The Bharatiya Janata Party will not contest the November 3 bypoll to Andheri East assembly seat in Mumbai, Maharashtra party chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule said on Monday.
The young and suave candidate of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Bhavya Bishnoi, looks to defend his 'family bastion' for five decades, while the main opposition Congress has placed its bet on veteran leader Jai Prakash in the Adampur bypoll in Haryana.
Shivpal Yadav on Wednesday held a meeting with party workers and exhorted them to ensure the victory of the SP candidate in the bypoll.
Rutuja Latke, the candidate of 'Shiv Sena Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray' party for the upcoming Andheri (east) bypoll, on Wednesday moved the Bombay high court seeking a direction to the Mumbai civic body to accept her resignation as its employee.
According to the police, the Congress leaders, including the party candidate Mukesh Malhotra, organised a public meeting on the Morena-Shivpuri highway instead of the Mandi campus for which they were granted permission.
Polling was by and large peaceful in the bypolls for three Lok Sabha and seven assembly seats spread across five states and Delhi on Thursday barring an incident of stabbing of a policeman in Tripura, where polling was the highest at 76.62 per cent.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a holy dip in the Triveni Sangam at the Maha Kumbh on Wednesday. Holding 'rudraksha' beads and chanting mantras, the prime minister offered prayers while standing in the river. Modi took a boat ride with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to reach Triveni Sangam -- the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati. The Maha Kumbh, being held after 12 years, has so far drawn over 38 crore pilgrims from across India and the world.
The CEC said that in the case of Wayanad, the remainder of the term is more than a year.
The Election Commission has issued a notification banning the conduct, publication or publicising of exit polls between 7.00 am to 6.30 pm on February 5 (Wednesday) when votes will be cast for the Delhi assembly and two bypolls in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
The ruling BJP-led coalition ended Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan's over four-decade dominance in Rampur with its ally Apna Dal-Sonelal winning the Suar assembly by-election by a margin of 8,724 votes.
Counting of votes is underway in assembly byelection to 58 seats in 11 states including Madhya Pradesh where the results will decide the fate of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.
Counting of votes for the bypolls in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand will be taken up on Sunday.
BSP chief Mayawati removed her nephew Akash Anand from all party posts and said that she will not name her successor till she is alive. In a slew of other significant changes in the BSP leadership announced at a high-level meeting of the party's office-bearers from across the country, Mayawati appointed her brother Anand Kumar and Ramji Gautam as national coordinators. Mayawati also criticized the budgets of both the central and Uttar Pradesh governments, saying they were "unrealistic" and detached from ground realities.
The Congress on Thursday secured a seat in the present Bengal assembly as its candidate Bayron Biswas won the Sagardighi bypoll, defeating the nearest rival of the Trinamool Congress by 22,980 votes.
Counting of votes in the Maharashtra assembly elections will begin at 8 am on Saturday, with all eyes on the outcome of the battle between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti coalition and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, which is seeking to make a comeback.
The Thackeray faction on Tuesday claimed that voters were being paid to choose None Of The Above or NOTA option.
Rutuja Latke, the candidate of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), secured a comfortable win in the bypoll to Andheri (East) Assembly seat in Mumbai on Sunday, while votes polled in favour of the None of the Above (NOTA) option obtained the second position.
The election agent of the candidate, Brahmanand Netam, said he has submitted a reply to the Jharkhand police on the leader's behalf stating Netam is busy with electioneering.
Adequate security and Covid safety measures have been put in place for the electoral exercise.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi on Saturday cruised to her maiden electoral victory, from the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, with a margin of over 4.1 lakh votes against Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Democratic Front's Sathyan Mokeri, according to figures released by the Election Commission.
High voter turnout was recorded in most of the seven assembly constituencies in six states where by-elections were held on Tuesday.
A controversy has erupted after Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's son, Kartikey, said during a public meeting in bypoll-bound Budhni that 'not even a brick will be laid in any village' in case a Congress candidate wins the by-election.
Voting will be held on Thursday in bypolls to seven assembly seats in six states -- a contest symbolic of the fierce turf war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and MP Ramgopal Yadav accompanied 44-year-old Dimple during the filing of nomination papers at the District Magistrate's office in Mainpuri.
The BJP registered emphatic victories in seven municipal corporations in Haryana, while its nominees were leading in two other civic bodies in the recently held elections. The Congress, which was hoping to improve its electoral fortunes after a defeat in the 2024 Assembly polls, suffered another setback. The BJP candidates won with large margins in Faridabad, Gurugram, Hisar, Karnal, Rohtak, Sonipat, and Ambala. The BJP was also leading in Yamunanagar and Panipat. In Manesar, an Independent candidate, Inderjeet Yadav, won the mayoral election. The results are seen as a major setback for the Congress, which has been facing internal turmoil and factionalism.
The three seats fell vacant following the resignations of Baburao Chinchansur, R Shankar and Laxman Savadi to contest the assembly elections.
Congress candidate Elangovan secured 1,10,156 votes (64.58 per cent), which is 20.29 per cent more than the 2021 assembly election as the then INC candidate secured 66,300 votes and won the seat.
The Rampur assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh which fell vacant following the disqualification of SP leader Mohammad Azam Khan is one of the five seats going for the bypolls.
Parties like the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, Mahaan Dal, and Janvadi Party-Socialist had distanced themselves from the SP after its defeat in the 2022 state assembly elections.
All the winners in the assembly bypolls were from the respective ruling parties.
A total of seven candidates have filed papers for the elections, for which the date for filing nominations ended on Friday.
While the opposition alliance is putting up a united front in Ghosi constituency in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand's Dumri, Dhanpur and Boxanagar in Tripura and Uttarakhand's Bageshwar, its constituents are contesting against each other in Dhupguri in West Bengal and Puthuppally in Kerala.
The Samajwadi Party and Congress have announced that they will contest together under the INDIA bloc.
Thackeray said he is 100 per cent confident that Latke will get the votes of the Maha Vikas Aghadi constituents.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Friday won the bypoll to the Champawat assembly seat defeating Congress' Nirmala Gahtori by a record margin of over 55,000 votes to retain his office.
The assembly polls in Maharashtra will be held in a single phase while Jharkhand polls will be held in two phases, the Election Commission of India announced on Tuesday.
The SP's Uttar Pradesh president Naresh Uttam will, however, continue to remain in his position.
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
While the term of the Maharashtra assembly ends on November 26, that of Jharkhand ends on January 5 next year.
The Eknath Shinde faction of Shiv Sena is set to meet the Election Commission on Friday to stake claim for the party's 'bow and arrow' poll symbol ahead of the Andheri East assembly bypoll in Maharashtra.
