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.
Fissures appear to have emerged in the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) as its two key allies, the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, on Thursday clashed over seat sharing for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal.
The body of Debendra Nath Ray, in his 60s, was found hanging from the ceiling of a verandah outside a shuttered shop near his home in Bindal village in Hemtabad area of the district, police said. Ray had won the Hemtabad (reserved) seat on a Communist Party of India-Marxist ticket in 2016 but later joined the BJP. He had, however, not quit his assembly seat.
Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Sougata Roy has demanded the removal of Kalyan Banerjee as the party's chief whip in the Lok Sabha after a spat with fellow MP Mahua Moitra. Roy accused Banerjee of "uncivilised" behaviour on multiple occasions and cited incidents of Banerjee breaking a bottle and throwing it at the chairman of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) meeting and making inappropriate remarks about Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. The spat between Moitra and Banerjee reportedly occurred on April 4 when a TMC delegation met the Election Commission over duplicate voter ID numbers. Banerjee was tasked with collecting signatures from TMC MPs on a memorandum to be submitted to the Election Commission, and Moitra alleged that she was not included in the signatories, leading to a heated exchange. Roy, who was present at the time, said he saw Moitra crying and complaining about Banerjee's behaviour. Roy believes that Banerjee's actions warrant his removal as chief whip and left the decision to Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee. The incident has also been highlighted in leaked WhatsApp messages, where Banerjee engaged in heated exchanges with another TMC MP, Kirti Azad, leading to further accusations of uncivilised behaviour.
Once a reviled practice in the state, both the parties seem to have endorsed a record number of turncoats this time -- triggering a wave of discontentment among their loyalists.
Virtually conceding the defeat, Fadnavis stated they will introspect and recover the loss in the upcoming assembly elections.
Temples across Uttar Pradesh were packed with devotees on Sunday for Ram Navami, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath leading prayers at the Gorakhnath Temple. Heavy crowds were witnessed at temples in Lucknow, Gorakhpur, and Varanasi, where security was heightened. In Gorakhpur, Adityanath performed the traditional kanya pujan ritual, while in Varanasi, a 51-foot statue of Lord Ram has become a major attraction. The festival was celebrated with enthusiastic fervor across the state.
There have been media reports of Banerjee meeting Rahul Gandhi at his residence in New Delhi on Wednesday morning. A leading Bengali daily had reported the meeting.
Of the four assistant sub-inspectors, three are from Kaliaganj Police Station and one is from Raiganj Police Station.
She claimed that the Centre has not released funds for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) project for the state and other initiatives of its housing and road departments.
There is a proposal from the BJP camp that they would resort to a proportion-based increase in the number of Lok Sabha seats for individual states, based on what they now have. On the face of it, this sounds like a fine argument that those demanding a 'freeze' now cannot oppose without reasons and justification, avers N Sathiya Moorthy.
Expressing his resentment over the "attitude of some junior doctors of Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital," Kabir, the Bharatpur MLA in Murshidabad district said, "They agitate and protest in airconditioned rooms while the masses suffer on streets."
A Bharatiya Janata Party leader, who the Trinamool Congress said is a brother-in-law of the saffron party's national vice-president Mukul Roy, rejoined the ruling party of West Bengal on Wednesday.
The impact of the explosion "was so massive" that the factory, which was being run from a residential building, collapsed, the police said.
"The death knell of Mamata Banerjee's regime has rung. We will form the next government in Bengal with a two-third majority," he added.
Addressing her first press conference after the election results were declared, she accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of polarising the people on religious lines to garner votes in West Bengal.
In the question paper, issued in an exercise book of a Bengali-medium school for Madhyamik aspirants, the paper setter has asked them to identify several places on the map (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (referred to as 'Azad Kashmir' in Pakistan), the place where Gandhiji had first undertaken the Satyagraha movement, and the Chittagong battleground.
The notice cited Ghosh's alleged remarks that "if someone crosses his limits then you have seen what happened in Sitalkuchi. There will be Sitalkuchi in several places."
Nearly three months after joining the Trinamool Congress, former Goa legislator Lavoo Mamlatdar on Friday resigned from the party, accusing it of being communal and trying to create a divide between Hindus and Christians for votes ahead of the state Assembly polls.
The Election Commission on Wednesday slapped show-cause notices on Bharatiya Janata Party leader Dilip Ghosh and Congress leader Supriya Shrinate for their offensive remarks against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Kangana Ranaut respectively.
After Bharatiya Janata Party working president Jagat Prakash Nadda took out a march in Kolkata in support of the newly-enacted citizenship law, the party's West Bengal vice president Chandra Kumar Bose has raised his voice against the act and said India is a country "open to all religions and communities".
There were discussions on issues like inflation, unemployment and 'deliberate attempts' at some places to encourage communal forces, Pawar told reporters in Baramati town in Maharashtra.
A special court for cases against MPs and MLAs in Mumbai was hearing a review petition filed by Banerjee against a summons issued against her by a local magistrate's court in connection with the case.
Three persons were shot dead and several others were injured as violence and arson marked the conclusion of nomination filing for the three-tier West Bengal panchayat polls slated next month.
Addressing a rally in West Midnapore district, Banerjee asserted that she would rather stay in jail than "remain silent or put up with BJP's misrule".
The West Bengal government objected to the inclusion of the Leader of the Opposition in the committee.
The opposition alliance that will take on the ruling National Democratic Alliance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections will be called Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) and an 11-member committee will be set up for coordination, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge announced after a meeting of the parties in Bengaluru.
Embroiled in a controversy over his 'slip of the tongue' on Lord Jagannath, Bharatiya Janata Party leader and party's Puri Lok Sabha candidate Sambit Patra apologised and announced he will undertake penance by observing fast for three days from Tuesday after being criticised from different quarters.
Modi also said the BJP has "not just today but never" acted against minorities.
The Supreme Court on Thursday extended Mishra's tenure till the midnight of September 15 in larger "public and national interest", after the Centre asserted that his continuity is necessary in view of the ongoing FATF peer review and attempts by India's neighbours to ensure that the country gets into the "grey" list.
Sharma sent an email to the police station expressing her inability to appear before it on Monday, the police officer stated.
According to the Minority Morcha's state president, Ali Hossain, around 4.5 lakh people from the community have already joined the saffron party.
After the Congress' shock defeat in Haryana, the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties flexed their muscles on Wednesday, accusing the grand old party of ignoring them.
The CAA, enacted by the BJP-led government at the Centre in 2019, aims at granting Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants, including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan who entered India before December 31, 2014.
A Trinamool Congress leader was stabbed to death at a market in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district on Thursday morning, following which locals caught one of the assailants and lynched him on the spot, the police said.
One person was killed and six others were injured in a clash between the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal's Birbhum district, police said.
BJP president J P Nadda drew a parallel between the post-poll result violence in West Bengal with the bloodshed during India's Partition, while his colleagues compared the Trinamool Congress with Nazis, as the saffron party's leaders protested in different cities on Tuesday against attacks targeting its workers in the state.
Security forces were maintaining a strict vigil across West Bengal in view of Hanuman Jayanti celebrations on Thursday, officials said.
In the run-up to the 2024 parliamentary elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party's minority morcha on Wednesday launched a year-long Muslim outreach programme -- "Sufi Samvad" -- with a special focus on the Muslim-dominated districts in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and Telangana.
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