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.
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.
They said that as Congress MPs, they are concerned about the transparency and fairness of the election process for the president of the party.
'It is important India to stay focussed on its primary national objectives: Combating terrorism; not losing sight of other security and strategic concerns (on the Sino-Indian front for instance); ensuring a strong economy and registering growth which includes improving the lot of common people; and finally making certain that the social fabric remains intact and harmony among people is not jeopardised, at least any further,' asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
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.
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.
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.
The political parties including the People's Democratic Party, the National Conference, and the Congress had opposed this order.
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.
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.
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.
A freebie once granted can hardly be discontinued. All that can happen is to substitute it with a bigger freebie, notes A K Bhattacharya.
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.
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 panel may recommend amending at last five articles of the Constitution to enable holding of simultaneous polls in the country.
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 Indian Diaspora has been able to carve a niche in their adopted countries as a result of their talent, perseverance and hardworking nature, asserts Rup Narayan Das.
The government has to specify what it intends to do with caste census data. It will be closely tracked if the government would simultaneously move towards removing the present 50% bar on reservations using means which are permitted in law. If this is not done, the entire exercise will become meaningless and could boomerang on the BJP, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
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.
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.
EPS has had its way on most things, alliance-wise. A week earlier, he reiterated that he would not re-admit OPS and Sasikala Natarajan back in the party. It was a message not just to detractors in the AIADMK. It was even more so for the BJP leadership in Delhi. Even more important for the AIADMK was their demand for accepting EPS as the chief ministerial candidate of any alliance that the party would form, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
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.
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 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.
A bill to link electoral rolls with the Aadhaar ecosystem to weed out duplication was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Although the Supreme Court has mandated the Centre to conduct the polls by the end of September, a spate of terrorist attacks in J&K could cause delays.
Responding to a question, Abdullah said elections can be held whenever the government wants.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday demanded the cancellation of the nomination of Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Suvendu Adhikari, who is pitted against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from Nandigram, as his name also 'seems to appear' in the electoral roll of Haldia constituency.
'The Election Commission is in the process of updating electoral rolls.' 'Once that is done, the dates for elections will be announced by the ECI at an appropriate time.' 'What can be more democratic than this?'
Accusing the opposition for the presence of bogus voters in electoral rolls, the ruling Left Front in West Bengal Monday urged the visiting Election Commission observers to go for a thorough scrutiny and remove all fake names.
Masoodi said all the participants are against giving voting rights to non-locals as "it will be tantamount to the disenfranchisement of the local voters."
The changes suggested include the amendment to the provisions of the Constitution relating to preparation of the electoral roll by the Election Commission of India in consultation with the State Election Commission(s) for the elections to the local bodies (in Article 325).
Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal will attend the meetings of the committee as a special invitee, while legal affairs secretary Niten Chandra will be secretary to the panel.
If 74.9 per cent of NRI voters are from Kerala, Andhra Pradesh at 6.4 per cent, Maharashtra at 4.7 per cent, Tamil Nadu and Telangana at 2.9 per cent each follow way behind.
The Election Commission on Friday issued instructions to Chief Electoral Officers of poll-bound states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Mizoram for allowing voting rights through postal ballots to all electors subjected to preventive detention.
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