Voting for the presidential election in which NDA candidate Droupadi Murmu is pitted against joint Opposition pick Yashwant Sinha began at 10 am and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first to cast his vote followed by BJP President JP Nadda.
Cross-voting was held during the Rajya Sabha elections and the Maharashtra Legislative Council polls last month.
Kumar is reported to have made the Rajya Sabha remark during an informal chat with some journalists who had asked him about his recent tour of areas falling under the now abolished Barh Lok Sabha constituency which he had represented many times.
His remarks came a day after Kharge said he told Tharoor that it would be better to have a consensus candidate but the Lok Sabha MP insisted on a contest for the "sake of democracy".
Currently, CM Shinde and his deputy Devendra Fadnavis are the only members of the cabinet.
Gehlot told Congress MLAs that they will be asked to come to New Delhi if he decides to file his nomination.
The Lok Sabha MP said a clear picture about the Congress president poll can be known on September 30 and the Yatra would cross the state's borders the next day.
After casting his vote, Thirunavukarasar, also an MP, said the elections are being held in a transparent manner and Kharge is the most favourite of the two -- the other being Shashi Tharoor.
Taiwan says it detected multiple Chinese aircraft and naval vessels taking part in military drills around the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, in what could be a possible simulated attack against the island.
They said that as Congress MPs, they are concerned about the transparency and fairness of the election process for the president of the party.
Congress's Lok Sabha members Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari, Karti Chidambaram, Pradyut Bordoloi and Abdul Khaleque said this list must be made available in order to verify who is entitled to nominate a candidate and who is entitled to vote.
However, he pointed out that the manner in which Smriti Irani was taking the name of President in the House was not proper and in consonance with the status and position of the President.
Tharoor said the message is also that the Congress is the party that can unite India and if the public is sufficiently inspired by this message, it will indeed inaugurate the revival of the party.
Zelenskyy says that despite Russia's claim it is attacking only military targets, civilian sites also have been struck.
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.
A resident of Saran district, which incidentally has been the karmabhoomi (land of work) of his famous namesake, Yadav claims to have already booked a flight ticket to Delhi where he proposes to file his nomination papers on June 15.
4,809 members of the electoral college comprising MPs and MLAs set to elect the successor to incumbent Ram Nath Kovind.
'I assured them I will not back away. I will not betray those who have supported me till now. Their confidence in me is what gives me the strength to move forward'
The mood in the tribal heartland in the east and in central India spread over Odisha, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and parts of West Bengal and Assam, is upbeat.
Gehlot, one of the proposers of Kharge, said Tharoor is also a good man and has good thoughts but he is from the elite class.
Bharatiya Janata Party MPs Sunny Deol and Sanjay Dhotre were among those who missed casting their votes in the presidential poll on Monday.
He joined the BJP in the presence of Union minister Piyush Goyal and lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership for providing a "strong government".
Some of them have also endorsed Sachin Pilot as chief minister. However, they added that whatever decision the party high command takes in this regard, they will accept it.
All the ministers who participated in this meeting were of the opinion that as soon as there is an agreement to form an all-party government, they will hand over the responsibilities to that government, it said.
There was a 'fascist threat' to democracy in Sri Lanka and 'we can't let them tear up our Constitution', acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe told the crisis-hit nation on Wednesday, as he vowed to restore normalcy as well as stop the destruction of state property.
However, party MP and chief spokesperson Sanjay Raut claimed of the 18 MPs in the Lok Sabha, 15 attended the meeting held at 'Matoshree', the private residence of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray in suburban Bandra. He did not provide details.
The anti-government protesters in Sri Lanka on Sunday continued to occupy the residences of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, a day after they stormed into the premises and set on fire one of the buildings protesting over the nation's severe economic crisis even as the island nation is still in the dark about the embattled President's whereabouts.
Modi, who met Putin last week on the sidelines of the 22nd meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan's Samarkand, had told the Russian leader that "today's era is not of war".
The speculations were triggered by Kumar's reference to the Rajya Sabha being "the only House" he has not been a member of.
Mallikarjun Kharge was on Wednesday elected the Congress president after defeating Shashi Tharoor in an electoral contest, the sixth in the party's 137-year-old history.
While Kharge is considered the firm favourite with his perceived proximity to the Gandhis and a large number of senior leaders backing him, Tharoor has pitched himself as the candidate of change.
The meeting with Naidu is significant as the BJP parliamentary board is meeting later on Tuesday to discuss the BJP-led NDA's choices for the new president.
Gautam Adani is now the fourth richest person on the planet. The chairman of the Adani group overtook Bill Gates -- once the richest man in the world -- this week.
In an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamana, the party said Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi and National Conference's Farooq Abdullah, the "regular names that crop up during the presidential polls", don't have the personality or heft to make it a tightly-contested battle.
As the Opposition held its first meeting on the Presidential polls and names of Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi also cropped up, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice with senior party leader and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress), Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal).
If elected, he will be the second All India Congress Committee president from Karnataka after S Nijalingappa, and also a Dalit leader to hold the post after Jagjivan Ram.
Taking to Twitter, AAP's Sanjay Singh shared a video of leaders greeting President Kovind at the farewell ceremony in the Central Hall of Parliament.
Sharma claimed he has received complaints that neither any virtual nor any physical meeting was held to finalise the electoral rolls, the sources said.
The veteran leader is also expected to use his good offices in unifying the faction-ridden party in the state, ahead of assembly elections just six months away.
Sajith Premadasa, the 55-year-old leader of Sri Lanka's principal opposition party Samagi Jana Balawegaya, said on Tuesday that he was withdrawing from the race of President to provide support to Alahapperuma.
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