'The people preferred Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar...'
Noted lawyer and Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Ram Jethmalani and Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma were on Thursday elected in the Rajya Sabha polls in Rajasthan, while a Congress-supported Independent candidate was defeated.
The BJP often forgets that in Dravidian Tamil Nadu, the voter does not mix religion, which is personal, and politics that is in the public sphere, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Shahu Chhatrapati, scion of the Kolhapur royal family, has said he chose the Congress for his poll debut as he draws inspiration from his great grandfather Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, a hugely revered figure among all segments of society for his bold social reforms.
The 2024 Lok Sabha contest between the BJP and Congress is crucial in the context of the assembly polls in Haryana, which are due by October.
A day after a Trinamool district president allegedly asked party men to attack the police with bombs and burn houses of Independent candidates, a TMC member of Parliament on Thursday asked party activists to "beat up Communist Party of India-Marxist workers with shoes".
The 31-year-old US-educated Yaduveer was crowned as the titular head of the erstwhile Mysuru royal family on May 28, 2015, making him the 27th 'King' of the Wadiyar dynasty.
Robert Romawia Royte of the Mizo National Front has declared assets of Rs 55 crore, owns a popular football club and has a fleet of luxury cars.
The Congress and BJP are apprehensive that AAP might eat into their votes among the Patel community, Kshatriyas, a section of minorities, and Dalits, thus delivering a fatal blow in the closely-contested seats. But the local BJP is elated over the entry of AIMIM as there will be a contender for minority votes apart from the Congress in seats like Bhuj and Mandvi, which have considerable Muslim electorate.
The former chief minister said if there was any danger of his losing from Budgam, then his party colleagues would not have allowed him to contest from Budgam.
Of the 788 candidates contesting 89 seats in the first phase of Gujarat Assembly polls, 211 are 'crorepatis', with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party accounting for 79 such nominees, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said in a report on Thursday.
"We will complain. He can meditate, but televisions cannot show it," she said, alleging that this will amount to "violation of the MCC."
"Fresh elections to the assembly should be held to enable people to elect a popular government in the state in accordance with law," the memorandum to the Haryana governor read.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party won the mayoral elections in 10 of the 17 municipal corporations in Uttar Pradesh, results for which were announced on Saturday, virtually adding a third engine to its "double-engine" government.
Radical Sikh preacher and Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh's brother Harpreet Singh has been apprehended by Jalandhar police in a drug case, a senior police official said on Friday.
As Chandigarh braces for a fierce contest between Congress candidate Manish Tewari and the BJP's Sanjay Tandon, its industry leaders harbour a fervent wish: Replicate the success of the National Capital Region model in this Union Territory.
On the night of July 5, the Tigers launched their first kamikaze operation. Miller took the wheels of the explosive-packed truck, smiled at everyone as he turned the ignition key and drove it slowly towards the Sri Lankan military camp. A few moments later all of Jaffna heard a thunderous explosion that brought the complex crashing down in clouds of dust. Miller had given birth to a deadly tactic that Prabhakaran would employ time and again with devastating consequences to Sri Lanka -- and India. A fascinating excerpt from M R Narayan Swamy's must read new book, The Rout Of Prabhakaran.
The independents also scored big in some seats.
The recent 'revelation' by TN fishers freed by Sri Lanka after they had paid up Lankan rupees 50,000 each in fines, that their hair was tonsured in prison and they were forced to remove their garments other than the underpants, and were also made to clean toilets, as if with vengeance, has touched a raw nerve this time, just as another issue or issues had done it ahead of the Jallikattu protests, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
A councillor of the Aam Aadmi Party has moved the Supreme Court challenging a Punjab and Haryana high court order that has refused to grant any interim relief to the party seeking fresh mayoral polls in Chandigarh.
The 288-member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly constitutes the electoral college Rajya Sabha elections, scheduled on June 10, and a candidate needs 42 votes to win a seat.
With former prime minister Imran Khan in jail, Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is tipped to emerge as the single largest party in the elections.
In the last five years, 480 candidates with declared cases related to hate speech have contested elections to state assemblies, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, the ADR said.
He said that his primary goal would be to strengthen the political momentum to replace the Congress government with BJP rule in the coming assembly polls in Karnataka.
The electoral battle in Varanasi, according to locals and political experts, is not about whether the PM will win for a third successive occasion, but if he will increase his share of the votes polled and his win margin.
President Alvi recalled the fight for the EVMs waged by the previous PTI-led government, saying that the entire endeavour -- which involved more than 50 meetings at the presidency alone -- was abandoned.
The wife of the chief minister's brother Kartik, Kajari is contesting from ward number 73 of the KMC.
Congress leader Kumari Selja ruled out the possibility of an alliance with the AAP for the Haryana assembly polls.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday attacked the Congress over party president Mallikarjun Kharge's recent remark on Lord Ram and Lord Shiva, and accused the opposition party of trying to divide Hindus for its appeasement politics.
Commenting that running a country is not a play for those born with a golden spoon, Modi said, "They have gone from Amethi and will go even from Rae Bareli."
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which has ruled Gujarat for 27 years, is trying to retain power in the state for the seventh term in a row.
P Chidambaram and Rajeev Shukla of the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party's Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar, former Congress leader Kapil Sibal, Rashtriya Janata Dal's Misa Bharti and Jayant Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal were among the 41 winners declared elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha.
The SEC, which held a meeting on Sunday evening, went through reports of vote-tampering and violence which affected polling in many places, and passed the order, an official said.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday termed the cancellation of over 25,000 school jobs as 'gross injustice' and alleged that it was a ploy by the Bharatiya Janata Party to stop these job losers from being deployed in poll duty.
The Congress won three seats, Shiv Sena won two, while the Nationalist Congress Party, Bharatiya Janata Party and an Independent bagged one seat each.
Warning against canvassing for the December 18 phase of Jharkhand assembly polls, Maoists on Tuesday burnt the campaign vehicle of an Independent candidate contesting from Panki assembly constituency in Palamau district, the police said.
The biggest electoral upset in the state was witnessed in Anantnag with National Conference candidate and former high court judge Hasnain Masoodi defeating former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti.
All 41 candidates from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Telangana were elected unopposed on Friday after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.
The BJP is focusing determinedly on the seats it lost in 2019, with the hope of winning these either independently or with the aid of its allies.
