Allegations of electronic voting machines malfunctioningreturned to haunt the Election Commission as four Lok Sabha seats and nine assembly constituencies went for bypolls on Monday across 10 states with moderate-to-heavy voting amid prestige at stake for the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as opposition parties ahead of the 2019 general elections.
Given the reality of the disparity and the enormous shift over the last 50 years, this can be done without an open and frank conversation with the people, something that has not begun and, knowing the style of our leader, is not expected to begin, asserts Aakar Patel.
The Election Commission on Friday rebuffed Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan for his reported statement that central police force (CPF) personnel would be confined to barracks during by-polls to three assembly seats in the state tomorrow.
'Its people are either victims of corruption or witnesses to it.'
Challenging the rejection, the SIT had approached the high court with a criminal revision plea to quash the court's order.
While the term of 288-member Maharashtra assembly ends on November 9, that of the 90-member Haryana assembly expires on November 2.
She called on all "progressive forces" to join hands to fight the "oppressive BJP regime".
'Kerala will witness a lot of fireworks in Wayanad and a kind of fight that it has not witnessed so far.'
'When an individual becomes authoritarian, you can overthrow the individual easily. 'When the system becomes authoritarian, whoever challenges the system will be called a criminal or an anti-national.'
The opposition party also said that it would like to remind the BJP that Hindu Mahasabha president Syama Prasad Mookerjee aligned with Jinnah's Muslim League to form the government in Bengal during the British rule.
The rejig may take place before the assembly election results for Assam, Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
Governors must be impartial, fair, and above narrow politics to uphold the values and spirit of the Constitution. But in a rapidly changing political culture where the unstated rule is to crush the Opposition, such values have no meaning. At stake are Constitutional values, federalism and governance, asserts Ramesh Menon.
With the assembly poll results in three states being a disappointment for the Congress, some rumblings have begun among the constituents of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) ahead of their meeting on December 6, with many leaders alleging that the grand old party ignored others, but was unable to win elections on its own.
This is a complete betrayal of the mandate of the people of the Sagardighi Assembly constituency, Ramesh said on Twitter.
'Rahul Gandhi wants a group under the name 'new generation'. But look at the people who surround him.'
After a marathon discussion lasting nine hours, the motion was defeated with 87 members opposing it and 40 supporting in the 140-member house with two vacancies.
'Once I went to meet an MLA with a complaint, but he refused to even listen to me.' 'I was insulted. That is when I decided not to vote for anyone.'
Terming the Kerala government's apprehension over safety of the Mullaperiyar dam as "unnecessary", Home Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday claimed it was borne out of "bypoll fear".
Nath said the foot march will enter the central Indian state from Burhanpur district on Wednesday morning.
If the party is unable to do well in Gujarat and Karnataka polls, it could lose this status in the subsequent binneial elections to the upper House.
During his whirlwind election tour in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, also the United Progressive Alliance's chief interlocutor, tells Saubhadra Chatterji the government has its own way of moving against corruption:
Women, if addressed properly, have the potential to become a decisive factor in elections.
In Kerala, the use of black ranges from such convenience to strictures by community and religion to fashion and personal choice. One would have to be really insecure or too fond of the well settled life to see black solely as a badge of protest, points out Shyam G Menon.
Tandon said, after the review meeting at Madurai and Chennai on Tuesday, they would decide on the Tamil Nadu election date.
Talking to reporters at a media briefing, 33-year-old Sreesanth said his name has been cleared by the court in a match-fixing case and he is, therefore, not worried about any Opposition attack on him regarding the controversy.
Candidates or their agents who have received both the doses of Covid-19 vaccine can also enter the counting hall on May 2 when votes for Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu will be counted, according to the guidelines issued on Wednesday.
Justice PV Kunhikrishnan said the prime minister was elected to power by the people of the country and therefore, what was wrong with having his photograph on the vaccination certificate.
'Tamil Nadu is a state of temples, it's a holy land. People don't seem to realise that.'
At its Jaipur meeting, the BJP will focus on this year's assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh while the Congress's Chintan Shivir in Udaipur will discuss how it can resurrect itself.
The bench said that it has to be in exceptional circumstances when the conviction needs to be stayed and it cannot be a norm.
Whenever they are announced, the bypolls to 20 assembly seats in Tamil Nadu will be a mini referendum on the state government's performance. It will also be a do-or-die battle for the ruling AIADMK, opposition DMK, as well as the rebel AMMK, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
There was no move to advance elections to the assembly in Kerala which would be held in the mid-May next year, Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi said on Tuesday.
The mandate will help further the development agenda in these states, with good governance and policy reforms taking centrestage
'What worked for the BJP were three things: Hindu nationalism, religion and a silent but strong anti-Muslim sentiment.'
'Mamata has used minorities only as her vote bank.' 'In her entire election campaign Mamata did not utter a single sentence against the RSS.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party's two-day 'Chintan Baithak' began at Cherai on Wednesday to discuss the party's strategy for the local bodies elections in September and the assembly polls due next year.
'...to come back to power because it was not doing well.'
'The problem is with those who are entrusted with powers.'
'Narendra Modi is one person who came up fighting many injustices. So, he is a fighter all the time, and that makes all the difference.'
Rampant corruption by Congress ministers must be counted as the single biggest factor to prompt the electorate to hand over a thumping mandate to the Communist parties, says M K Bhadrakumar.
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