One of the high-profile contests in the high-stakes Bengal polls is likely to be a direct fight between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her former confidant and now BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram seat.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's tally in Rajya Sabha has dipped below 90 for the first time in several years but the party and its allies are expected to not only recoup the their losses but also make some gains when by-elections to fill the existing vacancies are held in the coming weeks.
Singh, 31, and Rashid, 56, won the recent Lok Sabha elections from Khadoor Sahib in Punjab and Baramulla in Jammu and Kashmir, respectively, as Independents while being incarcerated.
Former Jharkhand chief minister Champai Soren joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday, two days after he resigned from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha citing dissatisfaction with the party's current style of functioning and 'bitter humiliation'.
The Congress on Tuesday announced its second list of 43 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, fielding Kamal Nath's son Nakul Nath once again from Madhya Pradesh's Chhindwara and Ashok Gehlot's son Vaibhav Gehlot from Rajasthan's Jalore.
The BJP won both the Rajya Sabha seats from Assam.
Voters in 30 assembly constituencies of West Bengal and 47 of Assam exercised their franchise on Saturday.
The letter said the high-powered committee of the ministry, which was holding talks with representatives from Ladakh, will meet them next on December 3.
In a four-cornered fight, the real battle is between Union minister Pratima Bhoumik and CPM's Kaushik Chanda.
A voter turnout of 72.14 per cent was recorded in Assam till 5 pm on Saturday in the first phase of assembly elections in the state, the Election Commission said.
Jailed activist Akhil Gogoi will contest the upcoming elections in Assam from Sibsagar as a candidate of his newly-floated Raijor Dal.
Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma added to the mystery by declaring only that the next CM would be from the BJP, without naming Sarbananda Sonowal, the CM of the outgoing government.
The second phase of the Lok Sabha election ended on Friday, April 26, 2024, for 88 seats across 13 states.
A decision on the next chief minister in Assam is yet to be taken though two days have passed since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance won the assembly election and the state chief of the saffron party said on Tuesday that either incumbent Sarbananda Sonowal or senior minister Himanta Biswa Sarma will head the next government.
'There are 7,000 guns which are in the hands of the armed militia of the Kuki and Meitei communities.'
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.
I particularly call upon my young friends to vote, Modi tweeted.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar's wife Sunetra Pawar on Thursday filed papers as an NCP candidate for Rajya Sabha elections.
"Around 20 candidates have been shifted to Jaipur from Assam today," said Congress chief whip in the Rajasthan assembly, Mahesh Joshi.
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.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was elected to Rajya Sabha for the fifth consecutive term on Thursday as Congress won both the seats to the Upper House from Assam.
Adding more mystery to the sensational death case, another video clip of a different person also went viral, claiming that the deceased police officer's vehicle was stationary and a speeding truck had hit it.
In its manifesto, the Congress also promised five lakh government jobs and 200 units of free electricity per month for all, besides hiking the minimum wages of tea garden workers to Rs 365.
According to an official release, the voting percentage is likely to go up when reports from all polling stations are obtained, as polling was scheduled until 6 pm in many constituencies.
In total, 17 people, including Telangana Chief Minister and Congress leader Revanth Reddy, have been issued notices to appear before the Delhi police's investigation officer (in connection with the case. Sources, however, said Reddy is "unlikely" to join the probe and may send his representative.
'There are more young people in Assam who are unemployed than possibly anywhere else.'
"The voting percentage is likely to go upwards when reports from all polling stations are obtained as polling is scheduled till 6 pm in many constituencies. Final figures will be known on Saturday after the scrutiny of form 17A," the EC said.
'It is in the interest of China and Pakistan to give a bad name to the Indian Army and remove AFSPA 'completely' from the north east.' 'Hopefully, better sense will prevail and the ground realities of the army countering insurgency in the north east acknowledged,' asserts Lieutenant General Prakash Katoch (retd).
A bench of Justices V Ramasubramanian and Pankaj Mithal, which extended the protection from arrest to Gogoi till March 3, said it would hear the matter on Friday.
Gujarat legislator Jignesh Mevani, who was arrested by Assam police from the western state for a purported tweet, was on Thursday remanded to three days police custody by a court in Kokrajhar in the north eastern state.
If 74.9 per cent of NRI voters are from Kerala, Andhra Pradesh at 6.4 per cent, Maharashtra at 4.7 per cent, Tamil Nadu and Telangana at 2.9 per cent each follow way behind.
Digital canvassing is expected to benefit from political money looking for alternative blow horns.
Bangladesh is in turmoil, which is not good news for India, which shares a porous 4000 km border with it. There is a danger of fundamentalism growing there, and India has to move in to reset its ties with the new dispensation before China and Pakistan make capital out of it, alerts Ramesh Menon.
The government on Saturday said a committee will be formed to propose safety measures for healthcare professionals even as OPD services were hit across the country as doctors joined the 24-hour nationwide strike called by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) to protest the alleged rape and murder of a trainee medic in Kolkata.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and its two Assam allies -- the Asom Gana Parishad and the United People's Party Liberal -- on Wednesday 'almost finalised' their seat-sharing pact for the Assam assembly polls and a formal announcement will be made in a day or two, sources said.
During his stay in the national capital, neither Singh nor his relatives or family members can make a statement in any form of media, according to the conditions laid down
The Congress leader compared Assam's BJP leadership with 'Dritarashtra' and 'Shakuni', characters in the epic Mahabharata, without naming whom she meant.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has taken over the investigation of four distinct cases from the Assam police, all connected with the death of the state police sub-inspector Junmoni Rabha last month in a suspected road accident, according to officials.
Even if the Congress is unable to defeat the political appeal of Narendra Modi, the resources and talent of the BJP and its managers, it is relying on issues like the Citizenship Amendment Act and the perceived threat to Assamese identity, along with the future threat of the National People's Register to ensure it continues to be a force in the state. Aditi Phadnis reports.
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