Parliamentarians and legislators across the country voted on Monday to elect India's 15th president, choosing between opposition pick Yashwant Sinha and National Democratic Alliance nominee Droupadi Murmu who is favoured to win the battle to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday constituted another five-judge Constitution bench which will hear five crucial cases including the challenge to the central government's 2016 decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes.
No one from the Gandhi family was present at the All India Congress Committee headquarters when the leaders filed their nominations for the election.
Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, senior leaders K C Venugopal, P Chidambaram and Salman Khurshid were among the party's top brass taking part in the satyagraha at Rajghat.
Addressing a gathering after the 'bhoomi pujan' of a bottling plant here, Adityanath said people are seeing that those who showed little respect for law and order earlier were now running for their lives.
According to sources in the Congress, eight legislators are likely to be sworn in as ministers along with them.
'Was an NDA meeting held to decide if the Shiv Sena has to be removed from the NDA?'
The BJP appointed Sunil Bansal, one of the party's key election managers, as its national general secretary and in charge of three opposition-ruled states -- West Bengal, Odisha and Telangana -- in run-up to the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
Das lost his seat to Independent candidate Saryu Roy by over 15000 votes. He said the BJP's failure to cling on to the alliance with AJSU is the reason for its loss.
The appointments holds significance as a large number of senior leaders, who had no organisational post currently, have now been given new responsibilities.
With the Biju Janata Dal backing the National Democratic Alliance's presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu, the vote share of the ruling dispensation has now crossed 50 percent, virtually paving the way for her election as the first tribal President and the youngest too.
The Congress may stand a better chance in the assembly polls if it followed the 'Himachal model', suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Whatever tricks the BJP may play, it will not be able to stop JD-U from becoming a national party by 2023'
He thanked Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and his father and JMM president Shibu Soren.
'As long as Amul was coming in with products it was not a problem because it was something value added and with a shelf life.' 'When it gets into the local market by procuring locally, it cuts into the market-share of local cooperatives.'
Karnataka, by reposing its faith in BSY, remains a Hindutva stronghold, reports R Rajagopalan.
Droupadi Murmu scripted history on Thursday by becoming India's first tribal President in the one-sided contest, defeating Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
L Murugan, 44, is the only newly-sworn minister who is not a member of Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha.
A senior TMC leader will be present at the proposed meeting, he said.
After the outstanding victory of Hemant Soren's Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, his younger brother Basant Soren on Tuesday said that the JMM-led alliance will form the government in two-three days. "As the people's mandate is with us, we are forming the government in 2-3 days," Basant told media reporters.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday said R C P Singh, whom his Janata Dal-United has denied another term in the Rajya Sabha, does not need to resign as a Union minister ahead of the expiry of his Rajya Sabha tenure.
To beat BJP, you either deny them a critical mass of Hindu vote or build a regional leader and party strong enough to protect their turf, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Mayawati was outmanoeuvred by the BJP in the race for the Rajya Sabha in Uttar Pradesh just days after she helped the Samajwadi Party snatch two Lok Sbaha seats from the saffron party in bypolls.
From the point of view of qualification, Murmu is probably educationally the least qualified among India's recent Presidents. But then, with the BJP in command, she will be required to do little but sign on the dotted line.
"Terms like 'unity in diversity' are used for our country. The country belongs to all. No remarks should me made that harm the country," Singh, a confidant of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, told reporters when asked for his reaction to the BJP leader's comments.
After its outstanding performance in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in three states, the Bharatiya Janata Party is aiming at smashing the world record of China's Communist Party by registering 10 crore new members by March-end during its ongoing membership drive across the country.
'In Punjab, disappointment among the people about the AAP government has already set in.'
The Centre told the Supreme Court on Monday that religious freedom does not include a fundamental right to convert other people to a particular religion and that it certainly does not embrace the right to convert an individual through fraud, deception, coercion or allurement.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United said it was the right time to withdraw the general consent to the CBI.
Amid a buzz that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar may emerge as the opposition's prime ministerial candidate, his party Janata Dal-United said on Friday if other parties want so, then this is an option.
Yadav, during his first visit to Guwahati, said he has already spoken to Congress and will hold talks with the All India United Democratic Front later in the day to formalise the alliance.
P Chidambaram and Rajeev Shukla of the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party's Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar, former Congress leader Kapil Sibal, Rashtriya Janata Dal's Misa Bharti and Jayant Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal were among the 41 winners declared elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha.
The saffron party also pledged to provide financial assistance to high school students hailing from backward and poor families.
All 41 candidates from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Telangana were elected unopposed on Friday after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.
Why weren't the chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra and Telangana -- all of which have borders with Karnataka -- not invited to Saturday's swearing-in ceremony, asks Shyam G Menon.
Before the ceremony, Yogi Adityanath, who led the party to a thumping victory in the just-concluded elections, will be elected as the leader of the legislature party, party sources said.
A group of people had lynched 40-year-old Alimuddin Ansari in Bazaar Tand locality of Ramgarh town on June 29, 2017, on the suspicion that he was carrying beef in his car.
The Congress Working Committee, the party's top-decision making body, would soon meet to deliberate further on the Chintan Shivir plans, the sources said.
While the term of 288-member Maharashtra assembly ends on November 9, that of the 90-member Haryana assembly expires on November 2.
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