The announcement came on a day that marks the third anniversary of the Naveen Patnaik-led government's fifth tenure in the state.
The leaders will also raise the issue of alleged "use of religious symbols" by the Bharatiya Janata Party in their campaign, they said.
'If you want to have fair elections you should have an officer, who is appointed as per the rules laid down for such appointments, which is based on seniority.'
National Democratic Alliance nominee Om Birla was elected as Lok Sabha speaker on Wednesday after a motion moved by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was adopted through voice vote, capping intense debate on the issue with the opposition in a rare move proposing its own candidate.
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.
Close to half of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats are bracing for multi-cornered fight this time, making the contest way more interesting and intense than it was in the 2019 elections.
Thackeray also declared the candidature of Satyajit Patil, Bharti Kamdi and Karan Pawar from Hatkanangale, Palghar, and Jalgaon constituencies, respectively.
For the first since the formation of Chhattisgarh in 2000, the new assembly will not have any MLA belonging to erstwhile royal families as all seven candidates fielded by the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Aam Aadmi Party bit dust.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Amit A Shah, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and G Kishan Reddy filed nomination papers for the Lok Sabha elections on Friday, April 19, 2024.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's bypoll win in four of the six seats it contested has invigorated the party ahead of assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
Please promise, especially those millions who trust you with their hard-earned money, never to let your voting preferences determine your actions on the markets. The most appalling and scary phenomenon was fund houses and brokerages going out on election yatras and writing copious reports promising more than 300 for the BJP. That was your wish as voters. Your investors are paying for it now, points out Shekhar Gupta.
It's obvious to all that the Congress is overestimating its success and the BJP is underestimating the people's message delivered through the ballot box, notes Sheela Bhatt.
Janata Dal-Secular leader and former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Wednesday hinted that his party was interested in the agriculture portfolio in the new National Democratic Alliance government.
Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party won all five seats it contested in the Maharashtra legislative council elections on Monday, Mohit Kamboj, its leader from Mumbai, claimed that three MLAs of the party indulged in "cross-voting".
In 2019, actor turned-politician Sumalatha Ambareesh, an independent backed by the BJP, won by defeating then Kumaraswamy's son and joint candidate of the then ruling Congress-JD-S alliance Nikhil by 1,25,876 votes.
Since Independence, Lok Sabha Speakers have been chosen by consensus.
Polling is being held for 224 seats in what is being seen mainly as a three-cornered contest between the ruling BJP, the Congress and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda's Janata Dal-Secular.
'During the election period, Modi did not refer to the government as 'Government of India'...it used to be called Modi Sarkar, Modi's guarantee. Today that Modi guarantee is no longer there'
That he hasn't done so yet, has continued to be active on the political street, in public debate and on social media, signals an important change. It will give his party hope. Maybe the achievement of reducing Mr Modi well below the majority mark will now motivate him to stay committed, observes Shekhar Gupta
The two candidates, current mayor Oberoi and BJP's Rai, had earlier filed their nominations for the Delhi mayoral poll slated to be held on April 26, officials had said.
Total of 59 seats spread across 6 states and one Union Territory will go to polls in the sixth phase on May 12.
Will Andhra Pradesh follow the Odisha model, voting differently in Lok Sabha and assembly elections? Or will Odisha follow Andhra Pradesh, voting in new faces in both?
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday ridiculed Congress leader Digvijaya Singh over his remark -- that Sushma Swaraj would be a better prime ministerial candidate than Narendra Modi -- saying the party did not need advice from a man who has not "dared" to fight Lok Sabha elections and who has been involved in his party's consecutive defeats in Madhya Pradesh.
If Tamil Nadu voters preferred the DMK combine, it owed to the Modi-Annamalai combo's ideological battle which often crossed the line of political decency and also challenged 'Tamil pride', argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
Wary of the possibility of cross-voting during the polling for two Rajya Sabha seats, the Congress is likely to take its Haryana MLAs to the party-ruled Chhattisgarh to protect them from poaching.
'Modi 3.0 will have more balanced policies like one saw in Modi's first term.'
A total of seven candidates have filed papers for the elections, for which the date for filing nominations ended on Friday.
Electioneering for the third and the final phase of polling in Assam to be held on April 24 in six constituencies - Gauhati, Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Barpeta, Mangaldoi and Nowgong -- came to an end on Tuesday afternoon with the election department expecting a high turn out on the basis of overwhelming response of voters in the last two phases of polling in the state.
Despite consumer inflation, joblessness, etc, ordinary voters still think Modi is the best to rule the country.< Going into the poll with a tried and tested prime ministerial candidate is a huge plus for the BJP --- and a huge handicap for the Opposition, points out Virendra Kapoor.
Wayanad will continue to support Rahul but not to the same extent as in 2019, when his margin of victory had been enormous. Articulate, to the point and speaking in fluent Malayalam, CPI's Annie Raja, had the people who gathered to see her, listening in rapt attention, notes Shyam G Menon.
Though the Lok Sabha polls are spread over five phases, the Bhartiya Janata Party on Thursday said it would be the sixth phase of realignment of parties after the polls that will actually decide who forms the government at the Centre.
51 constituencies across 7 states go to the polls in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha election.
Out of the 403 seats up for grabs, the BSP had prepared a final list comprising 97 Muslim candidates (12 more than 2012), 87 Dalits and 106 other backwards castes, besides earmarking 113 seats for upper castes -- Brahmins 66, Kshatriyas 36 and others 11.
In focus are the assembly polls in 2026. From a BJP perspective, their attack on the ruling DMK, using the 'Hindutva' card, and Annamalai's targeting of both Dravidian majors on corruption has not worked, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Two candidates each of the ruling coalition allies Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and the Shiv Sena and four nominees of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday night won elections to the Maharashtra legislative council, an official said.
According to the Election Commission data, 30 out of the state's 40 Lok Sabha seats went to the BJP-led coalition in the latest elections, a sharp drop compared with 39 in 2019 and lower than the tallies of 2014 (31) and 2009 (32).
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is headed for a big win in the Uttar Pradesh legislative council polls, bagging Barabanki and Ayodhya and leading in several other places. But it lost Varanasi to an Independent candidate.
'Neither did I approach the BJP nor did they ask me to join them. It was a natural choice for both of us to make.' 'It was never for me to ask or for them to give.'
Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu is keeping everyone guessing about whether he plans to join hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance for the forthcoming Parliamentary polls.
'All my wealth I earned in the US. It is all money earned transparently. I have paid all taxes.'
