Hoardings calling for the social boycott of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann have surfaced at several places including Hoshiarpur, Ludhiana, Bathinda and Amritsar in the state.
A four-year-old boy was safely rescued from a borewell in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district after a nine-hour operation involving multiple rescue agencies and local volunteers.
Tension gripped Chabbewal, Hoshiarpur, as villagers blocked the Hoshiarpur-Chandigarh road for four hours, protesting a mining case and alleged police excesses. The protest stemmed from an FIR filed under the Mining and Minerals Act, leading to arrests and accusations of police brutality. Traffic was disrupted until authorities assured a fair inquiry.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 15 assembly seats spread across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala and Uttarakhand. The bypolls, however, will not have any direct impact on the respective legislative assemblies. The results will be declared on November 23. In Uttar Pradesh, polling will be held in Katehari, Karhal, Meerapur, Ghaziabad, Majhawan, Sisamau, Khair, Phulpur and Kundarki. Ninety candidates are in the fray in these seats with the maximum of 14 in Ghaziabad. This will be the first electoral test of the INDIA bloc as well as the NDA in the politically-crucial state after the Lok Sabha elections. In Punjab, bypolls will be held in four assembly seats - Gidderbaha, Dera Baba Nanak, Chabbewal (SC) and Barnala. The bypolls were necessitated after MLAs representing them were elected to the Lok Sabha. Polling will also be held for the Palakkad seat in Kerala and Kedarnath in Uttarakhand.
The Election Commission on Monday rescheduled from November 13 to November 20 the assembly bypolls to all nine and four seats in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, respectively, and one seat in Kerala in view of festivals, an official statement said.
An average voter turnout of 20 per cent was recorded in the first four hours of voting in the bypolls to 15 assembly seats spread across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala and Uttarakhand on Wednesday amid an incident of stone pelting in a village in UP's Meerapur and allegations of police personnel deterring voters from casting their ballot.
Ruling parties held sway in most of the 13 states in the assembly byelection results declared on Saturday, with the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies wresting seats in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan and the Trinamool Congress sweeping West Bengal.
The counting of votes for the bypolls to 46 assembly seats in 13 states and in the Lok Sabha segments of Nanded in Maharashtra and Wayanad in Kerala, a crucial electoral exercise since the parliamentary polls in April-May, will begin at 8 am on Saturday.
'I have no doubt that when she was prevented from meeting Kejriwal, she felt humiliated.'
The old alliance between the BJP and the SAD broke last year when the Shiromani Akali Dal quit the National Democratic Alliance over the farm laws.
A beaming Amarinder Singh thanked the people of the state for their overwhelming support, saying he was committed to good governance and tackling the drug menace.
Here's a list of the full first-time ministers in the second term of the Narendra Modi government.
