A total of 20 forms were received during the nomination process. Four of them were rejected as signatures were repeated or did not match, he said.
It is unfortunate that the Congress has taken a decision of contesting the elections in alliance with the JMM without even consulting allies in the UPA government, he said.
Rajya Sabha on Tuesday passed a bill to regulate the appointment and service terms of Chief Election Commissioner and election commissioners incorporating key amendments like retaining their status at par with Supreme Court judges, upgrading the search committee and inserting a new clause to protect them from court cases while discharging their official duties.
Indications are that the DMK combine will win more seats than the AIADMK and BJP, but is facing a tough fight in about half a dozen from the rest, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy of the electoral contest in Tamil Nadu.
Even as the grand old party seeks to promote opposition unity ahead of the hustings next year, Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, however, would be conspicuous by her absence at the event at Sree Kanteerava Stadium.
Even if the BJP gets 60, 70, or even 100 per cent of the votes in the seats where it scored more than 50 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, these will still add up to only 224 seats, argues Shekhar Gupta.
A meeting of Opposition parties, organised by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will be held in Patna on June 23, his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.
The Karnataka government can have 34 ministers. Ten of them, including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy D K Shivakumar, were sworn in on May 20.
All political parties were asked at the dinner meeting on Monday night to suggest names for the alliance and the same would be discussed and consensus would be arrived at during the deliberations.
The upcoming Opposition meet in Patna scheduled for next week will not discuss a possible prime ministerial candidate and will focus on deciding the common agenda for the parties to work on in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.
Chowdhury said that the visiting MPs will present their observations on Manipur in Parliament.
'...a more capable State -- one that operates with greater capacity, greater efficiency, and greater clarity of purpose.' 'But I also see a more despotic State -- one that places more constraints on speech, assembly, dissent, and critique.' 'It may run 'better', but on the regime's rules.'
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi along with some opposition leaders too expressed surprise over the President not being invited to the important occasion of shifting Parliament to new premises.
The alliance would announce a coordination committee, which could be of 11 members from principal opposition parties.
What was the "locus standi" of Sonia Gandhi when she along with the then prime minister Manhoman Singh inaugurated legislative buildings in Manipur and Tamil Nadu, the Bharatiya Janata Party asked on Wednesday while countering the Congress's criticism over the inauguration of the new Parliament building by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Rajasthan is reeling under a huge financial burden with the state's debt having gone beyond Rs 5.59 lakh crores. Rajasthan has increased expenditure on education by 203.4 percent, by 105.4 percent on health, by 227.14 percent on housing. Its expenditure on social welfare schemes has increased by almost 2,475 per cent.
While the BJP and the Congress have always supported the bill, opposition by other parties and demands from some for quota for backward classes within the women's quota have been key sticking points.
According to the sources, the meeting will be held at 10 am on Thursday in the chamber of Rajya Sabha LoP.
According to the list of business uploaded on the apex court website, the plea of opposition parties would be heard on April 5 by a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud.
The padyatra concluded at the Lal Chowk area on Sunday with Rahul Gandhi unfurling the national flag but the official closing would take place on Monday in Srinagar, amid snowfall.
Apart from Kerala, in no state did the Grand Old Party scored in double digits.
Sources said the opposition parties would look to avoid the prickly leadership question as of now and emphasise on building a common ground.
Per capita income in the state has consistently been below the national average for at least 24 years. However, it has narrowed the gap with the all-India level in recent years.
Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge has resigned as the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, sources said on Saturday, a day after he filed his nomination papers for the All India Congress Committee president's election.
The bus careened and went down to a field behind the highway, leaving a few passengers slightly injured. Its occupants were brought back to Purulia town in West Bengal for medical treatment, a party leader said.
Despite heavy snowfall in Srinagar, the rally to mark the culmination of Bharat Jodo Yatra went ahead, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and other prominent leaders of opposition parties addressing the march.
Senior Congress leader A K Antony, assisted by All India Congress Committee general secretary and former Union minister Mukul Wasnik mket party leaders from Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal and held meetings daily and interacted with leaders individually
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
About 65.46 per cent electorate on Tuesday exercised their franchise in the second of the five-phase polling for the 20 Maoist-hit assembly constituencies as the day passed off peacefully.
The arrest, the first of a sitting chief minister, came hours after the Delhi high court refused to grant protection to the AAP national convenor from any coercive action by the agency.
Top leaders of Opposition parties will brainstorm at a meeting in Patna on Friday to chalk out a roadmap for the formation of an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party front for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, with sources saying that they would look to avoid the prickly leadership question and emphasise on common ground.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday accused Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and the Congress of helping former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda allegedly amass black money, a charge rubbished as "ridiculous" by the RJD supremo.
The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party were on Thursday locked in a verbal duel after Jharkhand Mukti Morcha supremo Shibu Soren sought to remind his ally BJP of the "agreement" that the two ruling parties had on sharing power on "rotation" in Jharkhand during government formation in September last year.
Opposition members of the Lok Sabha ethics committee on Thursday stormed out of a meeting along with Mahua Moitra, accusing the panel's chairperson of asking the Trinamool Congress MP personal and unethical questions.
Raking up the border issue, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said every individual in Ladakh knows that China has "taken away our land" and claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's assertion that not an inch of land was taken away was "absolutely false".
In a memorandum submitted to Manipur Governor Anusuiya Uikey, the 21 opposition MPs who signed the document demanded urgent rehabilitation and resettlement of the affected people to bring peace and harmony to the state.
The Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray on Friday made a pitch for unity among opposition parties ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, stating that the Bharatiya Janata Party can be defeated if all key leaders of these political outfits keep aside their ego and stick to their current stance of not keen on becoming the next prime minister.
A delegation of 21 Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc MPs will pay a two-day visit to Manipur beginning Saturday to assess the ground situation first-hand and then make recommendations to the government and Parliament for a solution to the problems in the violence-hit state.
What some of our leaders were up to on Tuesday, November 15.
Senior leaders P Chidambaram and Digvijaya Singh are learnt to be the front-runners to take on the mantle of Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha.
