Addressing reporters at his residence soon after the meeting ended, Chowdhury said six names came up before the panel for the selection of the two ECs and the names of Sandhu and Kumar were finalised by a majority of members of the high-powered panel.
The Congress-led United Democratic Front on Wednesday suggested further tightening of the measures on liquor policy if it returns to power.
Tamil Nadu and Kerala are voting in single-phase for 234 and 140 assembly constituencies respectively.
Highly placed sources said late Tuesday night that the decision has been conveyed to 75-year-old Dikshit, who will succeed Nikhil Kumar, a former Delhi Police Commissioner.
Joining hands with smaller parties with a political base in different castes was a part of the BJP strategy as it won big in Uttar Pradesh in the 2017 assembly polls and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and leadership of the LDF were quick to welcome Jose faction's decision to cooperate with the front.
Allegations of electronic voting machines malfunctioningreturned to haunt the Election Commission as four Lok Sabha seats and nine assembly constituencies went for bypolls on Monday across 10 states with moderate-to-heavy voting amid prestige at stake for the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as opposition parties ahead of the 2019 general elections.
In UP and Bengal, it is willing to sacrifice its interests to stop the BJP and would work towards ensuring the BJP did not win incremental seats in Odisha and Telangana.
The first phase of polls to the six southern districts was on April 22 and the last phase for the remaining Kasargode and Kannur districts is scheduled for May 3.
In a boost to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front in Kerala on Wednesday retained the Piravom assembly seat with its candidate Anoop Jacob winning by a margin of 12,070 votes. While Anoop Jacob (Kerala Congress-Jacob), a constituent of the UDF, garnered 82,756 votes, Left Democratic Front's S M J Jacob got 70,686 votes. Bharatiya Janata Party's K R Rajagopal polled 3241 votes. There were nine candidates in the fray.
Although the leaders are not on same page on many matters related to the party, they have apparently come together to check Tharoor's larger political ambition in the state, they said.
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Wayanad will continue to support Rahul but not to the same extent as in 2019, when his margin of victory had been enormous. Articulate, to the point and speaking in fluent Malayalam, CPI's Annie Raja, had the people who gathered to see her, listening in rapt attention, notes Shyam G Menon.
While members from Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Nagaland and Tripura are retiring on April 2, five members from Punjab are retiring on April 9.
Senior Congress leader Oommen Chandy is set to become the Kerala chief minister with Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president Ramesh Chennithala on Sunday opting out of the race for the top post. A meeting of the senior party leaders held at the KPCC headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram unanimously decided Chandy should lead the United Democratic Front ministry. The Congress Legislature Party meeting scheduled in Thiruvananthapuram later on Sunday will formalise the decision
Even as the dust settles on one election, glory in Thiruvananthapuram has come with a new question on the horizon: Who will be UDF's candidate in the next Lok Sabha election given Shashi Tharoor has said 2024 would be his last? It isn't a vacancy that can be easily filled, points out Shyam G Menon.
Heavy polling has been reported in the three assembly constituencies in the Kerala by-polls. According to information available with rediff.com, Kannur recorded 20 per cent polling at 10 am while Alappuzha recorded 14.5 per cent and Ernakulam 12.90 per cent.The Kannur by-poll has been marred by allegations and counter-allegations between the Communist Party of India - Marxist and the Congress.Chief Minister Achuthanandan has openly spoken up against the EC.
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.
This is the second time Vijayan is contesting from Dharmadam constituency.
The Model code of conduct has come into force immediately in the states.
Distancing himself from the comments, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the LDF's stand is not to personally attack Gandhi.
The recently concluded assembly polls in the four states -- Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and one Union Territory -- Puducherry saw a blatant use of money power. But interestingly, the newly elected members of Legislative have claimed in their expense statements submitted to the Election Commission that their expenditure was well below the prescribed limit.
It comes a day after party chief Sonia Gandhi proposed, at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee, the formation of a group to assess the party's losses in Kerala, Assam, West Bengal and Puducherry.
The Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, where Rahul Gandhi won for the second time in a row, comprises three assembly constituencies each in the tribal district of Wayanad and the Muslim-dominated Malappuram, as well as one in Kozhikode district where Christians hold a significant vote base.
In a setback to the Congress in Kerala, senior party leader K Sudhakaran on Thursday said he would not contest against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Dharmadom constituency in northern Kannur district.
Vijay has a lot of young and middle-aged women fans, but as voters, they are possibly now with the DMK, or remain with the AIADMK. Recapturing this constituency would have helped Vijay's political launch and the GOAT script and dialogues could have gone a long way in helping out. But the kind of script and screenplay and the unusually and equally unnecessary long run-time (3 hours, 3 minutes) that GOAT offers takes the film experience over the heads of those that are not familiar with secret agents and uranium theft in Tamil cinema, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
Meanwhile, allegations and counter claims continued on polling day as well, with Chandy's son -- Chandy Oommen -- claiming that his father and their family had been hounded for over 20 years.
Nitin Gadkari led BJP delegation on Sunday met President Pranab Mukherjee over Kerala violence issue.
The IMD has warned of heatwave to severe heatwave conditions in parts of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh during the next five days.
Several parties had requested that the session, which was originally scheduled to continue till April 8, be curtailed due to the five assembly elections being held in eight phases till April 29.
Should he begin the yatra from Gujarat's Porbandar, the birthplace of the Mahatma, on October 2, and skip campaigning for the five assembly polls?
The overall voting percentage in the bypolls to 51 assembly seats was nearly 56.84 per cent, the Election Commission said while releasing data available till 7 pm, adding that the polling passed off peacefully.
The commission will tour Pondicherry on March 27 and Tamil Nadu on March 28 and 29 to review preparations.
The humiliating rebuff given to the power brokers in Delhi in Kerala's local body election carries a big message: Malayalis thoroughly disapprove of the Modi government's shenanigans to misuse central agencies to destabilise a genuinely popular state government, notes M K Bhadrakumar.
A Congress source termed the process of drafting and presenting of the Bill before the state cabinet on Monday as a "unilateral" effort by the chief minister's office and ministers that are close to him.
A number of high-profile electoral battles, starring veterans and debutants, formidable opponents and unlikely contestants, feature in Tuesday's outcome.
With the Election Commission (EC) facing flak from some quarters for announcing eight-phase Assembly polls in West Bengal, officials on Friday said the polling had to be spread out due to festivals, the movement of security forces and an increased number of polling stations keeping in mind the Covid protocols.
Leaders of the opposition INDIA bloc are set to meet at the residence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in Delhi on December 6 to formulate a strategy for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman at Perumbavoor is becoming campaign material for the May 16 assembly polls.
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