From President Pranab Mukherjee's son Abhijit to Rahul and Varun Gandhi, at least 50 parliamentary constituencies will be contested by 'sons and daughters' of politicians of various parties during the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
The council said it takes serious cognisance of the alleged data manipulation by the CSDS and its attempt to create a narrative to undermine the sanctity of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi reiterated his vote theft allegations and criticized the Election Commission for demanding an affidavit to support his claims. He alleged collusion between the EC and BJP to steal the Lok Sabha election and called for investigation into election irregularities.
The Election Commission Saturday approached the Supreme Court to seek permission to hold byelections to the 10 Lok Sabha seats, which had fallen vacant after expulsion of members in the wake of the 'cash-for-queries' scam.
Earlier, I had asked for 12 seats. At the meeting, I requested Rahulji to give at least 10 seats to the JDS, Gowda told reporters.
Apparently not wanting to be left in the lurch if ally Janata Dal-United decided to break the alliance, the state Bharatiya Janata Party unit is bracing itself to contest all 40 parliamentary seats in Bihar.
The highlight of Tuesday's debate on Operation Sindoor was the speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with the rebuttal by Congress's Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi coming a close second.
Voting was adopted as per the directive of the All India Congress Committee for selection of a Congress candidate for the prestigious Guwahati Lok Sabha constituency on Wednesday. There were a total of 7 aspirants for the party poll ticket.
Samal also claimed that the Odisha BJP was confident of winning both the polls.
Giving the clearest indication yet that Pawan Kumar Bansal would be its contestant of choice for the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat, the Congress on Thursday said that the purported "taint" on the former rail minister was all a matter of "speculation which has nothing to do with the truth".
The ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu has won the Erode East bypoll with a massive margin, defeating actor-politician Seeman's NTK. The victory is seen as a boost for the DMK ahead of next year's Assembly elections. DMK candidate V C Chandhirakumar trounced Naam Tamilar Katchi's (NTK) M K Seethalakshmi by a margin of 91,558 votes, leading to the NTK forfeiting its deposit. Chief Minister and DMK president Stalin attributed the win to the DMK government's good governance, while AIADMK chief Edappadi K Palaniswami termed it a "fake" victory. The bypoll was necessitated due to the death of Congress MLA EVKS Elangovan last year.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to announce the names of its candidates for over 150 Lok Sabha seats on Thursday.
Union minister Ramvilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party will contest six seats in Jharkhand, where the party was excluded by three other United Progressive Alliance partners in the seat-sharing arrangement. LJP candidates will contest for Palamu, Chatra, Dhanbad, Hazaribagh, Koderma and Jamshedpur seats out of 14 Jharkhand LS seats, party spokesman Sanjay Singh told PTI in Patna on Tuesday. =
Actor Kamal Haasan launched Makkal Needhi Miam at a public meeting in Madurai in 2018.
Nirmala Bhuria lost to former Union minister Kantilal Bhuria, who wrested the tribal-dominated seat from the BJP by a convincing margin of 88,832 votes.
Polling is scheduled in all 20 seats of Kerala, 14 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, eight seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, six seats in Madhya Pradesh, five seats each in Assam and Bihar, three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and one seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday said it will contest over 350 Lok Sabha seats and vowed to take on tainted candidates and political leaders who have become "symbols" of corruption and criminalisation of politics.
BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Friday won Vadodara Lok Sabha seat by a margin of 5,70,128 votes.
He cautioned the party workers and emphasised the importance of management to ensure electors reach polling booths and cast their votes.
The BJP needs to win maximum number of seats from northeast to strengthen Prime Minister Narendra Modi so that development of the region continues.
Brisk polling was seen for the Wayanad Lok Sabha and the Chelakkara assembly seats in Kerala as they witnessed a turnout of 20.54 and 19.08 per cent, respectively, after the first three hours of voting on Wednesday.
Later, Yeddyurappa said that his remarks were reported out of context.
Both Hassan and Mandya, where the BJP's strength is negligible, are currently held by JD-S, which Congress too is eyeing this time.
Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey emphasised the crucial role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the party's electoral success, stating that the several sections which did not vote for BJP earlier now support the party and it has broken new ground in many states.
The Election Commission on Saturday announced five-phase election dates for Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir
BJP president JP Nadda held a meeting with the ministers on Wednesday to deliberated on the exercise to be held between May 30 and June 15, and to finalise the tour plans.
Pointing out that the party had contested seven seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the state LJP chief said there was no reason why it would settle for less than that for the 2019 elections, or for six Lok Sabha seats and one in Rajya Sabha.
The fate of 961 candidates, including Union ministers Giriraj Singh, Subhash Bhamre, S S Ahluwalia and Babul Supriyo of the BJP and former Union ministers Salman Khurshid and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury of the Congress, will be decided by about 12.79 core voters in the fourth phase.
The opposition parties snatched the high-profile Kairana LS seat in from BJP with a united force.
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.
'I tried a public donation drive to support my campaign for progressive politics without much success so far. I also tried to cut down the projected campaign spending to the minimum'
The daily said the DMK president, in his address at the 'Mupperum Vizha' on June 15 in Coimbatore, "stood tall by dedicating the victory to the DMK cadres, workers of parties of the INDIA bloc and all the leaders" of the alliance parties.
Former Bharatiya Janata Party president M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday made a presentation before the BJP parliamentary board on how the party should approach the Lok Sabha polls.
This has invited sharp reaction from the Opposition, with the Samajwadi Party saying that the BJP was afraid of its defeat in Milkipur due to which it moved the court for "stalling" polls on the assembly seat.
Gandhi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the "champion of corruption".
The Supreme Court Monday declined to grant permission to the Election Commission to hold polls in May for 10 Lok Sabha seats left vacant following expulsion of members of Parliament in the wake of the 'cash-for-query' scam.
The notable names in the BJP's first list include Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Hema Malini from Mathura, Ajay Mishra Teni from Kheri, Smriti Irani from Amethi, Lallu Singh from Faizabad (Ayodhya) and Mahendra Nath Pandey from Chandauli among others.
Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Odisha will be held simultaneously in the first phase.
The leaders of the two parties discussed the possibilities of seat sharing but did not divulge any details.
Kumar said the increase was due to Outer Manipur being counted twice, since polls will be held there in two phases.
