The final phase saw voting in all 13 seats of Punjab and an equal number of seats in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, eight seats each in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, four in Himachal Pradesh, three in Jharkhand and the lone seat Chandigarh.
While the polling so far has been peaceful, police had to open fire in the air in Purnia to disperse a crowd trying to disturb voting, even as people boycotted polling at 12 booths in Katihar in protest against barriers not being set up at two railway crossings.
Even non-partisan observers are saying the Congress and INDI alliance are not making any significant effort to campaign on the ground, he said.
Voting will be held on Thursday for the first phase of Gujarat Assembly elections in 89 seats spread across 19 districts in Saurashtra-Kutch and southern parts of the state where 788 candidates are in the fray.
A plea challenging the Election Commission's decision to conduct assembly elections over eight phases in West Bengal was filed in the Supreme Court on Monday.
Braving rainy and cold weather, and riding atop buses and trucks, officials carrying out Election Commission's task of holding the seven phase hustings in Uttar Pradesh have a thankless job.
Campaigning for the fifth phase ended on Friday evening, and all necessary arrangements have been completed, state Chief Election Officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said in Lucknow on Saturday.
Facing opposition fire for exit polls allegedly being used for stock market manipulation, Axis My India's chief Pradeep Gupta has said he is open to facing all kinds of investigations and it would help do business in a much better way if the government frames specific regulations for pollsters.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is contesting 88 seats out of the total 89, tops this list among major political parties in the fray with 36 per cent of its candidates having criminal cases. Thirty per cent of its candidates are facing serious cases such as murder, rape, assault, kidnapping, among others, the ADR said in its report. The number of candidates having criminal cases fielded by the AAP is 32.
A number of Assembly seats in the Parliamentary constituencies of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (in Lucknow), Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi (in Amethi) are also going to the polls.
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Political parties and leaders wait with bated breath for the Haryana and Jammu-Kashmir assembly poll results on Tuesday.
During the first phase of voting on November 12 for 18 seats in the Naxal-affected areas of the state, a total of 76.42 per cent polling was recorded.
From the Sensex basket, Asian Paints, Sun Pharma, HDFC Bank, Tata Consultancy Services, Axis Bank, Tata Steel, JSW Steel, Larsen & Toubro, ICICI Bank and Power Grid were the major gainers. Tata Motors dropped over 8 per cent despite reporting over three-fold jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 17,528.59 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2024. NTPC, Bharti Airtel, Titan, State Bank of India and Nestle were the other major laggards.
While Jamaat cannot take part in the elections due to the ban imposed on it by the Union home ministry, it had shown interest in participating in the polls during the Lok Sabha elections if the ban were removed.
Dantewada recorded lowest turnout with 49 per cent voting.
Sheela Bhatt and Sharat Pradhan bring voices from the ground in Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh, which is voting today in the first phase of elections
While conditions have improved over the last decade in western UP, there are still unfulfilled needs.
Polling was held in 1,643 polling stations in 38 constituencies across the twin districts of Imphal East and Imphal West, Bishnupur and the hill districts of Churachandpur and Kangpokpi.
The term of the 243-member Bihar legislative assembly comes to an end on November 29.
The April 11 polling will decide the fate of several political bigwigs.
A total of 833 candidates from 61 political parties, including Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel of the Bharatiya Janata Party, are contesting the polls in these assembly segments spread across Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Gandhinagar and other districts.
Devendra Fadnavis, a seasoned politician with deep roots in the RSS, is set to become the Chief Minister of Maharashtra for the third time, after his party, the BJP, won a landslide victory in the state assembly elections. Fadnavis' political journey has been marked by resilience and strategic maneuvering, as he has navigated through challenging times, including political upheavals and controversies.
There are 218,442 voters over 100 years on the electoral rolls.
Even as parleys continue in both states, the grand old party is expected to contest less than 110 seats in the November 20 polls for the 288-member Maharashtra assembly.
People in these villages routinely encounter big cats that stray into their farms from the adjoining Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, a bustling habitat for the Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris).
Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Mukesh Dalal was on Monday elected unopposed from Surat Lok Sabha constituency in Gujarat after all other nominees withdrew from the fray, a poll official said.
Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com gives the lowdown on the 59 seats spread across seven states and one Union territory going to polls in the last and final phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on May 19, 2019.
The Election Commission (EC) on Saturday came out with the constituency-wise data on the number of votes cast in the first five phases of the Lok Sabha polls and said there is a pattern in creating false narratives and mischievous designs to vitiate the electoral process.
Ignoring the separatists' call to shun the vote, electors in the five districts emulated the trend seen in the first phase by turning up at polling booths in large numbers at 8 am, the scheduled start of voting. It turned out to be an impressive 71.28 per cent turnout in the second phase.
According to the Election Commission of India, the code has evolved over the last 60 years to assume its present form.
The districts going to polls in this phase are Balrampur, Gonda, Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Bahraich, Shravasti, Basti, Siddharth Nagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Amethi and Sultanpur.
Even as KPs lined up across special polling stations in Jammu amid tight security, several of them had to return without casting their vote.
More than 40 per cent of the 908 candidates contesting the assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir are Independents, leading to claims that a large number of them have been propped up by the Bharatiya Janata Party to divide votes.
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
Fifty-seven assembly constituencies spread across nine districts went to the polls in this round.
The voting will be held on November 30, December 7, 12, 16 and 20.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat elections, viewed as a prestige battle for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a litmus test for the leadership of soon-to-be Congress president Rahul Gandhi, will come to an end on Thursday. Here's everything you need to know about the polls -- from candidates to the constituencies.
"Yediyurappa's yesterday reaction is his personal reaction. Until now, there has been no discussion on seat sharing or anything. We have met cordially two or three times. Later on, let us see what is going to happen," Kumaraswamy told ANI.
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