Jammu and Kashmir registered its highest turn-out in assembly elections in the last 25 years with an estimated 65 per cent of voters casting their votes, as the fifth and final phase of polling ended on Saturday. Jharkhand, which also went to the polls along with J&K, broke all previous polling records to witness over 66 per cent of turn-out in the five phases, bettering the previous mark of 54.2 per cent in the 2004 assembly poll.
The party has fielded Parvati Das for the by-election to the Bageshwar assembly seat in Uttarakhand and Lijinlal G for the Puthuppally assembly seat in Kerala.
Though the extended tenure of incumbent president JP Nadda ends on June 30, a recent amendment in the BJP's constitution has empowered its apex body, the Parliamentary Board, to take a call related to a president, including his term, in "emergency" situations.
Given the dismal show of the Congress in the recently concluded assembly polls and the JMM eating into its vote bank, the possibility of Congress MLAs switching sides is not bleak, reports R Krishna Das.
Asked how many seats INDIA bloc will get, Gandhi said, "Have you heard Sidhu Moose Wala's song '295'? So 295 (seats)."
'Considering the seriousness of the situation, the state government has decided to extend the lockdown till July 31,' Chief Minister Hemant Soren said in a tweet.
'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.'
'I welcome Droupadi Murmu as the first Adivasi woman President of India, but her track record has not been good as a politician and governor of Jharkhand when it came to helping Adivasis,' points out activist Gladson Dungdung.
BJP now governs 35% of country's landmass as against 71% in 2017. 43% of country's population is now governed by the BJP or allies in the states as against over 69 per cent two years ago. In all 3 state polls since its Lok Sabha win, BJP's vote share has fallen by big margins.
The Election Commission of India has set up more than 200 polling stations within housing societies in the urban areas of Uttar Pradesh to increase the voter turnout in the politically crucial state.
The 19-year-old partnership ended after the ruling party refused to accede to the ally's demand for 17 of 81 seats.
Political observers lauded the SP's choices in fielding several non-Yadav and Scheduled Caste candidates, the party's alliance with the Congress, and Rahul Gandhi's campaign around the danger to the Constitution if the BJP won a big majority.
Now, every state election -- first up, Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand later this year, then Delhi in January and Bihar in September next year -- will be seen by his followers for evidence of his recovery, and by rivals of sharpening decline, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Exigencies of electoral politics and individual ambitions often stoke family feuds and sibling rivalries.
Over 60 per cent voter turnout was recorded on Monday in 49 constituencies in six states and two Union territories in the fifth phase of Lok Sabha elections, with Baramulla in Jammu and Kashmir recording its highest-ever voting percentage.
A maximum of 92,000 personnel of CAPFs are likely to be deployed in politically volatile West Bengal, where elections will be held in seven phases, followed by 63,500 personnel in militancy-hit Jammu and Kashmir, where polling will be held in five phases.
The Yatra comes a day after the Congress was left high and dry with former ally Nitish Kumar, the Bihar chief minister, making a return to the BJP-led NDA.
While the coalition will not be unstable because of pressures, the effort from partners will be to constantly remind the central government and the BJP how much it is dependent on them.
Close to half of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats are bracing for multi-cornered fight this time, making the contest way more interesting and intense than it was in the 2019 elections.
There is little doubt that the prime minister's own charisma exceeds that of his party, but 2024 is proof that no party can ultimately depend on one person to deliver victory all the time, points out R Jagannathan.
Modi insisted that the Jharkhand government had worked day and night to end corruption over the last five years.
His first stint as chief minister of the tribal state had lasted for just about 14 months since July 15, 2013.
Many issues dog the Mahagathbandhan of the Congress, Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the most prominent of which is seat sharing.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal mounted a blazing campaign in the hot summer after he was released from the Tihar jail on interim bail on May 10, drawing huge crowds at rallies and roadshows, but it proved insufficient to propel his Aam Aadmi Party past the Bharartiya Janata Party challenge in the national capital.
The value of the vote of a member of Parliament has gone down to 700 from 708 in the presidential poll scheduled for July 18 due to the absence of a legislative assembly in Jammu and Kashmir.
It's obvious to all that the Congress is overestimating its success and the BJP is underestimating the people's message delivered through the ballot box, notes Sheela Bhatt.
The seven seats -- Bageshwar in Uttarakhand, Ghosi in Uttar Pradesh, Puthuppally in Kerala, Dhupguri in West Bengal, Dumri in Jharkhand, and Boxanagar and Dhanpur in Tripura -- went to poll on September 5.
Although the back-fence talk was that the AJSU would return to the BJP if the Jharkhand verdict was inconclusive, the AJSU's Deosharan Bhagat rejected the hearsay. 'Jharkhand was born out of a long agitation and we were one of the agitators. We won't allow people's hopes to die with short-term compromises. Our slogan is our rule, our government,' he said. Another Sena and Mahato as another Uddhav Thackeray, asks Radhika Ramaseshan.
The BJP's top leadership will drop its MPs found to be facing anti-incumbency, according to its internal surveys -- a pivotal tactic to ensure the party achieves its target of winning 370 seats.
Prime Minister Modi saw a reflection of himself -- she does not come from a political background, has no lineage, and had a lifetime of personal struggle and sacrifice.
BJP on Thursday released its manifesto for the Jharkhand assembly polls.
Facing opposition fire for exit polls allegedly being used for stock market manipulation, Axis My India's chief Pradeep Gupta has said he is open to facing all kinds of investigations and it would help do business in a much better way if the government frames specific regulations for pollsters.
rivals Congress, JMM and TMC and Samajwadi Party.
The BJP, which rules the Centre, is in power in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and is all set to get Madhya Pradesh back and snatch Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress after today's vote count.
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.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
In the last five years, 480 candidates with declared cases related to hate speech have contested elections to state assemblies, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, the ADR said.
The 17th Lok Sabha, which was dissolved on June 5, did not have a deputy speaker for its full term, and it was the second consecutive term of the lower house without an LoP.
Soren losing to Jharkhand Party candidate Gopal Krishna by a margin of 9000 votes clearly shows that the people of Jharkhand have rejected him to continue as the chief minister, BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad told media persons in New Delhi on Thursday.
Jharkhand Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Arjun Munda on Thursday won the Kharsawan assembly by-poll, defeating his nearest Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantric) opponent Dasrath Gagrai by over 17,000 votes. The by-poll was necessitated as Munda has to enter the state assembly within the mandatory six months period after becoming the chief minister on September 11 last year. BJP sitting MLA Mangal Singh Soy had resigned two months ago.
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