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.
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.
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.
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.
The clarification was issued through an advertisement in local dailies after facing political backlash, including from parties perceived close to the government.
They said that as Congress MPs, they are concerned about the transparency and fairness of the election process for the president of the party.
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 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 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 political parties including the People's Democratic Party, the National Conference, and the Congress had opposed this order.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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.
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.
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 panel may recommend amending at last five articles of the Constitution to enable holding of simultaneous polls in the country.
A freebie once granted can hardly be discontinued. All that can happen is to substitute it with a bigger freebie, notes A K Bhattacharya.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
A bill to link electoral rolls with the Aadhaar ecosystem to weed out duplication was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
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.
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.
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.
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 (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.
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.
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.
'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?'
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