The marathon polling process to elect the 18th Lok Sabha ended on Saturday with the seventh phase of elections witnessing an approximate voter turnout of 62.36 per cent, amid clashes between Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party supporters in Sandeshkhali and some other parts of West Bengal.
The Election Commission of India has set up more than 200 polling stations within housing societies in the urban areas of Uttar Pradesh to increase the voter turnout in the politically crucial state.
An estimated 57 per cent of the electorate cast their votes in the first phase of the Bihar assembly election in 49 constituencies on a violence-free note on Monday.
Other prominent candidates among the 904 in the fray are Union minister Anurag Thakur, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad's daughter Misa Bharti.
More than two crore voters in Bihar will decide the fate of 1,066 candidates on Wednesday across 71 assembly segments in the first phase of elections.
Additional Sessions Judge Saurabh Kulshreshtha sentenced Thakur to life imprisonment for remainder of his natural life.
Voting for the second phase of Lok Sabha polls will be held on Friday for 88 seats in 13 states with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi seeking a second-straight term from Wayanad in Kerala.
Questioning the team's authority headed by a former Patna high court judge, Banerjee pointed out that Ram Navami processions organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party had carried arms and driven tractors and deliberately taken routes where 'Namaz' was being offered.
A voter turnout of 60.19 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in 93 constituencies spread over 11 states and Union Territories on Tuesday with sporadic incidents of violence in West Bengal.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday apologised in both Houses of the legislature, as well as outside, for remarks made a day before on the importance of women's education to control population growth.
Bihar Chief Electoral Officer H R Srinivasa said the Election Commission has established a three-tier security system for strong rooms (housing the electronic voting machines) and the counting centres. The inner core is being guarded by the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), then there is the Bihar Military Police (BMP) and then the district police, he told reporters.
Modi said not a single leader of the opposition grouping INDIA has uttered a word against the "disrespect" for women.
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 body was found in Dardari Chaur in Warisnagar police station area, said officials who suspect that that the woman was killed elsewhere and later dumped there.
Besides the national capital, polling for the sixth round of the marathon seven-phase elections will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir.
Crucial reforms in Muslim personal law, especially laws related to inheritance and adoption, need to be initiated forthwith; historically speaking, without the State's backing, hardly has any reform taken place or allowed to prevail, asserts Mohammad Sajjad.
Given the reality of the disparity and the enormous shift over the last 50 years, this can be done without an open and frank conversation with the people, something that has not begun and, knowing the style of our leader, is not expected to begin, asserts Aakar Patel.
In nearly 100 seats, the BJP stands almost no chance of winning. In 200 seats, it is a direct fight between the BJP and the Congress where the BJP has an upper hand. In 243 seats, the BJP is pitted against regional parties and it is not going to be easy. That is why 400 seats may end up as a pipe dream, states Ramesh Menon, author of Modi Demystified: The Making of a Prime Minister.
The court referred the NCRB data and said 38,947 women were raped in India in 2016. "What is to be done? Girls and women are getting raped left, right and centre," the bench said."
According to the officials, the three-storey coaching institute, surrounded by residential and commercial establishments, had permission to use the basement as a store room, but it was being used as library in violation of the rules.
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.
Ironically, rival Tamil Nadu governments expend the most on social welfare schemes, especially targeting women and youth and children, but that money comes only by selling more liquor. There is always the specious plea, which has been peddled very many times in the past, that without licensed liquor, drinkers would go after hooch and there could be more hooch tragedies and hooch deaths. No one is convinced, but no one can dispute it either, comments N Sathiya Moorthy.
'...it gets a survey report that they are going to lose elections.' 'The fear of losing elections will make them immediately conduct a caste census.'
The 94 constituencies which are going to poll on November 3 are in 17 districts: West Champaran, East Champaran, Sheohar, Sitamarhi, Madhubani, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj, Siwan, Saran, Vaishali, Samastipur, Begusarai, Khagaria, Bhagalpur, Nalanda and Patna.
Amit Shah wants to increase the party's nationwide vote share by at least 10 per cent from the 37.7 per cent it secured five years ago and ensure above 50 per cent vote share in the states where it came close to that benchmark, but couldn't cross it.
Among the major political parties, chief minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United is contesting in 35 of the 71 seats, followed by its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (29), while the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal has fielded its candidates in 42 and its coalition partner Congress is in the fray in 20 assembly segments.
The Indian Air Force is set to make history on June 18 when the first three women fighter pilots will be formally commissioned into the force.
Sale of expensive sarees rose by 1,751 per cent while consumption of honey by 380 per cent.
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.
The team will also inquire into various cases of human rights violation including custodial deaths.
Besides Pratapgarh, incidents of rape and sexual abuse of women and girls at shelter homes run by NGOs have also surfaced recently in Muzaffarpur in Bihar and Deoria in Uttar Pradesh.
Kidwai is survived by two sons and four daughters. His funeral will be held on Thursday afternoon at the Jamia Burial Grounds.
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
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.
Supporting the food security ordinance, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said his government is taking steps for its implementation but felt bringing it after discussion in Parliament would have been a better option.
Several states that imposed prohibition in the past lifted it once revenue loss began to pinch
There are concerns within the Congress with respect to the articulation of the party's demand for the caste census, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently accusing the grand old party of attempting to divide Hindus through its push for the Other Backward Classes.
Let Bihar be damned under its contradictions of having gone 'dry' and then having been submerged under flood, which is a recurrent phenomena? After all it is a godforsaken land, having lost its promises of overcoming its problems, says Mohammad Sajjad.
