The Wednesday's preliminary meeting focused on various thematic issues including assured minimum facilities at polling stations, ease of registration for voters, electoral roll, timely resolution of grievances, arrangements of electronic voting and paper trail machines, postal ballot facility for senior citizens who are 80 and above, and people with disabilities.
"More voters were added in Maharashtra in five months between the Lok Sabha and assembly polls than in five years," the former Congress president said.
The Congress party in India has alleged "serious and grave inconsistencies" in the data relating to the polling and counting processes for the recently concluded Maharashtra Assembly elections. The party has sought an in-person hearing from the Election Commission to present evidence of alleged discrepancies, including the arbitrary deletion and addition of voters and inexplicable increases in voting percentages. The Congress leaders claim these irregularities benefited the ruling BJP-led alliance, which won a decisive victory in the polls.
The Election Commission of India has announced that the Delhi Assembly elections will be held on February 5, 2023, with the counting of votes scheduled for February 8. The last date to file nominations is January 17, and the scrutiny of nominations will be done by January 18. Candidates can withdraw their nominations until January 20.
Meanwhile, the Congress' data analytics department chairperson Praveen Chakravarty on Tuesday wrote to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, seeking assembly-wise voter rolls in excel sheet format for the Lok Sabha elections and the assembly polls in Maharashtra.
The Election Commission (EC) on Saturday came out with the constituency-wise data on the number of votes cast in the first five phases of the Lok Sabha polls and said there is a pattern in creating false narratives and mischievous designs to vitiate the electoral process.
'The failure of the ECI to follow the Registration of Electoral Rules and create verified and audited rolls or even verifiable and auditable ones, highlight that the entire electoral roll is merely a compilation of names without any effort or intention for completeness, correctness or fair play.' 'We are fooling ourselves by electing our representatives based on faulty electoral rolls that do not represent the people of the constituency. Elections based on these rolls are neither free nor fair. Democracy is under siege,' says Dr Anupam Saraph.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday ruled out holding any dialogue with Pakistan and asserted that the Modi government will wipe out terrorism from Jammu and Kashmir and make it the most peaceful place in the country.
Even when the Congress is facing the toughest challenge in its long history, it shows no sign of turning a new leaf and injecting internal democracy to revive its fortunes, argues Virendra Kapoor.
'We accept EVMs cannot be hacked because it is not connected, but can they be manipulated?' 'Are you allowing us to check if EVMs can be manipulated?'
The announcement came days after it issued a formal direction that VVPAT will be used at polling stations in all future elections where polls are held using EVMs.
Kumar said the Commission will follow the time-tested methods of consultations and consensus building in bringing about any reforms and will not shy away from tough decisions, according to an Election Commission (EC) statement.
He alleged that India "lost access to 26 out of 65 Patrolling Points" which was not the case before May 2020, and questioned the Modi government's "silence" on the issue.
Seeking to make inroads in Chhattisgarh, Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday announced 10 'guarantees' for the upcoming assembly polls in the Congress-ruled state including free electricity, monthly 'samman rashi' for women and Rs 3,000 monthly allowance for the unemployed.
The term of the 243-member Bihar legislative assembly comes to an end on November 29.
The commission issued letter of intent to ECIL and BEL -- both PSUs -- on Friday, two days after the Union Cabinet cleared its proposal to buy 16,15000 voter verifiable paper audit trail units at an estimated cost of Rs 3,173.47 crore.
Mistry said the election authority is in the process of finalising the AICC delegates who will vote in the crucial election for the top party post.
Alleging that the order made by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was unconstitutional, the attorney generals said the state overstepped its constitutional authority in accepting late ballots and violated the election clauses of the Constitution and that voting by mail creates voter fraud risks.
The challenges before the coming Budget are more daunting than those in 2021, reveals A K Bhattacharya.
'Kindling the private sector's animal spirits is more important than focusing on how government can give jobs on its own.'
'Even if something appears to be wrong, we can always request the government and Parliament to make amends.'
'The people of Uttar Pradesh have already made up their mind to puncture the Samajwadi Party's cycle, kick away the Bahujan Samaj Party's elephant, and remove shadows of the already-vanished hand of the Congress.'
B R Ambedkar's fears about personality cults in politics and money power in elections seem to be coming true, says Nitin Desai
'EVMs are absolutely credible, they are robust.' 'It's only a calculator with certain instructions. And the sim card inside an EVM is burnt and cannot be reprogrammed.' 'Besides, the machines are circulated among various states. No machine is allowed to remain in one state after an election.' 'By far, it is one of the finest innovations India should be proud of.'
Delhi University had claimed that unless the roll number of a student is not provided, it would be difficult to search the records.
The ministry has raised five questions in all including whether the personal data of Indian voters and users has been compromised by Cambridge Analytica or any other downstream entity in any manner.
"As we continued with (preparation for) voting, the Maldives Police Services have said no document relating to the election can leave the commission's offices, stopping the election," said a statement issued by the Election Commission.
Equity markets are currently difficult to gauge as the market has probably priced in a lot of things ahead of actual events.
What Saisuresh Sivaswamy learnt about the election from television and the newspapers. A must read column, folks!
'As demonetisation showed us, the Shah-Modi duo can take big risks.' 'Risking economic damage for political benefit, however, is one thing, stoking old fires in complicated Assam is another', warns Shekhar Gupta.
Finance minister tries to put house in order before reforms are unveiled in February.
The implementation of their recommendations means that an adequate apparatus to change this is at the disposal of the government.
President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday addressed the first joint sitting of Parliament as mandatorily required under the Constitution after the general elections. The address is the political, economic and foreign policy road map of the Narendra Modi government and covers virtually all crucial areas.
It is easy to foretell that negotiating a comprehensive and final agreement on the Iran nuclear issue is by no means an easy task. It involves hard negotiations, but the hardest step has been taken, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, who was among the first group of foreigners to visit the the top-secret Arak plant hidden behind barren mountains south of Tehran.
