The Madhya Pradesh Congress filed a police complaint on Sunday, claiming that a fake letter was made viral on social media to create the impression that its senior leader Digvijaya Singh resigned after the party released the first list of its candidates for the upcoming assembly polls.
Since Wednesday morning, around 45-odd MLAs met Bharti.
Ministers Gauri Shankar Shejwar and Arun Mishra, who is also Vajpayee's nephew and state Legislature Party secretary Dhyanendra Singh met Vajpayee for about 30 minutes, the sources said.
Imarati Devi, Tulsi Silawat, Govind Singh Rajput, Mahendra Singh Sisodiya, Pradyumn Singh Tomar and Prabhuram Chaudhari were removed from the cabinet with immediate effect on Friday, said a Public Relations Department official.
Lodhi, who represented the Bada Malhera assembly seat in Chhatarpur district, joined the BJP at the ruling party's state headquarters in the presence of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Union ministers Ravneet Singh Bittu and George Kurian were elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha Tuesday along with senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi and former minister Upendra Kushwaha.
The development came against the backdrop of the ruling party accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party of trying to poach its MLAs to topple the Kamal Nath-led government, which enjoys a wafer thin majority in the House, and imminent expansion of the state Cabinet.
Moderate to high turnout was recorded in 13 assembly constituencies across seven states where bypolls were held on Wednesday amid sporadic incidents of violence in Uttarakhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
Election to fill up 55 seats in the Upper House of Parliament was to be held on March 26, but 37 candidates have already been elected without a contest.
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief J P Nadda and new party entrant Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan were among the 41 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will witness polling on February 27.
Nath has been reprimanded for repeated violations of the model code while campaigning for the bypolls in 28 assembly constituencies in the state.
The Congress on Tuesday suffered a major upset in Himachal Pradesh at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya Sabha elections which were marred by cross-voting in all the three states though it won three seats in Karnataka while the saffron party pocketed an extra seat in Uttar Pradesh.
To adopt the January-December financial year cycle, the government needs to shrink the current financial year to three quarters and present the new annual budget to the state legislative assembly for its passage in December.
Women politicians bring to politics and policy a sensitivity that most of their male counterparts, at least until a generation back, lacked.
BJP candidate and minister Kunvarji Bavaliya defeated his nearest rival Congress nominee Avsar Nakiya by a margin of 19,979 votes, officials said.
With the passage of the bill, Madhya Pradesh becomes the first state in the country where those convicted of such rapes will face the gallows.
The year-end assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Mizoram, the dates for which were announced by the Election Commission on Friday, have acquired a special significance as the results of these polls are expected to set the tone for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
"The state government has taken an important decision that government jobs will be given to youths of Madhya Pradesh. We are making necessary legal provisions for this. Resources of Madhya Pradesh are meant for children of the state," Chouhan said in a video statement.
It is speculated that Scindia, known to be very close to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, met the legislators in a bid to feel their pulses in the wake of developments in Karnataka and Goa.
The opposition is likely to put up a joint candidate for the July 18 presidential election despite not having numbers on its side, and consultations in this regard have already begun.
A large part of the productive time in Parliament is spent on non-legislative matters such as discussion on motion of thanks by the President, conduct of fellow MPs and so on.
Reacting to the voting, chief minister Kamal Nath said, "The BJP says daily that we are a minority government and one which could fall any day."
The leaders of the Opposition INDIA bloc are meeting on Monday morning ostensibly to redraw their strategies to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP both inside the Parliament and in the electoral arena.
Describing the unrest among party members as just the "tip of the iceberg," the report shed light on the underlying discontent within the BJP.
Out of the candidates announced so far, 65 are below the age of 50 years and 19 are women, he said.
While the BJP and the Congress have always supported the bill, opposition by other parties and demands from some for quota for backward classes within the women's quota have been key sticking points.
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.
The party has already denied tickets to 14 of the 49 legislators who had won last time.
'At no point did Kamal Nath and Digvijaya indicate that the Opposition bloc was formed only to fight the Lok Sabha polls.'
The EVMs are based on a technology where they work as aggregator of votes in direct elections such as the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
Extensive arrangements have been made due to the COVID-19 pandemic including personal protective equipment kits for election staff, more polling booths, thermal screening, sanitisers, masks and gloves for voters and markings to ensure social distancing, officials said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress on Sunday were set to share the honours in the Lok Sabha and assembly bye-elections in 13 states.
Bharatiya Janata Party nominee S Selvaganapathy was declared elected unopposed to the lone seat in Rajya Sabha from Puducherry, the first time the saffron party has got representation in the Upper House from the Union Territory, while Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's two nominees, Kanimozhi N V N Somu and K R N Rajeshkumar, were elected without contest from Tamil Nadu.
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 EVMs, officials explained, are not designed to register this system of voting.
Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav on Tuesday said he was in favour of extending reservation benefits to Muslims but emphasised that it should be based on social backwardness and 'not on the basis of religion'.
In the video, Nath was talking to Raghuvanshi's supporters when he made the remarks about former CM Digvijaya Singh and his son.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday released its second list for the upcoming assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, fielding three Union ministers.
Senior Congress leaders accused the BJP of trying to bring down the party-led government, which is surviving on support of over half a dozen independent, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs.
Kamal Nath said that the Bharatiya Janata Party was perturbed as its "corruption over its 15-year rule is going to be exposed"
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances