The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal for 'one nation, one Election' as recommended by the Kovind panel, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday.
"Won't you vote out a government which sullied the reputation of the abode of God," the prime minister said.
The former Punjab Congress chief had been upset with the party for serving him a show-cause notice.
These expulsions are in addition to the 18 expelled immediately after they refused to withdraw from the fray for the assembly polls.
Senior BJP leader and Patnagarh MLA KV Singh Deo and debutant from Nimapara assembly segment Pravati Parida took oath as deputy chief ministers.
'When I said the Gandhi family had to step aside, it was because we have consistently seen that the public has not accepted them.'
"Is being part of Modi's 'political family' a 'guarantee of protection' for criminals?" Rahul Gandhi asked.
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief J P Nadda and new party entrant Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan were among the 41 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will witness polling on February 27.
Gujarat has witnessed the steepest decline in the number of contestants in the fray for its 26 seats, from 371 five years ago to 266 in 2024.
She had addressed a series of public meetings in both Kumaon and Garhwal regions yesterday. Gandi condemned the blasts stating that such incidents will not be tolerated in the country.
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd made a number of electoral bond purchases close to the date of bagging crucial projects, including the all-weather Zojila tunnel that is being constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 4,500 crore in Jammu and Kashmir.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna is on his way out, according to Congress sources, and Union Minister Harish Rawat and state minister Pritam Singh are emerging as the frontrunners for the top job in the hill state.
'There is also a possibility that Andhra Pradesh may demand a similar package. But as of now, we are only working on a package for Bihar.'
The incident regarding Chinese troops entering the border district of Chamoli in Uttarakhand is that of "transgression" and not "incursion", the government said on Thursdy.
Uttarakhand Speaker has issued notices to nine rebel Congress MLAs asking them why they should not be disqualified from the House for aligning with the opposition BJP.
Rebel Congress MLA and former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, who also reached Delhi, said he is surprised why CM Harish Rawat has not resigned so far on moral grounds.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister B C Khanduri won the trust vote in the state Assembly on Wednesday.
Campaigning ended on Wednesday evening for 102 Lok Sabha seats across 21 states and Union territories which will go to polls in the first phase on April 19 with top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance and the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) making a last-gasp effort to woo voters.
The development came even as Uttarakhand is set to have a vote of confidence on Tuesday to determine whether Congress leader Harish Rawat has enough numbers to retain power in the state that is currently under the President's Rule.
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure, the little-known Hyderabad-based firm that in recent years won the prestigious Zojila tunnel deal among other projects, forayed into city gas and acquired a media group, was the second largest donor to political parties using electoral bonds.
Political temperatures shot up in Dehradun on Friday abruptly after the arrest of Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Mussoorie, Ganesh Joshi in the Shaktiman case, with the entire place agog with rumours that the BJP was trying to woo disgruntled Congress legislators to prove that the party had been reduced to a minority.
'The Congress in the past backed the demand, but will not support it now since the SP opposes any division of UP.'
Wordsmiths and artists of different parties are working overtime to deliver punches and counter punches in their bid to reach out to voters through different platforms ranging from Facebook to YouTube.
In a major organisational rejig ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress on Saturday appointed Avinash Pande the general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, replacing Priyanka Gandhi Vadra while Sachin Pilot was made the general secretary in-charge of Chhattisgarh.
Voting for by-elections to seven assembly constituencies of six states, including Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Tripura, West Bengal, and Jharkhand, started on Tuesday at 7 am.
The BJP, which has allied with a few smaller parties, has sought to upend the state's conventional politics, which has so far been indifferent to Hindutva politics, by taking the ruling DMK head-on for its alleged insult of Sanatan Dharma besides involvement in corruption.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party waiting to pull down the Congress-led state government, the new chief minister's duration of service will all depend on the results of the Lok Sabha elections, says Anita Katyal.
Two days after he advised VIPs not to visit Uttarakhand, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde did a U-turn on Wednesday saying that anyone, including Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, could go to the rain-ravaged state now as the situation has changed there.
'We can't sit back clutching our memories of the riots. The country, the future of our children are more important.' Jyoti Punwani reports on an unusual election meeting in Mumbai.
Voters include 8.4 crore men, 8.23 crore women and 11,371 from third gender. There are as many as 35.67 lakh first time voters, besides 3.51 crore young voters in the age group of 20-29 years.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi held a meeting with senior party leaders on Wednesday amid reports that a final call on the fate of Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna will be taken soon.
Suspense continued on Sunday over who would lead the Congress-led government in Uttarakhand, with top leaders from the state and the Centre huddled in the national capital to decide on the new chief minister.
Shortly before going to the Raj Bhawan to submit his resignation to Governor Aziz Qureshi, the former high court judge-turned-politician said he was resigning on the directives of the party high command
The speaker had disqualified nine Congress MLAs under the anti-defection law hours after imposition of President's rule in the state on March 27, a day before the state government was scheduled to go for a floor test in the assembly.
While the opposition alliance is putting up a united front in Ghosi constituency in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand's Dumri, Dhanpur and Boxanagar in Tripura and Uttarakhand's Bageshwar, its constituents are contesting against each other in Dhupguri in West Bengal and Puthuppally in Kerala.
Nearly 70 per cent polling was recorded in the Uttarakhand assembly elections, which sealed the fate of 788 candidates including Chief Minister B C Khanduri and state Congress president Yashpal Arya.
Uttarakhand was on Sunday brought under President's rule by the Centre on grounds of "breakdown of governance" in a controversial decision.
About 20 Punjab Congress leaders met in Ludhiana on Tuesday, with some of them batting for a key role for Navjot Singh Sidhu, the former state party unit chief who was among the participants.
Bharatiya Janata Party President Rajnath Singh on Saturday accused the Congress-led United Progresive Alliance government of bluffing the country over the number of lives lost in the recent Uttarakhand flash floods.
A sudden downpour in Delhi caught citizens off guard and caused heavy waterlogging and traffic jams on Tuesday while Mumbai breathed a sigh of relief as showers stopped a day after heavy rain brought the metropolis to its knees.
