Bucking anti-incumbency, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party pulled off a hat-trick of wins in Haryana to retain power and halt Congress' comeback attempt in the assembly elections, results of which were announced on Tuesday.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday named 14 candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls including former Union minister R P N Singh and Sudhanshu Trivedi -- the only outgoing MP renominated by the party.
The withdrawal of the candidature by DPAP leaders on the last day on August 30 is seen as a boost to the NC-Congress alliance.
Five MLAs -- four from the BJP and one independent -- were also sworn in as ministers. However, former home minister and six-term MLA from Ambala Cantt, Anil Vij, has not found a place in the new cabinet.
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.
Senior leaders of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in India are calling for action against Rajya Sabha MP and national spokesperson Sasmit Patra for allegedly creating confusion among lawmakers regarding the Waqf (Amendment) Bill. The controversy arose after Patra, despite the party's announced opposition to the Bill, revealed he had voted in favor of it and stated that MPs could vote according to their conscience. The situation has led to accusations of a possible "deal" between the BJD and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
A win for SP could provide some consolation for Akhilesh Yadav after the defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early this year and the loss of Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in June bypolls.
No matter how smug they sound on the surface about the potential of the dissenters to disturb the proverbial applecart, the Congress and the BJP know that their electoral calculations are precariously hinged in a seemingly tight contest.
A total of 16 turncoats were in the poll fray -- nine fielded by the Aam Aadmi Party, three by the Congress and four by the BJP.
Sharma said Jai Ram Thakur's sarcastic comments forced him to resign from the ministry, saying it indicated that the chief minister had lost faith in him.
The deceased leader's nephew, Kapoor Singh Rathee, said that his uncle's elder son Bhupinder and younger son Jatinder have received 18 threat calls from an unknown number.
'If Pakistan has fired one bullet at us then we have to respond by firing 10 bullets at them. It is our right to do so.'
With the announcement of list of candidates for the December 1 assembly elections, rebellion is out in the open among Bharatiya Janata Party rank and file in Rajasthan's Hadoti region, once a stronghold of the opposition party.
Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal, Randeep Surjewala and Jairam Ramesh of the Congress and Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut were among the 16 candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha from four states where polling was held on Friday after tussle over cross voting and alleged breach of election rules delayed the counting by around eight hours in Maharashtra and Haryana.
BJP leader Anil Vij on Tuesday skipped Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini's swearing-in ceremony where, according to the outgoing CM M L Khattar, he would also have been inducted in the cabinet.
Except for the Devendra Fadnavis- led government during 2014-19, Anil Deshmukh has managed to find a berth in the state ministry irrespective of which party came to power in the last over two decades.
The district police said they were apprehended from Goa in a joint operation by the Haryana Police and the Delhi Police.
The voter turnout recorded in the 2019 assembly polls was around 68 per cent.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday announced the names of candidates for 59 out of 70 seats in Uttarakhand for the upcoming assembly polls.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, whose Rashtriya Janata Dal on Sunday retained Mokama assembly seat but failed to wrest from the Bharatiya Janata Party Gopalganj constituency, losing it by a whisker, asserted that the outcome marked a success of their 'experiment'.
Director General of Police Hitesh Chandra Awasthi had said on Thursday, "The post-mortem of the two girls was done by a panel of doctors and no injury before death or external injuries were found on their bodies.The cause of death could not be ascertained and viscera has been preserved for chemical analysis."
Haryana's new Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini said they have presented a letter of support of 48 MLAs to the governor and asked him to convene an assembly session on Wednesday so that the Bharatiya Janata Party government can prove its majority in the House.
While a number of those left out are sulking as the party has preferred Congress defectors over dedicated party cadres on many seats in its first list of 59 candidates, a few have come out in the open with their wounded feelings.
Names of at least half a dozen leaders, including Dhan Singh Rawat, Bhagat Singh Koshyari, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Satpal Maharaj, are doing the rounds to replace Trivendra Singh Rawat, who resigned as the chief minister of Uttarakhand on Tuesday.
The prime minister has announced an ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh from PMNRF (PM's National Relief Fund) for the next of kin of each deceased in the road accident in Mirzapur, UP. The injured would be given Rs 50,000, the Prime Minister's Office posted on X.
The Congress won 40 seats in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh assembly while the BJP got 25 seats.
The Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) had issued a whip, asking its 10 legislators to remain absent from the House during voting on the confidence motion. However, when the issue of trust vote was taken up, five of its MLAs left the House.
The swearing-in ceremony may take place on Tuesday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president J P Nadda and chief ministers of several BJP-ruled states likely to attend the event, he said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday released its first list of 189 candidates for the May 10 Karnataka assembly polls, fielding Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai from his traditional Shiggaon constituency.
According to a senior Election Commission official in Chandigarh, Panwar got 36 votes, while Sharma got 23 first preference votes and six transferred from the BJP, taking his tally to 29.
Prominent among these include former sports minister and sitting MLA Gurmit Singh Sodhi, MLA Fatehjang Singh Bajwa and former minister Anil Joshi.
Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' will also participate in Uttarakhand BJP legislative party meeting in Dehradun later on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Modi will address three rallies -- at Dehri-on Sone (Rohtas district), Gaya and Bhagalpur -- to seek support for National Democratic Alliance nominees on different assembly constituencies going to vote in the first phase on October 28. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is also slated to launch his campaign in Bihar elections on Friday.
Members of the Legislative Council asked how some former legislators could enter the Vidhan Bhavan premises amid COVID-19-related restrictions and sought a report on the matter.
Seeking to consolidate its position in Rajya Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party is banking on independents for four additional seats and is seeking to capitalise on the infighting within the Congress in as many states in the June 10 biennial election.
The BJP registered a victory in the Rajouri Garden assembly bypoll, handing a humiliating defeat to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, which finished a distant third and even lost its deposit.
The suspense over whether Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will contest the polls from Amethi and Raebareli respectively continued.
Incumbents Pushkar Singh Dhami and Pramod Sawant are the clear favourites but face some opposition
Bajpai said he quit the AAP as he felt "suffocated" over the "misbehaviour and insult" meted out by the party and claimed that several other legislators of the ruling party in the national capital felt the same way.
Non-BJP chief ministers are retaliating. If the Centre can use its agencies to threaten, intimidate and jail its rivals, so can they. The fightback will get more intense, observes Shekhar Gupta.
