The suspense over whether Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will contest the polls from Amethi and Raebareli respectively continued.
The Rajya Sabha chairman asked him to authenticate his assertions and refused to accept newspaper clippings that the Congress leader showed to buttress his points.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday took the Congress to the cleaners over making the 2024 general elections about the protection of the Constitution, saying Indians voted on the plank only once when they threw out the Indira Gandhi government in 1977 after the Emergency.
Those who quit included deputy chief minister Y JoyKumar Singh.
National People's Party, a partner in the existing government which won seven seats in the just concluded state poll, will not be a part of the new dispensation, Singh told reporters at his residence.
At least six people were killed and dozens were missing after a massive landslide occurred at a railway construction site in Manipur's Noney district, officials said.
Henry Okram, nephew of former Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Ibobi Singh, Panonam Broken, Oinam Lukhoi Singh, Ngamthang Haokip, Ginsuanhau Zou were inducted into the BJP by its vice president Baijayant Jay Panda.
Violence was reported from some places of the north east state hours before the second phase of polling commenced as a BJP supporter was gunned down allegedly by a Congress worker and a crude bomb exploded outside the residence of an expelled saffron party leader, police said.
Voters include 8.4 crore men, 8.23 crore women and 11,371 from third gender. There are as many as 35.67 lakh first time voters, besides 3.51 crore young voters in the age group of 20-29 years.
Though embattled Biren Singh has survived the crisis, media reports suggest that restructuring of the cabinet will not be an easy task for him.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said that she has been admitted to hospital due to an illness and hence would not join the party's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra on Friday.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi had on Tuesday asked its state unit chiefs in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab and Manipur to put in their papers after the party's drubbing in the recently held Assembly polls in these states.
'Every Congressman in Rajasthan is in Ashok Gehlot's pocket.'
There are lessons for the Congress to learn from the Karnataka elections of how burying the hatchet among top leaders and not washing dirty linen in public can help, says Ramesh Menon.
Posters depicting Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as Lord Krishna were pasted at some places in this Uttar Pradesh district on Wednesday, the day the Congress leader is expected to arrive in Kanpur with his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.
According to an official release, the voting percentage is likely to go up when reports from all polling stations are obtained, as polling was scheduled until 6 pm in many constituencies.
The Lok Sabha was adjourned twice in the post-lunch period on Thursday as a war of words broke out between the treasury and opposition benches, triggered by Congress MP Charanjit Singh Channi's spat with the Bharatiya Janata Party's Ravneet Singh Bittu.
During a fresh round of talks with North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) convenor Himanta Biswa Sarma earlier in the day, the NPP leaders stuck to their demand for change in the leadership of the BJP-led coalition government, they said.
Officials have said an absence of drainage system and safety measures, and use of basement for commercial activities in violation of norms led to the death of three civil services aspirants at the coaching centre.
'The performance of any government is benchmarked on five parameters -- India's external security, the state of the economy, social cohesion, internal security, and India's relations with the world or its foreign policy. On each of the benchmarks in the past nine years, the NDA-BJP government has come up completely short'
At 79, Zoramthanga is working to rebuild his image as the people's CM.
The electoral fate of 92 candidates will be decided on Saturday, including 12 from the Bharatiya Janata Party, followed by the Congress (18), the National People's Party (11), the Janata Dal-United and the Naga People's Front (10 each).
Jairam Ramesh said Gandhi spoke for 37 minutes but was shown on Sansad TV camera for only 14 minutes and 37 seconds.
Here are some of the famous faces queued up to get ink mark on their fingers.
In an address at an election rally in this southern-most part of Mizoram bordering Myanmar, Singh said violence is no solution to any problem and the two communities in Manipur must talk to each other to improve the situation in the troubled state.
"Last time I stood, I was not allowed to speak. The ruling party paid a very heavy price for throttling the voice of one MP," she said, referring to her suspension in the last session.
Congress deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Pramod Tiwari said the first priority should be to hold a comprehensive and detailed discussion on the Manipur situation in Parliament, going by the fact that people have been killed and the chief minister himself has admitted that several such incidents have happened in the state.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge Saturday said the Lok Sabha poll mandate is a "decisive rejection" of the politics of divisiveness and hate, and stressed that the INDIA bloc must continue functioning cohesively both inside and outside Parliament.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Friday sought to quell the suggestions of its rift with the Bharatiya Janata Party and that Mohan Bhagwat's recent critical references related to the Lok Sabha polls were aimed at the ruling party, insisting that such claims are just speculation meant to create confusion.
Eight Union ministers, two former chief ministers and one ex-governor are among those who are set to test their electoral fate in the first phase of elections on April 19 when 102 seats across 21 states and Union territories will go to polls.
Opposition MPs staged a walkout from the Lok Sabha on Thursday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was replying to a debate on the no-confidence motion, complaining that there was no reference to Manipur in the first 90 minutes of his speech.
If Modi was really keen on Katchatheevu, he could have reclaimed that island during his 10 years in office, he said.
Modi slammed the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) as the most directionless the country has ever seen and cited reviled names, such as East India Company and Indian Mujahideen, to assert that people cannot be misled merely by the use of the country's name.
The proposed no-confidence motion by opposition parties is bound to fail the numbers test but the latter argue that they will win the battle of perception by cornering the government on the Manipur issue during the debate.
"This is the minimum expectation at this time of national tragedy," she said.
Without making two-thirds of the country's population a development partner, India's prosperity is impossible, the Congress leader added.
'...We should first look at and acknowledge what we have done to ourselves.' 'To not do so opens us to the accusation of rank hypocrisy and also reduces the stature of our globetrotting peaceniks,' asserts Aakar Patel.
The toast of the Congress for their tenacity and the difficult choices they made to fulfil a five-month political commitment, their stories are many.
Union Minister Smriti Irani on Wednesday came down heavily on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his 'murder of India in Manipur' remark in Lok Sabha, saying this is for the first time in parliamentary democracy that someone has made such a statement.
'The Congress is not pragmatic about politics or about people.' 'Rahul's intention is good, but good intention does not win you elections.'
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