At many places, where the voters had entered booths before 6 pm and were standing in queues, they were allowed to cast their votes.
Counting for assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur was held on Thursday. Here's how the big names fared.
Barring 2004 and 2009 when Navjot Singh Sidhu won the Amritsar seat as a BJP MP and 1998 when Daya Singh Sodhi from BJP was elected as the MP, it has essentially a Congress bastion.
Actor and activist Deep Sidhu, accused of being the key conspirator of the Red Fort violence on Republic Day last year, died in a road accident on Kundli-Manesar-Palwal highway near Kharkhoda in Haryana's Sonipat, police said.
Aam Aadmi Party candidate Sushil Rinku on Saturday won the Jalandhar Lok Sabha by-election, defeating his nearest rival and Congress nominee Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary by a margin of 58,691 votes.
The bodies of Jasdeep Singh, 39, his wife Jasleen Kaur, 27, their eight-month-old daughter Aroohi Dheri and Jasdeep's brother Amandeep Singh, 39, were found in an orchard near Indiana Road and Hutchinson Road on Wednesday evening.
Abhay Chautala said that Banerjee has told him that she had some preoccupation on that day and she will depute a senior leader of her party for the event while Thackeray told him that if he is unable to attend due to some reasons he will send a senior leader for the event.
The Congress also fielded former Patiala mayor Vishnu Sharma from the Patiala assembly seats against its former leader Amarinder Singh.
"Akali Dal is a part of the NDA but it is a separate political outfit. They have taken this decision because of some political reasons. We have an alliance (SAD-BJP) but both are different political outfits. They (SAD) have taken a political decision," said Sharma.
Supreme Court's ruling favouring Haryana on the contentious Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal issue has set political temperature soaring in Punjab, with the state Congress chief Amarinder Singh quitting as Member of Parliament and all MLAs following suit, as Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal asserted "not a drop of water" will be allowed to be taken out of the state.
Two gangsters, who were arrested in connection with singer Sidhu Moosewala murder case and lodged in the Goindwal Sahib Central Jail in Punjab's Tarn Taran district, were killed in a clash among inmates on Sunday, police said.
Sidhu attacked the Aam Aadmi Party, alleging that the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi had last year notified one of the farm laws even when farmers were sitting at the borders of national capital protesting against the legislations.
Another bill related to the farm sector, the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, was passed on Tuesday.
The BJP senior leadership believes the YSRCP is a more reliable potential ally post-2024 Lok Sabha election than the TDP.
The leaders attacked the BJP, accusing it of trying to create "Hindu-Muslim disturbances" to benefit politically and making false claims and promises.
Expressing her anguish over the pain of farmers, Badal, leader of the ruling BJP's erstwhile ally, said, "It is strange that farmers are spending nights in open during the chilling winters and even then their demands are falling on deaf ears."
The state police have been looking for the Shiromani Akali Dal leader to arrest him.
The Opposition targeted Mann on Monday, alleging that he was deplaned from a Delhi-bound aircraft at the Frankfurt airport as he was drunk, a charge dismissed by the ruling Aam Aadmi Party as baseless.
In a relief toD leader Bikram Singh Majithia, the Supreme Court Monday directed the Punjab police not to arrest him till February 23 in a drugs case so he can undertake electioneering
A social activist, a young law graduate, a debutante, and an eye surgeon -- Punjab polls gave gave birth to a number of giant killers from the Aam Aadmi Party, who drubbed such stalwarts as Navjot Singh Sidhu, the Badals, and even Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi.
Kejriwal blames Sukhbir Badal for blast, while Sukhbir, Amarinder blame the AAP chief for it.
Sukhbir was having none of that. He saw Manpreet taking the V P Singh route to oust him (in the interests of austerity, Manpreet drives his car himself, has minimal security and refuses to touch cashew nuts offered to ministers at public functions, according to newspaper reports from Punjab).
SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia, facing arrest in an NDPS case, involving sale, purchase and manufacturing of drugs among other offences, was on Monday granted anticipatory bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
The unidentified youths shot Nijjar, a designated terrorist, inside the premises of Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara Sahib, of which he was the head, at Surrey at 8:27 pm (local time) on Sunday, they said.
The father of the girl agreed to conducting of post-mortem and cremation of the body.
The Sena also said that forming a partnershipwith the BJP means "killing your own freedom of janadhar."
Sikh Federation UK, which has styled itself as one of the largest Sikh organisations based in the UK, said Avtar Singh was terminally ill with blood cancer. He was on a life support system for the last few days.
With numbers on its side -- the ruling NDA has about half the votes of the electoral college -- and the possible support of fence-sitters like the BJD, the AIADMK and the YSRCP, the NDA candidate will likely sail through the contest.
The action came after Jagir Kaur failed to appear before the party's disciplinary committee, which had asked to explain her decision of contesting the election.
There is a strong possibility of opposition parties coming together to fight the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said on Monday, stressing that he has had good talks with them and many will join hands gradually.
The merger was sealed on Friday during a meeting between Badal and Rahul at the latter's residence here where Singh and All India Congress Committee General Secretary Shakeel Ahmad were also present, they said.
Two persons were injured in a clash which took place between AAP and Congress workers at Sultanpur village in Sangrur district.
The wife of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal passed away in Chandigarh on Tuesday in a hospital after a prolonged illness.
Modi, who addressed a poll rally in the Malwa heartland, asked the electorate to vote for the SAD-BJP combine for the third time, warning that Punjab as well as the entire nation could face a "crisis" if government led by any party other than the alliance comes to power.
The Punjab cabinet has approved the summoning of a special session of the assembly on September 22 to bring a confidence motion.
With 85-year-old Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal at the helm, the old faces mostly stand out in the newly sworn Punjab Cabinet, whose average age is 60 years. Badal is the oldest member of his council of ministers, which comprises 17 other Cabinet-rank ministers, including his son Sukhbir Singh Badal as his deputy.
Strains in relations between the SAD and the BJP had begun surfacing for over a year.
An explosion took place at the headquarters of the intelligence wing of the Punjab police in Mohali Monday night, sources said in Chandigarh.
A case against Majithia under various sections of the NDPS Act was registered on the basis of a 2018 status report of probe into the drug racket in the state.
However, Sonu Sood has no such plans for himself.
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