The IMD has predicted heavy rainfall over Karnataka and Kerala for the next few days.
Everyone on election duty for the upcoming polls for five assemblies will be vaccinated against COVID-19 before polling day, the Election Commission said on Friday.
The colourful rally galvanised the BRS workers who shouted slogans hailing the party-led regime's welfare schemes in Telangana and peppy political songs praised Rao's 'national' emergence.
The 67-year-old gave the example of two neighbouring states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, to buttress his point on why seat-sharing pattern of the INDIA bloc will vary from state to state.
According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Those joining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers for the first time include three former chief ministers -- Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana) and H D Kumaraswamy (Karnataka).
Ramaswamy was a distant fourth with 7.7 per cent of the votes polled in the Iowa Caucus
Sources said Rahul Gandhi is likely to contest from Rae Bareli, but a final call is yet to be taken by the first family of the Congress.
Singh has questioned the reliability of the EVMs on more than one occasion following the Congress' defeat in the recent assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
Intense heat swept through east India and parts of the southern peninsular region on Thursday, testing power grids and prompting the Kerala government to order closure of educational institutions till May 6.
According to sources, the filters were applied on Saturday night soon after the poll schedule was announced.
Flaying both the Congress-led United Democratic Front and Bharatiya Janata Party-National Democratic Alliance and a section of the "right wing" media for trying to tarnish the image of the government and its development and welfare programmes, he said the people have rejected their 'vicious propaganda' by giving the Left a decisive mandate.
Unfortunately, the best man does not always win, but I feel enriched by the experience of the campaign and getting to know Rajeev Chandrasekhar, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The Congress leadership, which knows that there is a fairly good chance of sweeping the polls given the lackadaisical performance of the Left Democratic Front government and the infighting in the Communist Party of India-Marxist, does not want the advantage to slip away from it.
Gandhi attacked the BJP by alleging that the saffron party has proved that hatred can be used politically and to win polls, but cannot generate employment.
The poll-panel called these seizures by its various field and technical enforcement teams a "historic milestone" achieved "for the first time in any assembly electoral process", meaning during simultaneously-held assembly polls.
'The PM who is first among equals, who has to listen to others, take their point of view into account and who would have to be a good manager'
Shah said that the complaint was lodged based on the provisional certificate which he got after receiving the shot at a vaccination centre on Thursday morning.
The Congress chief, however, said he was not expecting any cooperation from the prime minister and the BJP-led central government for the development of Wayanad and Kerala.
The WFI will resume national camp from March 27, after after almost 16 months with Sonepat and Gandhinagar in Gujarat to be the likely venues for men and women respectively.
While EC Secretary General Umesh Sinha would be visiting Tamil Nadu next week, Deputy Election Commissioner Sudip Jain would be in West Bengal in the coming days, sources said.
In the run-up to the 2024 parliamentary elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party's minority morcha on Wednesday launched a year-long Muslim outreach programme -- "Sufi Samvad" -- with a special focus on the Muslim-dominated districts in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and Telangana.
The priority in ticket distribution will be given to youth, women, and those with a clean image, he said.
Counting of votes in all elections will be held on May 2.
The national award-winning actor had organised a mass Vishu kaineettam campaign earlier this week in Thrissur, where he unsuccessfully contested in the last assembly and Lok Sabha polls.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Personal competence, where it should have been acknowledged and appreciated, was sacrificed for that oft heard line: Party-is-supreme. It angered that at a time when lives are at stake amidst the pandemic, the government didn't deem continuity in leadership important for the health portfolio, observes Shyam G Menon.
'Anybody is free and welcome to contest in the election if they have the backing of 10 PCC delegates'
Ending his 52-year-long association with the party, P V Balachandran, a member of the KPCC executive committee, said both majority and minority communities are moving away from the Congress and the people would not stand with a party which has lost its direction.
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.
The former Congress president also tagged a post by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in which he talked about eliminating EVMs.
Former Commonwealth Games gold-medallist Narsingh Pancham Yadav was elected chairman of the Wrestling Federation of India's Athletes' Commission in Varanasi on Wednesday, completing a process that was mandated by the sport's world governing body.
'The path of militant Hindutva that the BJP's national leadership chose as its main electoral plank literally dug the grave for the party in Kerala,' says M K Bhadrakumar.
Congress leader K C Venugopal and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's T R Baalu walked out of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's office, refusing to endorse NDA candidate Birla without being offered the Deputy Speaker's position.
The Trinamool Congress registered a decisive victory in West Bengal on Sunday, contrary to results of most exit polls which predicted a tight race between the BJP and the TMC with an edge to the Mamata Banerjee-led party.
Sreesanth said he would decide on whether to contest in the election on Wednesday.
Leaders from 26 opposition parties, in power individually or in alliance in Delhi and 10 states, are meeting in Bengaluru to discuss strategy to take on the Narendra Modi-led NDA in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
He also said that the focus will be on developing infrastructure in a big way and bring the state out of the debt trap if the BJP wins the assembly polls that are likely to be held in April-May this year.
'He has emerged as a formidable leader who cannot be ignored anymore, who cannot be mocked.'
Mamata Banerjee fended off a spirited challenge by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal with a landslide victory for her Trinamool Congress on Sunday for a third consecutive term and the saffron party and the Left Democratic Front were poised to form government again in Assam and Kerala respectively while the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam stormed back to power in Tamil Nadu after a gap of 10 years.
