The BJP won 74 seats in the 147-member Odisha assembly and was leading in four more seats, the Election Commission of India.
The move is seen as a prelude to Chavda's joining the Bharatiya Janata Party.
While a tweet from a close aide of the Gandhi's and the Chief Whip of the party in Rajya Sabha, Jairam Ramesh took a dig on Azad for accepting the award, Congress stalwarts from the G-23 group have congratulated him for the 'well-deserved' award.
Amid the ongoing political turmoil in the Congress in Rajasthan, the party's chief whip in the state, Mahesh Joshi, on Tuesday said a meeting of the MLAs loyal to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was not called to mount pressure on the party high command.
Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Tuesday disqualified Telugu Desam Party MP M Jagannath, who defied a party whip and voted for the Congress-led United Progressive government in a trust vote He was diusqualified according to the Anti-Defection Law under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, a Lok Sabha release said.
Pilot said rules and discipline of the party apply to all, adding that he hoped Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge would take a decision in the matter soon.
Senior Congress leader and former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot arrived in the national capital on Tuesday amid a buzz of a likely meeting with the party high command that is grappling with the high political drama in the state.
The Congress, which has 37 MLAs, had fixed a quota of 30 first preference votes for its candidate Satav, and seven remaining votes were to go to its ally Sena (UBT)'s nominee Narvekar, party sources said. Eventually, Satav got 25 and Narvekar 22 first preference votes, which meant at least seven Congress MLAs cross-voted.
'If the country felt very strongly about the BJP, then why did the country not put money where the mouth is?'
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.
"Time will also take account of those registering cases and those getting them registered. Stopping the business of MLAs and allowing friends to loot, is this a change in the system?" he posed.
Hitting out at Tharoor, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee working president and the party's chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Kodikkunnil Suresh on Friday said everybody in the party should work according to it's policies and programmes.
The Indian National Lok Dal will contest all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana, senior party leader Abhay Singh Chautala said on Thursday.
The preferred format would be for the top BJP leadership in the government to reach out to the alliance leaders on a case-to-case basis.
Ashok Gehlot has proved that a strong state leader can challenge the Congress high command.
Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra's expulsion from the Lok Sabha triggered a political slugfest on Friday, with the opposition calling it a 'betrayal of India's parliamentary democracy' and the Bharatiya Janata Party asserting that it was an 'apt decision' as there was proof of the allegations levelled against her.
Trinamool Congress has named Derek O'Brien as its chief whip in the Rajya Sabha. The party, which is a key constituent of the United Progressive Alliance government, has sent a communication in this regard to the Rajya Sabha secretariat, sources said in New Delhi on Thursday.
To keep their MLAs together, political parties are organising dinner meetings and arranging hotel stays for them ahead of the council elections, which are taking place just three months ahead of the assembly polls in the state.
They accused Sarma of attempting to incite communal tension by targeting a specific community, potentially leading to riot-like situations in the state.
The Bharatiya Janata Party leadership in Himachal Pradesh is making efforts to mollify party leaders who are disgruntled over distribution of tickets to six Congress rebels for the assembly bypolls, former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said on Tuesday.
Action will be taken against such MLAs, he said.
The sources said that Priyanka Gandhi remained in constant touch with the party president, the chief minister, ministers and all important leaders, and did not allow any laxity.
The government also termed the alleged insult to the farmer as an infringement on "dignity and self-respect", and said it cannot be tolerated.
Much drama is likely to continue in the coming year, within the Sangh Parivar as well as involving the Opposition parties and, of course the BJP's allies, predicts Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Six rebel Congress MLAs, including Rana, who were disqualified for defying the party whip asking them to be present in the assembly and vote in favour of the state government during cut motions and the budget, moved the Supreme Court on Tuesday against their disqualification.
The case was registered recently to probe alleged financial irregularities in the party-promoted Young Indian that owns the National Herald newspaper.
Six Himachal Pradesh Congress MLAs who voted against party nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the Rajya Sabha elections, along with three Independent lawmakers, have shifted to a hotel in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Uttarakhand amid an ongoing rebellion against Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.
Amid the government's plan to take up and possibly pass the ambitious Food Security Bill in Parliament, Congress has issued a whip to its members in Lok Sabha to be present in the House on Wednesday and vote in favour of the legislation.
Faced with brewing dissidence by a section of party MLAs, the ruling Congress party in Assam have taken every precaution possible to ensure victory of both the party candidates, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ,on May 30 Rajya Sabha polls from the state
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's 'rashtrapatni' remark snowballed into a major political row on Thursday with the Bharatiya Janata Party accusing the opposition party of insulting President Droupadi Murmu and demanding that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi should apologise to the nation.
The Congress has 40 MLAs while the BJP has 25 in the 68-member state assembly. The remaining three seats are held by independents.
The legislators landed at the Birsa Munda Airport in Ranchi in a chartered flight and were taken to the Circuit House in the city in two buses.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday named its candidates for assembly bypolls in several states, fielding six disqualified MLAs of the Himachal Pradesh assembly in the state days after they joined the party after leaving the Congress.
Udhayanidhi's 'untimely' elevation as deputy CM may be used against the party, for critics to argue that the DMK's 'first family's is not concerned about anything else but their clan's welfare. If packaged and delivered properly, some of the sting may stick at election time, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
RSS leader whipped up a political storm for stating that the BJP was restricted to 240 seats, well below the majority mark, in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, due to its "arrogance".
Congress observers for Rajasthan on Tuesday recommended disciplinary action against three key loyalists of Ashok Gehlot but did not seek any action against the chief minister, as the party scampered to resolve the crisis that has cast a shadow on the election of the party president.
The Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena on Monday moved the Supreme Court challenging Legislative Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar's order declaring the Sena bloc led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde as the 'real political party' after its split in June 2022.
A week after he was arrested and released on bail for making controversial remarks against the Muslim community, another case was registered against senior politician P C George by the police on Tuesday, on charges of hate speech.
The Congress sought the imposition of President's Rule followed by fresh polls in Haryana.
The Congress on Thursday raised the issue of Enforcement Directorate action and police gherao of its party office and the residences of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, with Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge saying in the Rajya Sabha that he has been summoned by the ED at a time when Parliament is in session.
