The Congress on Friday said it will take a decision at an 'appropriate time' whether its senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Sonia Gandhi will attend the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22.
A voter turnout of 10.82 per cent was recorded till 9 am on Saturday in 58 constituencies in six states and two Union territories where polling is underway in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
Rashtriya Lok Dal president Jayant Chaudhary on Friday said the Centre won his heart with the announcement of Bharat Ratna to former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh. 'Dil Jeet Liya,' he posted on X.
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.
'Gyanendra back on the throne would be bad news for the Nepali people. He may not have learnt from his experience, but we have.'
Late-stage diagnosis is a major issue, with over 75 per cent of cases being detected at advanced stages (50 per cent at Stage 3 and 25 per cent at Stage 4). This significantly reduces survival rates.
The assembly polls in Maharashtra will be held in a single phase while Jharkhand polls will be held in two phases, the Election Commission of India announced on Tuesday.
Over 60 per cent voter turnout was recorded on Monday in 49 constituencies in six states and two Union territories in the fifth phase of Lok Sabha elections, with Baramulla in Jammu and Kashmir recording its highest-ever voting percentage.
The IMD has warned of heatwave to severe heatwave conditions in parts of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh during the next five days.
The BJP got the benefit of a split in Muslim votes in some seats of western UP, and its candidates registered wins from Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, Meerut, Bulandshahr, Baghpat and Aligarh Lok Sabha seats.
The decision on Rahul Gandhi's appointment as the Leader of Opposition was made after a meeting of the floor leaders of the INDIA bloc at Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge's residence.
The male-female turnout gap was wide in Bihar and Jharkhand. While in Bihar, the male turnout was 52.42 percent, the female turnout was 61.58 percent.
Saturday's voting will mark the end to the marathon polling process that began on April 19 month and has already covered 486 Lok Sabha seats in 28 states and Union territories.
Political leaders and candidates should not use children for campaign activities in any manner including holding a child in their arms, carrying a child in a vehicle or in rallies, the poll watchdog said.
Among the keenly watched contests are those involving former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav (Kannauj, UP) and Union ministers Giriraj Singh (Begusarai, Bihar), Nityanand Rai (Ujiarpur, Bihar) and Raosaheb Danve (Jalna, Maharashtra).
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday declared 13 candidates from Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha polls including actor Arun Govil, who played Lord Ram in popular TV serial Ramayan, from Meerut, while replacing sitting MP Varun Gandhi from Pilibhit with state minister Jitin Prasada.
As required, Modi submitted the affidavit while filing his nomination papers Tuesday as an election candidate from the Varanasi parliamentary constituency, a seat he has held twice earlier.
The June 23 meeting of opposition parties, called by Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar, will see anti-BJP players chalk out a strategy for the Lok Sabha polls.
Upset with the Congress for not conceding any seat for the Samajwadi Party in the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday hinted that the Congress could get the same treatment from his party in Uttar Pradesh.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh will be the deputy leader of the party in the Lok Sabha and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha.
In FY24, the net income generated from Waqf properties fell to about Rs 1.26 crore from Rs 150 crore in FY20.
A voter turnout of over 40 per cent was recorded till 1 pm on Monday in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections in 96 constituencies spread over 10 states and Union Territories amid incidents of violence in Andhra Pradesh and reports of poll boycott in some villages of Uttar Pradesh.
'Mrs Sonia Gandhi, chairperson, UPA has been admitted to our hospital today. She has been admitted in Department of Chest Medicine under the care of Dr Arup Basu and his team. Mrs Gandhi has been admitted for observation and treatment of a viral respiratory infection,' said Dr Ajay Swaroop, chairman of the hospital's board of management.
In his letter to Modi, Kharge asserted that strict legal action should be taken against those giving such statements so that Indian politics can be prevented from degenerating and nothing untoward happens.
According to BJP insiders, every Union minister has been given 3-4 seats to mentor and has been told to work hard on these constituencies in the next 20 months to ensure the party's victory.
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 seats held by the non-BJP parties in the state are Bijnor, Amroha, Moradabad, Sambhal, Raebareli, Ghosi, Lalganj, Jaunpur, Ambedkarnagar, Ghazipur, Shravasti, Mainpuri, Saharanpur and Nagina. Of these, Raebareli is held by Sonia Gandhi of the Congress.
"We are going to have a meeting with our partners tomorrow. These questions will be raised and answered there," Gandhi told a press conference in New Delhi when asked if the Congress and its allies will approach parties that are part of the National Democratic Alliance to try and form a government.
The much-delayed decadal census exercise and the work to update the National Population Register (NPR) are likely to begin early 2025 and the data will be declared by 2026, thus changing future census cycles completely, official sources said.
The disqualification of wrestler Vinesh Phogat in the Olympics after being found overweight before the final bout also saw the government and Opposition come to blows in Parliament.
'The 2024 general elections proved that UP is not Gujarat.'
He served as the Union health minister in Modi's first term from November 9, 2014 to May 30, 2019.
UP's representation in the government could diminish, given the BJP's decreased seat count in that state.
Five BJP MLAs and Apna Dal (Sonelal) legislator Amar Singh Chaudhary also joined the SP in the presence of Akhilesh Yadav.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday announced Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fight again from Varanasi in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as it named 34 Union ministers in the first list of 195 candidates.
The BJP appointed Sunil Bansal, one of the party's key election managers, as its national general secretary and in charge of three opposition-ruled states -- West Bengal, Odisha and Telangana -- in run-up to the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
Bypolls to one Lok Sabha and four assembly seats across four states will be held on May 10 along with the Karnataka assembly polls, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday.
Officials have said an absence of drainage system and safety measures, and use of basement for commercial activities in violation of norms led to the death of three civil services aspirants at the coaching centre.
The Samajwadi Party and Congress have announced that they will contest together under the INDIA bloc.
Nearly half of the MPs elected in the 2019 general elections in India were first-timers.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances