The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday pulled off a stunning performance in Maharashtra winning a record number of seats to propel the party-led ruling Mahayuti alliance to a landslide victory while the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) stormed back to power in Jharkhand on the back of a spectacular showing by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.
The senior JMM leader, who briefly held the chief minister's post after Hemant Soren's resignation, said only the saffron party seems serious over the issue of tribals, while others are indulging in vote bank politics.
The traffic police also issued an advisory in view of the protest planned outside the BJP office at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg, while entry and exit have been disallowed at the nearest ITO metro station.
Additional District Judge of SC/ST court Ajay Kumar granted bail to Singh on two surety bonds of Rs 50,000 each, government counsel Chedi Lal Gupta said.
According to police, Yediyurappa has been booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, and Section 354 A (Sexual harassment) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) based on a complaint by the mother of a 17-year-old girl who alleged that he molested her daughter during a meeting on February 2 this year, at his residence in Dollars Colony in Bengaluru.
Police said they have made five arrests in the incident. Those arrested have been identified as Prabhjit Singh, the main accused, Kulbir Singh, Sahib Singh, Gurjant Singh and Ninder Kaur, they said.
'Unlike in the sporting arena, where sports federations moved from partisan to impartial referees, in Indian democracy's biggest festival, it appears we are moving backward from unbiased and objective to one-sided and partisan,' observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs, George Kurian, strongly condemned the alleged threatening of teachers at a government school in Kerala by Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists over Christmas celebrations. Kurian urged the state government to take stringent action against the culprits to prevent such incidents from recurring. The incident sparked outrage, with opposition leaders accusing the Sangh Parivar of attempting to create communal tension. Meanwhile, VHP leaders clarified that they were not against any religion and admitted that their district office bearers had questioned the teachers about the organisation of the Christmas celebration.
Bibhav Kumar was produced before Metropolitan Magistrate Gaurav Goyal who sent him to five-day police custody after the police sought his remand to question him about the incident and to retrieve data from his phone.
The Delhi government's Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) has registered a case against former PWD minister and senior AAP leader Satyendar Jain over alleged corruption in a Rs 571-crore CCTV project. According to the ACB, Jain allegedly accepted a bribe of Rs 7 crore to waive the liquidated damages penalty of Rs 16 crore imposed on Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL). The project, which was executed when he was a PWD minister in the previous Arvind Kejriwal government, was related to the installation of 1.4 lakh CCTV cameras across all 70 assembly constituencies.
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 development comes days ahead of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the state to inaugurate various projects.
The Mumbai police registered a case against the woman on Deshmukh's complaint of "extortion", an official said on Tuesday night.
As part of country-wide fill-the-jail campaign against fuel price hike, a number of BJP leaders and workers on Friday courted arrest in Punjab and Haryana.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai and K V Viswanathan noted that Kavitha has been in custody for around five months and the probe against her by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was complete in these cases.
The arrest, the first of a sitting chief minister, came hours after the Delhi high court refused to grant protection to the AAP national convenor from any coercive action by the agency.
'It could backfire on the BJP and boost the Opposition parties.'
Once a close aide to JMM supremo Shibu Soren, Champai is now seen as crucial for the saffron party's efforts to establish a foothold in the tribal belt of Jharkhand, where Scheduled Tribes make up about 26 per cent of the electorate.
Bharat Rashtra Samithi's Goshamahal in-charge Nanda Kishore Vyas is pitted against Raja Singh from Goshamahal segment.
A BSP functionary said it was a "planned murder" and claimed there was an "intelligence failure." Therefore, the central agency should probe the case.
Targeting Aaditya Thackeray on Thursday, Bharatiya Janata Party minister Nitesh Rane said as per the Supreme Court's past decisions, if a person is facing allegations of rape, he must be arrested.
If Kejriwal is arrested, it will take very little for Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena to summon a meeting of the assembly, direct it to elect a new leader of the House, and, if it doesn't, dissolve it and impose President's Rule, predicts Aditi Phadnis.
In a fresh statement, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader has raised questions on the attack on Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan suspecting if the attack on the actor was real or if Khan was just acting. Rane while addressing a public gathering in Maharashtra's Pune, raised questions on attack on Saif saying -- "I doubted whether he had been stabbed or he was acting."
As the election nears, political positions on prohibition are shifting.
The BJP expelled Vinod Arya and his son from the party, a day after the leader's another son was arrested in the murder case of a woman receptionist at a resort in Uttarakhand's Pauri.
The opposition Congress on Thursday stepped up the attack on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka and demanded the arrest of party MP Tejasvi Surya and a party MLA, alleging they were behind the scam involving blocking of hospital beds meant for COVID patients in Bengaluru.
This comes amid the row over the arrest of former priest of ISKCON Bangladesh, Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari, over sedition charges, which led to protests and unrest in Bangladesh.
The killing led to tension and protests at several places in the coastal district on Wednesday with instances of stone-pelting and police lathi-charge.
The Janata Dal-United, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress legislators on Wednesday created ruckus in both Houses of Bihar legislature over recovery of Rs 1.14 crore, $600 and ornaments stolen from the house of Bharatiya Janata Party MP Giriraj Singh and demanded his arrest and termination of Parliament membership alleging it as "black money".
Kejriwal asserted that his party could not be crushed by sending its leaders to jail.
The crime investigation department, probing the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act case against Yediyurappa, had earlier summoned him for questioning.
The Congress hit back at Nadda, saying his letter to Mallikarjun Kharge is a "4D exercise - denial, distortion, distraction, and defamation".
A woman on Thursday lodged a police complaint, alleging that she was abducted by three persons from outside her residence in West Bengal's Sandeshkhali where allegations of sexual abuse against Trinamool Congress leaders have been levelled.
Armed with sticks, they set ablaze thatched structures near a fishing yard in Belmajur area of Sandeshkhali, venting their fury against the elusive TMC leader Shahjahan Sheikh and his brother Siraj. The torched structure, it was revealed, belonged to Siraj.
There was high-drama at the Jammu airport after senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders were not allowed to leave the airport ahead of the flag yatra planned in Jammu. Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Anant Kumar were asked to return to Delhi after they landed in Jammu to "take command" of the party programme to hoist the tricolour in Lal Chowk in Srinagar on Republic Day.
'The CM's credibility is on the line.'
Soren, who is scheduled to join the Bharatiya Janata Party on August 30, also resigned as an MLA of the state assembly and a minister in the Jharkhand Cabinet.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said Narendra Modi should be referred to as a Bharatiya Janata Party leader and not as the prime minister in the saffron party's campaign as he is a 'caretaker PM'.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has issued directions from the Enforcement Directorate custody to ensure that medicines and tests are available to people at all government hospitals and Mohalla Clinics, Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj said on Tuesday.
Failing to get any reprieve from the Delhi high court, the Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will move the Supreme Court soon against his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate and maintained the excise policy case was the 'biggest political conspiracy of the country' to finish the party.
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