AIADMK leader Edappadi K Palaniswami is under pressure from his party as his unclear stand on the BJP alliance has brought back fears among party workers that the party may lose its identity, be forced into an unwanted coalition, and be taken over by the BJP later, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Balbir Singh Verma, an independent candidate from Chopal constituency in Himachal Pradesh, has declared the highest income among all candidates -- Rs. 1.41 crore -- in his income tax returns, according to a report prepared by the Himachal Pradesh Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will spearhead discussions on gender eligibility criteria in sports, its new President Kirsty Coventry said on Thursday, four years after the ruling body had urged federations to handle the issue independently.
An independent candidate was on Friday shot dead, while a Pakistan People's Party nominee went missing in the port city of Karachi.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which fell three seats short of a simple majority in the Karnataka assembly elections, is all set to form the government after its talks with three independent candidates proved to be fruitful. BJP sources told rediff.com that the talks with three independent candidates, who won the polls on Sunday, have been successful and they are ready to help the BJP form the government. With their support, the BJP will manage to achieve the 113 mark.
A three-time MP, Suresh is the brother of Karnataka Congress chief DK Shivakumar and is the sitting member from Bangalore Rural. He was the only Congress candidate to win in the 2019 general elections in the state.
Kharge claimed that though the BJP says the corrupt must be put in jails, when leaders facing corruption charges join the saffron party, they are "put on the lap" and sent to Rajya Sabha or assembly.
Voting for the bypolls in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were held on Wednesday.
Singh's mother also claimed that pressure was being put on him to contest the polls, adding that he will now begin his political innings from Khadoor Sahib.
Voters in Muslim-dominated Nuh in Haryana have made the Congress victorious in all three assembly seats in the district, with one of the contestants registering the highest victory margin.
The point to note for India is that we must not panic. The United States may be our largest export destination, but high tariffs will not exactly mean gloom and doom. Sure, we can throw some morsels as we continue negotiating, but we must be firm that some red lines cannot be crossed, no matter what, asserts Shreekant Sambrani.
The courts in Pakistan have been flooded with petitions as candidates, mostly backed by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), challenged the results of Thursday's general elections, alleging rigging.
The Congress appeared to have bounced back in the state's political landscape after suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of the AAP in the 2022 Punjab assembly polls.
The Supreme Court of India has invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and other staff in West Bengal's state-run and state-aided schools, deeming the selection process "vitiated and tainted." The court ordered the state government to conduct a fresh selection process within three months. The decision comes after a Calcutta High Court verdict in April 2024, which also annulled the appointments. The apex court, while upholding the high court's order, made some modifications, including exempting disabled employees from returning their salaries. The case stemmed from alleged irregularities in the 2016 recruitment process by the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC), involving OMR sheet tampering and rank-jumping. The Supreme Court had previously termed it a "systemic fraud." Former West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee and Trinamool Congress MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha are among the accused being investigated in the recruitment scam.
Seeking to consolidate its position in Rajya Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party is banking on independents for four additional seats and is seeking to capitalise on the infighting within the Congress in as many states in the June 10 biennial election.
Amid this unrest came the verdict of the Allahabad high court on June 12, 1975 that found Gandhi guilty over discrepancies in the electoral campaign, which led to the Emergency on the night of June 25.
Since Independence, Lok Sabha Speakers have been chosen by consensus.
All the 200 seats in Rajasthan will vote on Friday, November 25, 2023.
Though Sukhu has been putting up a brave face and there appears to be no immediate threat to his government, the BJP is looking to bring down his dispensation with bypoll wins amid a view that it may draw more legislators of the ruling party into its fold.
The BJP can win two Rajya Sabha seats with the number of MLAs it has, while the ruling allies Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP in Maharashtra can win a seat each.
'It is something like traditional Indian families.' 'The family might be run by younger people, but if the patriarch says that you should consider someone for some task, it is very difficult for the others to ignore it.'
Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange on Sunday refuted talk of his stir not being a factor in the Maharashtra assembly polls, which were swept by the Mahayuti comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party.
Only in the event of the RSS managing to force Modi into accepting a consensual candidate, will the party not continue to 'being' the 'next Congress', observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
State BJP minister Chandrakant Patil last week said Harshvardhan Patil will regret his decision to join the Pawar-led party.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pinned its hopes on the old guard to ensure victory in next month's assembly elections in Chhattisgarh as it gave tickets to 11 sitting MLAs and renominated 13 leaders who lost in the 2018 polls.
Ritika Gupta, a study abroad expert and founder of Aaera Consultants, explains how Germany's new visa rules will affect international students and working professionals.
HD Kumaraswamy, former chief minister, will contest from Channapatna where he had won the election defeating local heavyweight CP Yogeshwar in 2018.
'If people don't see you, they might be hesitant, but once they see you, they are confident that this is the person they will vote for,' says political debutant Shambhavi Choudhury, 25, alumnus of the Lady Sriram College and the Delhi School of Economics.
The withdrawal of the candidature by DPAP leaders on the last day on August 30 is seen as a boost to the NC-Congress alliance.
In the first phase of the Lok Sabha polls, there were 135 women candidates while in the second phase, there were 100 women candidates, bringing the combined total for the first two phases to 235 women candidates.
The BJP received 39.94 percent votes, while the Congress managed 39.09 percent in the assembly polls.
'Congress leaders are ready to lose the election and not form the government, but are never ready to share seats with others.'
A political source revealed that Naqvi assumed the role of chairman through a clear understanding between influential stakeholders and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).
The Election Commission of Pakistan has announced that independent candidates, a majority of them supported by the PTI secured 101 seats, followed by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) with 75 seats, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) getting 54 seats, and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) bagging 17 seats.
Singapore's long-ruling People's Action Party (PAP), led by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, has secured a landslide victory in the country's general election. The PAP won 87 of 97 seats, with voters endorsing the party's focus on stability and economic security amidst global uncertainties. Wong expressed gratitude for the strong mandate and vowed to tackle concerns about the cost of living and housing. The results mark a significant win for the PAP, which has been in power since Singapore's independence in 1965.
51 constituencies across 7 states go to the polls in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha election.
Since Sunday there have been around 50 such attacks carried out in the province and in one incident in Sibi town attackers targeted an election rally of a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party-backed candidate for the National Assembly in which four people lost their lives and six were injured.
The Maharashtra Assembly elections witnessed the continued influence of political dynasties, with prominent families retaining their strongholds across the state. The Thackareys and the Ranes emerged as dominant forces, securing victories in various regions. The Rane brothers, Nilesh and Nitesh, won in Sindhudurg, while Uday and Kiran Samant secured victories in Ratnagiri. In Mumbai, Aaditya Thackeray retained his Worli seat, while his cousin Varun Sardesai won in Vandre East. The results underscore the enduring power of family connections in Indian politics.
...the DMK chief minister's campaign -- which includes criticism of the BJP's 'pro-Hindutva, anti-Tamil, anti-federal' policies and building on his own government's social welfare programmes targeting especially women and youth -- appeals to Tamil Nadu's voters in next year's assembly election, explains N Sathiya Moorthy.
According to data collected by the Association for Democratic Reforms, 13 seats in the 2018 assembly elections had a winning margin of less than 2 per cent.
