Here's how political leaders across the country celebrated the festival of colours.
A fierce competition among parties to offer freebies and guarantees, a scramble for tribal, OBC, women votes and a touch of Hindutva -- all have combined to make the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls a high-stakes battle with main rivals BJP and the Congress pulling out all the stops to gain power.
The EOW conducted searches at the house of PC Singh, the bishop of the Church of North India Jabalpur Diocese, on Thursday morning following registration of a case of cheating against him.
The BJP has played the social engineering card in Rajasthan with an eye on the Lok Sabha election where the party will try and retain all the 25 seats that it had won in the 2014 and 2019 elections.
The police on Wednesday arrested Pravesh Shukla, accused of urinating on the victim, Dashmat Rawat, who belongs to a tribal community.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Opposition Congress in Madhya Pradesh, where assembly polls are due by 2023-end, are not attaching much importance to the presence of the AAP and the AIMIM citing the largely bipolar politics of the state.
Many exit polls have kept the incumbent Bharatiya Janata party ahead of the Congress in what was a straight contest between two main parties. Assembly polls were held in the state in a single phase on November 17.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, however, was conspicuous by her absence at the event, which was attended by tens of thousands of people as the Congress sought to promote opposition unity.
Jyotiraditya lost out on the chance to be among the youngest chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh, as Kamal Nath, 72, was picked for the top job in the state.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday picked first-time MLA Bhajan Lal Sharma as Rajasthan's new chief minister, ending days of speculation that followed its victory in the assembly polls.
June rainfall accounts for 15 percent of the total precipitation of 87 cm recorded during the four-month monsoon season in the country.
Terming it as an important day in history, Shah said Madhya Pradesh has become the first state in the country to start the MBBS course in Hindi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar supremo Sharad Pawar were among the famous faces who queued up at the polling booths on Tuesday to caste their votes in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
Amid a plethora of Bharatiya Janata Party bigwigs, Manohar Lal Khattar and his council of ministers took the oath of office at Panchkula on Sunday.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
Ahead of the last Assembly polls, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had promised to implement a farm loan waiver scheme in the state if the party came to power.
Voting for the bypolls in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were held on Wednesday.
Nath, 72, reached Bhopal late in night to be greeted with chants of 'Jai Jai Kamal Nath' by his supporters.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Sunday took note of religious conversions, saying that an anti-conversion law should be made to stop such acts.
Chouhan also said the state government has developed cow sanctuaries and shelters, but they require the participation of society for better functioning.
A girl, around 12 years of age, was found bleeding on a street in Ujjain city of Madhya Pradesh, and her medical examination confirmed that she had been raped, police said on Wednesday.
The longest-serving Bharatiya Janata Party chief minister and popularly known as mama (maternal uncle) and 'paon-paon wale bhaiya' (foot soldier), Shivraj Singh Chouhan has emerged as the hero of his party's stunning victory in the state assembly elections.
Nath's resignation brought an end to the 18-day-long political drama which also played out in Haryana, Bengaluru and the national capital.
Stepping up its attack, the Congress party on Monday said that Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan cannot escape responsibility for the "45 deaths" connected to Vyapam scam and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take "moral responsibility".
The Congress will conduct a caste census in Madhya Pradesh after winning the assembly polls and establish a university in the name of Sant Ravidas, said party president Mallikarjun Kharge, accusing the regime at the Centre of wishing to change the Constitution.
His son and party chief Akhilesh Yadav lit the funeral pyre. The former Uttar Pradesh CM had died aged 82 at a private hospital in Haryana's Gurugram on Monday.
In the video, Nath was talking to Raghuvanshi's supporters when he made the remarks about former CM Digvijaya Singh and his son.
In a tweet on Wednesday morning, Singh said, 'Instead of answering my question they have filed FIR against me. Is that Democracy BJP Model or Modi Model? What about the Hate speeches made by BJP and RW fraud Babas?'
Life on the election campaign trail can be hard!
The 61-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party leader was sworn in by Governor Lalji Tandon at Raj Bhawan here at 9 pm.
'The party is breaking stereotypes by not inviting senior leaders to become chief ministers.' 'No other party has had the guts to do this.'
A 10.5-kilometer-long stretch will be opened for traffic in the first phase, an official earlier said, adding that motorists can enter the coastal road from Worli Seaface, Haji Ali interchange and Amarson's interchange points, and exit at Marine Lines.
He also rejected reports that have hinted possible increase in coronavirus cases due to migrants and asked, "Did corona not spread at places where migrants were not there?"
Fourteen priests, including 'sevaks' (assistants), were injured in a fire that broke out in the Mahakal Temple in Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh on Monday during 'bhasma aarti', an official said.
Kanugolu had also made forays in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh following a directive from the party's central leadership but regional satraps Ashok Gehlot and Kamal Nath reportedly were not on the same page as the poll strategist.
The Bharatiya Janata Party swept Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh on Sunday inflicting a resounding defeat on the Congress to tighten its stranglehold in the Hindi heartland, in a big boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and setting the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Electioneering ended in Madhya Pradesh at 6 pm except in Naxalites-hit districts of Balaghat, Mandla and Dindori, where campaigning drew to a close early at 3 pm.
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.
The chief ministers of five mineral-rich states on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for local value addition in the National Mineral Policy (NMP). They also argued that foreign firms must not be allowed to grab control of prized natural resources. The team consisted of Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Chhatishgarh CM Raman Singh, Jharkhand CM Madhu Koda, Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Rajasthan's Vasundhara Raje.
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