) went all out to persuade voters to elect an effective and accountable government for the progress of the national capital, contributing to the BJP's thumping victory in the polls, according to sources.
Many in the party believe that as was the cases in Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, the BJP leadership might put its bets on a "dark horse" among the newly-elected MLAs.
Sources said the leaders during the meeting discussed the possible reasons for the "unexpected" results in Haryana and decided to set up the team to ascertain the reasons behind such results and also look into complaints of "discrepancies" in EVMs, as alleged by party candidates.
Earlier, AAP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh welcomed reports claiming Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has shown interest in the possibility of an alliance with Arvind Kejriwal-led party in poll-bound Haryana.
Despite this setback, Pandey emphasised that discussions regarding ticket distribution are ongoing and solutions will be found through timely communication.
An analysis of the affidavits of all the 90 winning candidates by the Association for Democratic Reforms and Haryana Election Watch show a slight rise in the number of crorepati MLAs, from 93 percent in 2019 to 96 percent this time.
Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who is serving a prison sentence in a Haryana jail, was granted a three-week furlough on Monday, a reprieve that Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said had nothing to do with elections.
Even as parleys continue in both states, the grand old party is expected to contest less than 110 seats in the November 20 polls for the 288-member Maharashtra assembly.
'Arithmetic could decide the Haryana election given the presence of multi-cornered contests.'
First-time MLA Rekha Gupta will be the new chief minister of Delhi, capping 11 days of suspense over who will get the top post after the Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power after over 26 years ending the 10-year rule of the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party.