An average voter turnout of 20 per cent was recorded in the first four hours of voting in the bypolls to 15 assembly seats spread across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala and Uttarakhand on Wednesday amid an incident of stone pelting in a village in UP's Meerapur and allegations of police personnel deterring voters from casting their ballot.
In the letter sent on Sunday, the Lok Sabha MP from Amravati has demanded strict action against Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay PandeY.
The couple was arrested on April 23 by the Mumbai police following their public declaration of reciting the Hanuman Chalisa outside Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's private residence 'Matoshree' in Bandra.
Surat police commissioner Anupam Singh Gehlot identified the arrested accused as Maulvi Sohel Abubakr Timol (27), who worked at a thread factory as a manager and offered private tuition on Islam to Muslim children.
Jammu and Kashmir BJP chief Ravinder Raina, seeking re-election from Nowshera assembly constituency of Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir, is facing a major challenge from his former party colleague Surinder Choudhary.
Member of Parliament Navneet Rana and her MLA husband Ravi Rana have "undoubtedly crossed the line of freedom of speech" guaranteed under the Constitution, but mere expression of derogatory or objectionable words may not be a sufficient ground for invoking the charge of sedition against them, a special court in Mumbai has said.
At least six people were killed and three others injured when explosives kept in a truck went off in a coal mine in West Bengal's Birbhum district on Monday, a police officer said.
Hours before the ceremony, Saini visited the Valmiki Bhawan and offered prayers at a gurdwara and the Mansa Devi temple in Panchkula.
National Conference leader Omar Abdullah was sworn in as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, the first elected government in the Union Territory since 2019 when Article 370 was abrogated.
Bypolls are due in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
Himachal is first state in the country to pass such a bill under which "A person shall not be entitled for pension under the Act, if he has been disqualified at any point of time under the tenth schedule of the Constitution".
'Neither did I approach the BJP nor did they ask me to join them. It was a natural choice for both of us to make.' 'It was never for me to ask or for them to give.'
Rebel Himachal Pradesh Congress MLA Rajinder Rana on Saturday claimed that nine more party legislators 'feeling suffocated' due to Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's style of functioning are in touch with him as he called the chief minister 'liar number one'.
The withdrawal of the candidature by DPAP leaders on the last day on August 30 is seen as a boost to the NC-Congress alliance.
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) is poised to form the first elected government in Jammu and Kashmir, having secured a victory in the assembly elections by securing 49 out of 90 seats on which polls were held for the first time since the abrogation of Article 370 five years ago.
Kumar also hinted that the Maharashtra elections could be held after Diwali.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday named its candidates for assembly bypolls in several states, fielding six disqualified MLAs of the Himachal Pradesh assembly in the state days after they joined the party after leaving the Congress.
High drama was witnessed during the Himachal Pradesh Cabinet meeting on Saturday with ministers Jagat Negi and Rohit Thakur leaving midway following a 'heated debate' over policy decisions, sources said.
After sitting over the warrant against legislators accused of inciting the Muzaffarnagar riots, the Akhilesh Yadav government finally got into the act and arrested Bhartiya Janata Party MLA Suresh Rana in Lucknow on Friday evening.
The returnees also included three independent MLAs, who too had landed in Panchkula on Tuesday after casting their votes in the Rajya Sabha election.
The counting was scheduled to start at 5 pm Friday, but it could not be taken up as the Bharatiya Janata Party approached the Election Commission alleging violation of rules by three MLAs of the state's ruling alliance of Maha Vikas Aghadi.
A Bharatiya Janata Party MLA in Punjab was allegedly thrashed and his clothes torn by a group of farmers at Malout in Muktsar district on Saturday, police said.
Amid cross-voting, BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan on Tuesday won the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Himachal Pradesh, defeating ruling Congress' Abhishek Manu Singhvi, officials said.
Though Sukhu has been putting up a brave face and there appears to be no immediate threat to his government, the BJP is looking to bring down his dispensation with bypoll wins amid a view that it may draw more legislators of the ruling party into its fold.
The announcement from the Congress lawmaker brought fore cracks in the party, which on Tuesday lost the sole Rajya Sabha seat to the Bharatiya Janata Party and is apparently scrambling to keep its members together to prevent the fall of its government.
The BJP in Himachal has its own problems. But it is not a party that sits around twiddling its thumbs.
A few former MLAs, considered to be his loyalists and a few supporters, turned up at Sidhu's residence in Patiala Friday morning to extend moral support to him.
A notification in this regard was issued on Thursday evening which further said that these six MLAs ceased to be members of Himachal Pradesh legislative assembly with effect from February 29.
These Congress rebels, who had voted in favour of the BJP nominee in the Rajya Sabha polls, later abstained from voting on the Budget, defying a party whip.
Sanjay Rana, who is associated with YouTube channel Moradabad Ujjala, was booked after a video of the event surfaced online and a local Bharatiya Janata Party youth wing leader filed a complaint.
In the wake of a political row in Maharashtra over the recitation of Hanuman Chalisa, the Shiv Sena on Monday hit out at the BJP and said the Hindutva ideology is a culture and not chaos.
The one-year-old Himachal Pradesh Cabinet headed by Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu was expanded on Tuesday with the induction of Rajesh Dharmani and Yadvinder Goma as cabinet ministers.
Bharatiya Janata Party member of Legislative Assembly Suresh Rana, who was arrested for his alleged role in fanning communal violence in Muzaffarnagar, was booked on Thursday under the National Security Act.
NCP leader Fahmida Hasan Khan wants HM Amit Shah's nod to read scriptures of all faith outside PM house.
Indicating a rift within the party after its split with the ruling Janata Dal-United in Bihar, a Bharatiya Janata Party member of Legislative Assembly on Wednesday said that state Chief Minister Nitish Kumar would be a "better" prime minister than Narendra Modi and blamed his party for the break up of the coalition.
The disqualified MLAs are Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Devinder Kumar Bhutoo, Ravi Thakur and Chetanya Sharma.
"One nation, one law can be understood. But we will never accept one nation, one party plan of the BJP", Thackeray said.
Shiv Sena MP Shrikant Shinde on Tuesday tore into the Uddhav Thackeray faction for 'abandoning' Hindutva and Bal Thackeray's ideology and even recited the Hanuman Chalisa in Lok Sabha as his party opposed the no-confidence motion against the Modi government.
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Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Legislative Assembly Sangeet Som, who was arrested for his alleged role in the Muzzafarnagar riots speeches, was on Tuesday detained under the stringent National Security Act.
Bihar's Ruling Janata Dal-United legislator Anant Singh was arrested on Wednesday in a case of kidnapping and extortion at Bihita in rural Patna.
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