What some of our politicians were up to on Wednesday, September 25, 2024.
Union minister Chirag Paswan on Monday said his Lok Janshakti Party-Ram Vilas wants to fight the assembly election in Jharkhand and a final decision will be taken soon on whether it would contest under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or alone.
BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as the new Chief Minister of Maharashtra in a grand ceremony at Azad Maidan in Mumbai.
Voters, it is said, get the government they deserve. We will soon see what voters in Maharashtra choose. Till then, a sense of helplessness and scepticism hangs in the air, notes Ramesh Menon.
Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday night announced the 47 remaining candidates for Haryana assembly elections who include Union Minister Sushma Swaraj's younger sister Vandana Sharma and two former Congress MPs and a former minister in B S Hooda government in the state.
Predicting a hung assembly in Haryana after the October 13 polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday did not rule out a post-poll alliance in the state to keep Congress out of power.
'Young people say they know all this emphasis on Hindu-Muslim differences is politically motivated.' 'If you stop watching TV and turn off social media, you'll find the situation on the ground different.'
'...to think apna time aa gaya after the 2024 election.'
The Delhi government has ordered half of its staff to work from home, urging private organizations to follow suit as the national capital faces an alarmingly high level of air pollution. The move comes as Delhi recorded an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 426 in the "severe" category, with residents reporting health issues. Essential services will continue to operate at full capacity. The government has also advised companies to provide shuttle bus services for employees and suggested that private entities consider shifting office hours to reduce traffic congestion.
Ahead of the no-confidence vote against the Manohar Lal Khattar Haryana government, senior Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) MLA Devender Singh Babli on Tuesday urged his party to withdraw support to the Bharatiya Janata Party government over farmers' issues.
Questions are being raised on the future of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) as differences among its constituents come to the fore and several parties call for serious introspection by the Congress after a string of debilitating electoral losses.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has called for tough decisions and unity within the party after the Congress suffered electoral defeats in Maharashtra and Haryana. In a meeting with top party leaders, Kharge highlighted the need to strengthen the organization from the grassroots, fix accountability, and address internal bickering. He also urged leaders to remain united and avoid public criticism of each other. The Congress chief expressed concern over the party's performance in state elections despite a strong showing in the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year. He acknowledged the need to learn from the setbacks and improve the party's strategy and communication to counter its rivals' propaganda.
'Women' as a political constituency appears to be an idea that has come of age. It is changing India in ways that we only dimly understand, asserts Aditi Phadnis.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
Hours after he resigned as Haryana chief minister along with his cabinet ministers, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Manohar Lal Khattar Tuesday hinted that he may be fielded by the party in the coming Lok Sabha polls.
The Delhi chief minister also asked people to vote in the coming Lok Sabha polls to elect an MP, not the prime minister, saying the MP would "work for you during tough times".
'When our daughters, wrestlers Sakshi Malik and Vignesh Phogat, were protesting at the Jantar Mantar, the police kicked them with their shoes.'
No violation of rules or regulations were found in the transfer of land by businessman Robert Vadra's Skylight Hospitality to realty major DLF, the Haryana government has told the Punjab and Haryana high court in Chandigarh.
'They refuse to be transparent. They refuse to be accountable.'
The Samajwadi Party announced on Saturday that it would walk out of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi after Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray chief Uddhav Thackeray's close aide hailed the demolition of Babri mosque and a related newspaper advertisement.
Maha Vikas Aghadi constituents -- the Congress, the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray, and the Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar -- are still struggling to resolve internal differences over certain seats and fix an agreeable formula for the assembly polls even though the deadline for filing nominations is closing on October 29.
They stated that when a soldier fights for the nation, he does so not as a Hindu, Muslim, or any other religion, but as a patriot.
Narendra Modi (Gujarat), Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Rajnath Singh (Uttar Pradesh), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana), Sarbananda Sonowal (Assam), H D Kumaraswamy (Karnataka), and Jitan Ram Manjhi (Bihar).
In a bizarre promise to youths of Haryana ahead of the assembly polls this year, Bharatiya Janata Party leader O P Dhankar has said he will bring brides from Bihar for them if they are unable to find a match in the state infamous for its skewed sex ratio.
KC Venugopal mentioned that the Congress's goal is to diminish the BJP's representation in Uttar Pradesh by securing half of the seats in the state.
The strains are telling as old friends and new enemies face each other in the battlefield.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Monday hit out at the Election Commission for the 'tone and tenor' of its recent letter to his party while also urging the poll body to act against 'communal and incendiary rhetoric' allegedly used by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma during poll campaigns.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's bypoll win in four of the six seats it contested has invigorated the party ahead of assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
The actor-politician said she must remember that she is not only an artiste but also a BJP member now and her statements should be in line with her party's policies.
A deputy superintendent of police investigating illegal stone-mining was killed on Tuesday when a truck he signalled to stop in Haryana's Nuh district drove into him, officials said.
Anil Vij on Tuesday skipped Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini's swearing-in ceremony where, he would also have been inducted in the cabinet.
The move came days after the Supreme Court vacated the stay imposed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on the trial in three sacrilege cases.
As part of country-wide fill-the-jail campaign against fuel price hike, a number of BJP leaders and workers on Friday courted arrest in Punjab and Haryana.
'The biggest near-term risk to Indian equities is the outflow of investments to China as tactical trades by foreign investors.'
Zee Entertainment Enterprises, co-producer of Kangana Ranaut's film Emergency, on Friday told the Bombay high court it has agreed to the cuts suggested by the censor board.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday evening discussed the party's strategy ahead at a meeting of the Parliamentary Board, its highest decision-making body.
The assembly polls in Maharashtra will be held in a single phase while Jharkhand polls will be held in two phases, the Election Commission of India announced on Tuesday.
Around 10 people were injured Saturday as police allegedly lathi-charged a group of farmers disrupting traffic movement on a highway while heading towards Karnal to protest against a BJP meeting.
In the wake of forthcoming assembly polls in Haryana, retired bureaucrats and police officers are in the fray to test political waters in the 'jat' heartland which goes to polls on October 15.
They joined the BJP in the presence of Sports and Youth Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, party's general secretary in charge of Haryana Anil Jain and its state chief Subhash Barala.
