Sometimes, it pays to be single. This seems to be the message Arun Gawli's Akhil Bharatiya Sena has given through its performance during the past two years and ahead of the 13th Assembly election in Maharashtra. The gangster-turned-politician's party has not only utilised 100 per cent of the MLA's fund for local area development, but is also the only party to do so.
'The intention is to let the governor know that we have the majority and the letters of support is the proof.'
Maharashtra government will file cases against the security guards of embattled IPL commissioner Lalit Modi for physically assaulting journalists, Chief Minister Ashok Chavan told the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
Rutuja Latke, the candidate of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), secured a comfortable win in the bypoll to Andheri (East) Assembly seat in Mumbai on Sunday, while votes polled in favour of the None of the Above (NOTA) option obtained the second position.
It said the Congress will infuse new blood in leadership roles without creating new fault lines and cementing its ideological moorings.
Maharashtra government has requested the Centre to rename the Bombay high court as the High Court, Mumbai, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said on Tuesday.
The situation is currently under control, Beed Superintendent of Police Nandkumar Thakur told PTI.
Maharashtra Home Minister R R Patil on Tuesday said top police officials would be held responsible if the dance bars and hookah parlors are found functioning in areas under their jurisdiction.
All 37 rebel Shiv Sena MLAs who are camping in Guwahati on Thursday sent a letter to Maharashtra Assembly's Deputy Speaker Narhari Zirwal, stating that Eknath Shinde will remain their group leader in legislature.
The government was formed 10 days after Shinde raised a banner of revolt against the Shiv Sena leadership. Forty out of 55 Sena MLAs sided with Shinde, which resulted in the collapse of the two-and-a-half-year-old Maha Vikas Aghadi dispensation comprising the Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.
Mamata Banerjee was on Sunday formally elected Trinamool Congress's Legislature Party leader.Two days after her party stormed to power with three-fourths majority, ending 34 years of Left Front rule in West Bengal, the name of 56-year-old Banerjee as TCLP leader was proposed by Subrata Bakshi.
In its exit poll released after the voting on May 10, India Today-Axis My India predicted a clear majority for the Congress with 122-140 seats and gave the BJP 62-80 seats. It gave 20-25 seats to the JD-S.
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.
Veteran legislator Ganpatrao Deshmukh on Sunday created history by winning his 11th assembly election.
Shiv Sena is confident that Prime Minister Narendra Modi won't join hands with a "Naturally Corrupt Party". Prasanna D Zore reports
The petitioners alleged that the governor has acted in a "partisan manner" and allowed himself to be a "pawn in the BJP's illegal usurpation of power".
The wrangling between the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party over portfolio allocation may lead to a delay in convening of the maiden session of the 12th Maharashtra assembly. The three-day session, where legislators in the 288-member House would be sworn in and a Speaker elected, is scheduled to begin from November 3. However, in the absence of swearing-in of the new ministry, after which a cabinet meeting approves a resolution.
Archis Mohan decodes Bharatiya Janata Party's pre-presidential poll manoeuvres.
Ashok Chavan, the Congress' choice of Maharashtra chief minister for the second time, on Sunday said the state cabinet would be formed after the meeting of Nationalist Congress Party Member of Legislative Assembly on Monday and added that Raj Thackeray's support would not be taken to form the government.
But one thing is clear -- the moment the outcomes are announced on October 22, all these speculations and wild guesses passed off as educated surmises and conclusions would be forgotten till the next round.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said he had proposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership to make Eknath Shinde, who had rebelled against the Shiv Sena leadership, the new chief minister after the collapse of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government last week.
'...that he was in talks with the SS-UBT and would return if his ministry was snatched away and given to one of the NCP ministers.'
The MES and some political outfits in Maharashtra have been pressing for this demand on the ground that the district and a few other neighbouring areas of Karnataka have a substantial Marathi speaking population.
Vilasrao Deshmukh, who had earlier come under severe criticism from the Supreme Court for interdicting police action against a Congress member of Legislative Assembly in Maharashtra, came under further attack from an apex court judge who questioned his continuance in the government.
Deputy Speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly Narhari Zirwal on Friday asked the legislature secretary not to respond to the Supreme Court's notice on a plea filed by 12 Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs challenging their one-year suspension.
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, the AAP's Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha alleged that the BJP is offering two options to his party MLAs -- they should either join the saffron party or the CBI-ED will put them in jail.
Former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan on Wednesday pleaded his innocence in the Adarsh housing society scam, saying he never cleared any files relating to the project.
Want to live in Maharashtra, follow these eight rules or get jailed. Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com on the proposed Maharashtra Protection of Internal Security Act.
The new facility was completed within 13 months and is among the fastest green-field projects to be created. Spread across an area of 100 acres of land and with independent assembly facilities for passenger cars and commercial vehicles, the infrastructure can address future expansion, underscoring the long-term growth plans of the company in India.
After years of living with his family in a poky 110 sq. ft. 'house', textile worker Sambhaji Surve dreams of moving into a home four times the size once the Maharashtra government starts its ambitious redevelopment of the 39-acre Kamathipura shanty town in south-central Mumbai. Sharing his dream are about 8,000 other families hoping for a better life when the redevelopment project, part of the government's effort to redevelop old settlements and make life more livable for some residents, gets underway. The Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party aims to redevelop BDD Chawl and Dharavi but for Surve all the matters is Kamathipura where he arrived in the 1970s from Nasik to work in a textile mill. Kamathipura was originally built 150 years ago following construction of a causeway to connect the seven islands of Mumbai. From the British Raj to post-independence, it became infamous for slums and brothels.
Top political leaders of Bihar, including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan, on Monday strongly condemned the attack on Samajwadi Party Member of Legislative Assembly Abu Asim Azmi.Nitish Kumar condemned the incident and declared that it had again exposed the MNS' true colours "We will take the matter up with the Union government as well as the Maharashtra government."
'If the Thackeray cousins love the media, the media too adores the two bespectacled Thackeray scions, who in their bid to espouse their Marathi manoos agenda, have become an easy bait for a medium that depends for its survival on high TRPs and ad revenues.'
Shiv Sena legislators on Monday occupied opposition benches as the special three-day session of Maharashtra assembly began here during which Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis will seek a trust vote as mandated by Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao when he stakes claim to form the government
Union Heavy Industries Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on Friday said that he is not a contender for the chief minister's post in Maharashtra. Speaking to reporters after his meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi, Deshmukh said he would leave the decision to the party high command. Deshmukh, who has headed the state government twice earlier, is claiming the support of fifty Members of Legislative Assembly.
'The timing of the current episode involving Ajit Pawar is important. The episode has elements of deceit, betrayal and falsehood intertwined'
Normalcy returned to the city, recently renamed as 'Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar', even as the government deployed five companies of the State Reserve Police Force as a precaution.
The letter was posted by Shinde on his Twitter handle, claiming these were the sentiments of the Sena MLAs.
The MLAs of the ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition in Jharkhand on Tuesday arrived in Raipur by a chartered flight in a bid to thwart the Bharatiya Janata Party's possible attempt to poach them, and moved into a nearby luxurious resort.
'It is a well-thought-out decision. I feel it is difficult for him now to step back.'
The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on a batch of cross-petitions of Uddhav Thackeray and CM Eknath Shinde factions pertaining to the Maharashtra political crisis.