'Our fight is against his political masters, the BJP and Devendra Fadnavis.'
The poll aspirants who feel threatened are seeking to garner sympathy from their voters by meeting influential leaders like Jarange in the Marathwada region
Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala on Wednesday said the Maharashtra party leadership has been asked to ensure all rebels withdraw nominations and asserted there will be no friendly fights among the Maha Vikas Aghadi allies in the state assembly polls.
Narvekar, who polled 164 votes, defeated Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena candidate Rajan Salvi who got 107 votes.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction on Wednesday alleged that Rutuja Latke, its candidate for the November 3 byelection to Andheri East assembly seat in Mumbai, was being pressured by the Eknath Shinde camp to contest on their ticket.
'The BJP has 106 MLAs and Eknath Shinde claims the support of 40 MLAs. So why are they both not forming the government right now in Mumbai? Why the delay?' Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf reports.
The Haryana victory will be a morale booster for the Bharatiya Janata Party and increase its bargaining power in the Mahayuti's seat-sharing talks for the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections, according to political analysts.
The strains are telling as old friends and new enemies face each other in the battlefield.
After rebelling against the Shiv Sena leadership, the faction led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde will face its first popularity test in the November 3 bypoll to the Andheri (East) assembly segment in Mumbai, which was represented by Shiv Sena MLA the late Ramesh Latke.
At the state level, Pawar appealed to Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde to convene an all-party meeting to discuss the quota dispute.
The massive victory of Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti in Maharashtra indicates a tactical course correction post the Lok Sabha debacle, with factors like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's active role in the poll campaign, Ladki Bahin scheme, rise in women voting, and subtle message of Hindutva playing a crucial role.
'Money power was deployed like an army in a war.' 'None of the MVA parties had that kind of money.'
In the coming assembly election, negotiations over seat-sharing will be as important as actual outreach to voters.
Speaking to reporters in Delhi, Patole asserted there are no disagreements within the MVA, adding that discussions on seat-sharing were underway and would conclude soon.
Thackeray said since the SC directed Narwekar in May last year to take a decision on the pleas seeking disqualification of rebel Shiv Sena MLAs, the speaker has met the chief minister twice.
The Congress party in India has alleged "serious and grave inconsistencies" in the data relating to the polling and counting processes for the recently concluded Maharashtra Assembly elections. The party has sought an in-person hearing from the Election Commission to present evidence of alleged discrepancies, including the arbitrary deletion and addition of voters and inexplicable increases in voting percentages. The Congress leaders claim these irregularities benefited the ruling BJP-led alliance, which won a decisive victory in the polls.
Friendly fights, however, are more complicated for the MVA, especially since smaller parties who are part of the INDIA bloc are also in the mix.
What India needs more than one simultaneous election is better governance both at the central and state level. Yes, we need reforms, but our priority should be to make elections less expensive, make it more democratic, do away with freebies which are actually bribes before elections, allow only those who are educated to contest, and bring in a bill to make it impossible for criminals to contest, advocates Ramesh Menon.
The firing took place outside his MLA son Zeeshan Siddiqui's office.
The Congress on Sunday demanded a thorough probe into Siddique's murder and said Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his deputy Devendra Fadnavis, who holds home portfolio, should take moral responsibility for law and order "failure" and resign.
The Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray on Tuesday fielded Milind Narvekar, a close aide of party chief Uddhav Thackeray, in the biennial elections to 11 seats from the legislative council, taking the number of candidates in the fray to 12.
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram is Congress nominee from Maharashtra for the biennial elections to Rajya Sabha while senior leaders Kapil Sibal and Jairam Ramesh have been named from Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka respectively.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati, and Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray were among the famous faces who queued up at the polling booths on Monday to caste their votes in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
Police have launched a probe into the killing of former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique from different angles, including a possible contract killing, business rivalry or threat over a slum rehabilitation project, officials said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Congress' data analytics department chairperson Praveen Chakravarty on Tuesday wrote to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, seeking assembly-wise voter rolls in excel sheet format for the Lok Sabha elections and the assembly polls in Maharashtra.
'How can the voting percentage be higher than the actual polled votes?'
Thackeray claimed that the construction of the bridge was completed two weeks ago but it was not opened to the public as Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had no time to inaugurate it.
He could have blazed a trail that few Indian judges had. It was a missed opportunity of a lifetime, notes Ramesh Menon.
To keep their MLAs together, political parties are organising dinner meetings and arranging hotel stays for them ahead of the council elections, which are taking place just three months ahead of the assembly polls in the state.
But if the reports are found to be wrong, those who made these allegations against him should quit politics, he challenged the leaders from the Opposition parties, as he alleged that efforts were on to defame him.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) spokesperson Mahesh Tapase on Sunday said the oath taken by nine NCP MLAs as ministers in the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government does not have official support of the party.
Sources in the BJP said the expansion of the cabinet was unlikely before the session though the allocation of portfolios to the NCP ministers might happen in the coming days.
'You can wake up a person who is sleeping, but how do you wake up a person who's pretending to sleep.'
The Andheri East bypoll is the first after Shinde and the BJP unseated the MVA government in June.
At least five Congress MLAs did not attend a meeting of the party's lawmakers in Maharashtra on Thursday, called in the aftermath of the high-profile exit of former chief minister Ashok Chavan that has triggered speculation about more such defections.
Maharashtra legislative assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar on Monday said that after the Supreme Court's May 11 verdict, he will have to first recognise in the House which faction of the Shiv Sena is the political party before going ahead with any other decision.
The remarks by Sibal, a noted advocate, came after Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar and eight others were inducted into the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government.
'The BJP, already falling short of a strong OBC leader from Maharashtra, will be more than happy to welcome Chhagan Bhujbal in its fold.'
Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh continues to be the rising star in Rahul Gandhi's Congress. With the Congress war room at Gurdwara Rakabganj Road being re-designated as the Congress Coordination Centre, Ramesh has been appointed as the convenor of a small group which would look after the co-ordination work for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The Maharashtra Congress has convened a meeting of its legislators on Tuesday in view of the developments in the state that saw a split in the Nationalist Congress Party and Ajit Pawar being inducted as deputy chief minister in the Eknath Shinde government.
