The government must develop a legally tenable mechanism in order to restore the cycle of simultaneous elections.
The government on Friday issued rules allowing linking of electoral roll data with Aadhaar, making electoral law gender neutral for service voters and enabling young citizens register as voters four times a year instead of the present one.
As Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal pitches for early assembly polls in Delhi, experts on Sunday said the city government may have to write to the Election Commission giving reasons behind the demand. The term of the Delhi assembly ends on February 23 next year and the polls are expected to be held sometime early February.
Congress's Lok Sabha members Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari, Karti Chidambaram, Pradyut Bordoloi and Abdul Khaleque said this list must be made available in order to verify who is entitled to nominate a candidate and who is entitled to vote.
AAP projects its affordable 'health model' as a success story. The BJP calls it a hoax.
The clarification was issued through an advertisement in local dailies after facing political backlash, including from parties perceived close to the government.
Of the 87.54 crore electors in the first six phases of the Lok Sabha polls, as many as 57.77 crore voters turned up at the polling stations to cast their votes.
The Election Commission refuses to tell how many people have voted in each phase.
They said that as Congress MPs, they are concerned about the transparency and fairness of the election process for the president of the party.
"The open-ended nature of Section 6A has, with the passage time, become more prone to abuse due to the advent of forged documents to establish, inter-alia (among other things), wrong date of entry into Assam, inaccurate lineage, falsified government records created by corrupt officials, dishonest corroboration of the date of entry by other relatives so as to aid illegal immigrants who are otherwise not eligible under Section 6A by virtue of having entered into Assam after March 24,1971," he noted in a separate 127-page dissenting judgment.
Of the 76.41 crore eligible voters in the first five phases of the Lok Sabha polls, as many as 50.72 crore people have cast their vote, according to data shared by the Election Commission on Saturday.
Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, estranged cousins and leaders of Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS respectively, will share a public stage after two decades to celebrate the Maharashtra government's decision to roll back the three-language policy in primary schools.
BJP MP Nishikant Dubey has written to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla seeking initiation of breach of privilege proceedings against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for making "blatant lies and vilification campaign" during his speech in the House. Dubey alleged that Gandhi used his parliamentary privilege to spread canards without authenticating his charges and distorted historical facts during his speech. Gandhi had claimed that mobile phones were not made in India but only assembled here, China has captured the Indian territory, and India had sent Foreign Minister S Jaishankar to the US to get an invite for Prime Minister Narendra Modi for US President Donald Trump's swearing-in ceremony. He also made allegations related to the electoral rolls for the Maharashtra Assembly polls and the law for the appointment of the elections commissioner. Dubey accused Gandhi of misusing the Constitution's Article 105, which accords privileges to parliamentarians for their comments made inside the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. He urged the Speaker to initiate proceedings against Gandhi, alleging that Parliament's records and proceedings are a testimony to his irresponsible attitude.
The political parties including the People's Democratic Party, the National Conference, and the Congress had opposed this order.
"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 Election Commission on Friday directed officials for a review of the deletions and additions in the electoral rolls of three assembly seats in Karnataka and ordered the suspension of two additional district election officials after allegations of 'electoral fraud' in the state.
Eighteen distinct amendments to the Constitution and other statutes would be required for the implementation of the Kovind committee's recommendations on simultaneous elections, according to the panel's report accepted by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday.
A fresh political row has erupted in West Bengal after a person allegedly involved in Bangladesh's August 2024 student protests was found listed as a voter in Kakdwip, triggering sharp Bharatiya Janata Party-Trinamool Congress exchanges over alleged illegal infiltration and manipulation of the voter list in the state.
Parties like the NC and Peoples Democratic Party claimed the administration has not addressed their main concern on whether ''outsiders'' ordinarily residing in J-K will be allowed to enroll as voters.
A high-level committee on Thursday recommended simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha and state assemblies as the first step followed by synchronised local body polls within 100 days.
He also asked why anyone seeking to contest the Congress president's election should go to the PCC office to get the electoral roll as this does not even happen in a club election.
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.
Taking serious note of the discrepancies, Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami told a press conference in Bangalore that it has been decided to delete 33.48 lakh entries and add 9.27 lakh new ones. Gopalswami, who reviewed the electoral rolls and the state's preparedness to hold the polls along with Election Commissioners Naveen Chawla and S Y Quraishi, said work on revision of the rolls was not satisfactory.
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.
The Election Commission will dispatch a team to Gujarat to probe allegations of "bogus voters" being included in the electoral rolls. A three-member Congress party delegation including Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee chief Siddharth Patel, leader of opposition Shakti Singh Goel and general secretary in charge of Gujarat, Sidharath Reddy on Friday called on the Election Commission, complaining against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Narendra Modi government.
There is no guarantee that if we speak in only Indian languages, all our faults will be washed away and India will shine. Why then do they bully and belittle the English-speaking? asks Shyam G Menon.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal for 'one nation, one Election' as recommended by the Kovind panel, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday.
Jammu and Kashmir is likely to get around 25 lakh additional voters including outsiders after the special summary revision of electoral rolls being held for the first time after the abrogation of Article 370, an official said on Wednesday.
The panel may recommend amending at last five articles of the Constitution to enable holding of simultaneous polls in the country.
The opposition parties were demanding a division of votes as they had moved a motion to send the Bill to a select committee, which was rejected by voice vote.
The principal opposition party though appeared content securing 99 of the 543 seats in the 2024 national elections as against its all-time low of 44 in 2014 and then 52 in 2019.
A bill to link electoral rolls with the Aadhaar ecosystem to weed out duplication was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Days after rules were issued allowing linkage of Aadhaar with voters list to weed out duplicate entries, the Election Commission has warned of 'severe' disciplinary action against electoral registration officers for any leakages of physical forms filled by electors to share their Aadhaar details.
The former India all-rounder and member of the 1983 World Cup-winning team's name appeared on the BCCI's Draft Electoral Rolls (on the BCCI's website) for the October 18 elections and Annual General Meeting as a representative of the Karnataka State Cricket Association, instead of KSCA secretary Santosh Menon.
EC has directed the state government to delete from the electoral rolls, the names of those persons against whom non-bailable warrants could not be executed for more than six months.
The National Conference called the meeting after remarks related to the addition of voters in the revised rolls by the Union Territory's chief electoral officer Hirdesh Kumar raised hackles of the regional parties.
Over the medium and long term, the BJP hopes to devour the AIADMK, they having identified the party as 'ideologically not as sound as the DMK', predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
A freebie once granted can hardly be discontinued. All that can happen is to substitute it with a bigger freebie, notes A K Bhattacharya.
Trump may temper his approach from time to time, but to think that he will change his basic philosophy is delusional, asserts T T Ram Mohan.
Jammu and Kashmir has been without an assembly since November 2018 when the then legislative assembly was dissolved by then Governor Satya Pal Malik after the People's Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government fell apart earlier that year.
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