Majority of these constituencies are in Uttar Pradesh and the party that is on the third slot even as the counting is still underway on several seats is the Bahujan Samaj Party, a party neither with the National Democratic Alliance nor the opposition INDIA bloc.
The Supreme Court on Monday imposed an interim stay on directives passed by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments that eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route must display names of owners.
The National Testing Agency, under fire over the lapses in the conduct of NEET and UGC-NET, is gearing up to conduct on Sunday a retest for the medical entrance exam for 1,563 candidates who were earlier awarded grace marks to make up for the loss of time at six centres.
Coincidentally, the two first-term members got seats adjacent to each other in the House.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
The Bharat Rashtra Samithi has fielded 114 crorepati candidates followed by the Congress (111), the Bharatiya Janata Party (93) and 30 by the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Surat police commissioner Anupam Singh Gehlot identified the arrested accused as Maulvi Sohel Abubakr Timol (27), who worked at a thread factory as a manager and offered private tuition on Islam to Muslim children.
'No one is propagating RSS ideology as a government officer.'
Now, with the INDIA bloc putting up an impressive show in the Lok Sabha polls and managing to stop the BJP juggernaut, opposition leaders will be looking at the senior Pawar for guidance in navigating the political space against the saffron party post-elections.
Political observers lauded the SP's choices in fielding several non-Yadav and Scheduled Caste candidates, the party's alliance with the Congress, and Rahul Gandhi's campaign around the danger to the Constitution if the BJP won a big majority.
In his first visit to the valley after becoming the prime minister for the third consecutive term, Modi emphasised the importance of enabling the people of Jammu and Kashmir to elect their representatives for the assembly.
The Congress appeared to have bounced back in the state's political landscape after suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of the AAP in the 2022 Punjab assembly polls.
Karan Bhushan rejects the charges against his father, saying the "allegations are political and made up. We will challenge them in court".
The Congress this time won six of the 10 seats reserved for the SC category, one less than in 2018.
With all 29 under its belt, the BJP became the first political party to achieve such a feat after 40 years in Madhya Pradesh.
There is little doubt that the prime minister's own charisma exceeds that of his party, but 2024 is proof that no party can ultimately depend on one person to deliver victory all the time, points out R Jagannathan.
However, the national party count has gone down to six from 14 in over seven decades.
The police detained five women and Shree Rajput Karni Sena president Mahipal Singh Makrana before he could meet them in Ahmedabad.
The ruling BJP's income forms 76.73 percent of the total income of the six national parties during FY 2022-23, it said.
The last time a non-Gandhi was in the fray from the constituency was in 1998, when Satish Sharma, a close aide of Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, contested the polls but lost to the BJP's Sanjaya Sinh.
The Madhya Pradesh unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Brahmin Samaj said it will move the high court against the demolition at the house belonging to his father.
The seized properties include a hospital building at Bhavani Nagar in Nauchandi and two luxury cars that Qureshi had allegedly purchased in the name of his family members and employees, they said.
According to the Election Commission data, 30 out of the state's 40 Lok Sabha seats went to the BJP-led coalition in the latest elections, a sharp drop compared with 39 in 2019 and lower than the tallies of 2014 (31) and 2009 (32).
BJP sources said the party has sought a reply from the South Delhi MP for his use of unparliamentary words.
Forty-two of the 102 Lok Sabha seats going to polls in the general election's first phase are constituencies that have three or more candidates facing criminal cases, according to a poll rights body.
This appears to be a common refrain in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri Lok Sabha constituency where farmers want better prices for their produce and respite from the stray cattle menace and others want political leaders to talk about job creation instead of issues like the Ram temple and Article 370.
Members from the Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal too were part of the group, their participation seen as another indication that the party is all set to switch sides from the SP to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Few in Varanasi expect the result to be different from 2014 and 2019. The only point of interest is whether Narendra Modi will increase his winning margin against his rivals.
Besides the national capital, polling for the sixth round of the marathon seven-phase elections will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have got a tough fight in Varanasi had Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra contested against him as Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) candidate, feel party workers from the temple town.
Family members of Dalit icons B R Ambedkar, Jagjivan Ram, Kanshi Ram and other 'prominent people' belonging to the scheduled castes are among those invited for the January 22 consecration ceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, according to sources.
The government's decision to confer former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur with the Bharat Ratna is a testament to the socialist leader's enduring efforts as a champion for the marginalised and a stalwart of equality, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday.
The electoral battle in Varanasi, according to locals and political experts, is not about whether the PM will win for a third successive occasion, but if he will increase his share of the votes polled and his win margin.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Friday took 'serious note' of certain objectionable remarks made by BJP member Ramesh Bidhuri in the House and warned him of 'strict action' if such behaviour is repeated in the future, officials said.
Aiming to retain power at the Centre for the third time in a row, the Bharatiya Janata Party while banking heavily on its sitting MPs on Saturday released the first list of 51 candidates from Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha elections.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav and RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary announced the tie-up on social media for the elections later this year.
'Episodes of targeted attacks on Muslims established that for a section of people and, sadly, even officials of the State, the election results conveyed no lessons.' 'Opposition parties must not be hesitant in speaking out whenever the mob with tacit State support targets Muslims,' asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
'Go around and ask what Amritpal has done for the village and nearby areas.'
Close to half of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats are bracing for multi-cornered fight this time, making the contest way more interesting and intense than it was in the 2019 elections.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Maneka Gandhi on Saturday indicated that her son Varun Gandhi's writings that were sometimes critical of the government may have cost him the party's Lok Sabha ticket from Pilibhit but asserted that he would do very well even without it.
