Long denied the right to vote, members of the Valmiki community exercised their franchise for the first time in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections on Tuesday and termed it as a "historic moment".
Shiromani Akali Dal-Amritsar's Simranjit Singh Mann on Sunday won the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat after defeating his nearest rival, Aam Aadmi Party's Gurmail Singh, by a margin of 5,822 votes.
The BJP has released a video of Arvind Kejriwal's previous residence, calling it a "Sheeshmahal" and accusing him of corruption. The AAP has countered, accusing the BJP of running a "smear campaign" to distract from Delhi's worsening law and order situation. The controversy comes ahead of the Delhi Assembly elections.
The overall voting percentage in the bypolls to 51 assembly seats was nearly 56.84 per cent, the Election Commission said while releasing data available till 7 pm, adding that the polling passed off peacefully.
'If you put your own party into the witness box, like what Sidhu did, and treat them as wrongdoers, then how will the people of Punjab trust the party?'
The Congress has proposed AAP should contest five seats while the Samajwadi Party and Left parties could contest one seat each.
It also allowed political parties and candidates to hold meetings and rallies with the restriction of using only 50 per cent capacity of space being relaxed.
"Former Chief Minister Mayawati and I will not contest the assembly elections," Bahujan Samaj Party member of Parliament Satish Chandra Misra told ANI.
The biggest winner will be the BJP -- which has such a small presence that every incremental vote it gets can only increase its strength. But the man who will win despite losing everything will be Captain Amarinder Singh, predicts Aditi Phadnis.
Devendra Fadnavis will lead the new Mahayuti coalition government in Maharashtra, with Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar serving as deputy chief ministers. The swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for Thursday evening at Azad Maidan ground in south Mumbai and will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several Union ministers. The Mahayuti coalition won the recent assembly elections by a landslide, securing 230 out of 288 seats.
The Congress on Friday released a list of 30 star campaigners for the February 20 Punjab Assembly elections and left out names of Tewari and Ghulam Nabi Azad, who are among the prominent members of the 'G-23' leaders who had written to the party leadership seeking an organisational overhaul.
Election rallies have been on for weeks, but nothing captures the immediacy of an election like the sight of candidates filing their nomination papers.
The ED action, sources said, has been initiated after taking cognisance of a 2018 FIR of the Punjab Police against some companies and individuals alleged to be involved in illegal sand mining in the state.
Ahead of Amarinder Singh's resignation as Punjab chief minister on Saturday, over 50 Congress legislators from Punjab had written to party chief Sonia Gandhi seeking his replacement, highly placed party sources said.
In a blow to Punjab Congress, two of its senior leader resigned from the party and joined the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal on Friday.
Consolidating its position, the Bharatiya Janata Party wrested high-profile Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh from the Samajwadi Party and won three assembly seats, including that of Chief Minister Manik Saha, in Tripura in by-election results announced on Sunday.
Making the announcement at a press conference in Chandigarh, Sidhu, however, said he will assume charge the day Punjab will get a new advocate general.
Jailed ex-Pakistan premier Imran Khan's party-backed independent candidates on Friday sprang a surprise by winning 86 seats out of the 201 results declared following unusual delays and allegations of rigging, as the country appeared heading towards a hung assembly.
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.
Aam Aadmi Party's Ferozepur Rural candidate Amandeep Ashu Banger on Monday quit the party and joined the ruling Congress in Punjab, alleging that Arvind Kejriwal's outfit runs like a "multinational company" with only Delhi leaders calling the shots.
The BJP won the Chandigarh mayoral election on Thursday, defeating the AAP-Congress alliance. Harpreet Kaur Babla of the BJP was elected as the new mayor, while the AAP-Congress alliance won the posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor. The victory of the BJP candidate indicated that cross-voting took place during polling. The Supreme Court had previously overturned the result of the 2023 mayoral poll, which had seen the BJP candidate win despite allegations of tampering with ballots. The court had ordered prosecution of the returning officer for the poll, Anil Masih, a BJP leader, for his "misdemeanour." The court had also declared defeated AAP-Congress alliance candidate Kuldeep Kumar as the new city mayor. This latest victory is a significant win for the BJP in the city and represents a setback for the AAP-Congress alliance.
Rahul Gandhi had earlier talked to the MLAs over the phone ahead of the meeting of the AICC panel on Punjab.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's unexpected announcement on Sunday that he will resign after two days drew mixed reactions from parties, with some saying it was a compulsion due to bail restrictions on his functioning and others hailing it as a right call to go back to the people.
'The honourable prime minister virtually handpicked me for the Amritsar East seat.' 'Amit Shahji announced that if I am elected, the whole of Punjab will be drugs free.'
Here are some of the glimpses.
Haryana is witnessing a multi-cornered contest this time, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party facing anti-incumbency and a resurgent Congress.
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
Polling was by and large peaceful in the bypolls for three Lok Sabha and seven assembly seats spread across five states and Delhi on Thursday barring an incident of stabbing of a policeman in Tripura, where polling was the highest at 76.62 per cent.
The Congress and the AAP fought the Lok Sabha polls together in Delhi while they had contested separately in Punjab.
No final decision has been taken on the alliance with the Congress for the October 5 Haryana assembly polls yet, sources in Aam Aadmi Party said on Sunday. The last date to file nominations is September 12.
Counting of votes for the bypolls in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand will be taken up on Sunday.
Kejriwal's centralised way of governance might work in Delhi, but Punjab will call for delegation, observes Sanjeev Nayyar.
As leaders in both the BJP and Congress concede, neither has within their parties a leader to match Arvind Kejriwal's charisma in Delhi.
Former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday vacated the 6, Flagstaff Road residence to move to his new address in the Lutyens' Zone.
Among these are Labh Singh Ugoke, who defeated former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi in the Bhadaur assembly segment by a margin of 37,558 votes, and Gurmeet Singh Khuddian, who beat Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal in his traditional Lambi seat by 11,396 votes.
Clearly, her father hopes that a successful tenure in Lahore will give Maryam the ballast to be prime minister after the next general election.
22 images that captures glimpses of a most unusual Indian who led the nation for 10 years.
But the atmosphere is now conducive for the Mahayuti to continue in power in Maharashtra thanks to the government's people-centric schemes, while the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is giving promises that it cannot execute, he said.
Amid speculation about a possible change of guard in the Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh, chief minister Bhupesh Baghel on Saturday asserted that his state can never become Punjab, and said the two states bear only one similarity -- that of having numbers in their names.
