Poll violence has so far claimed two lives in West Bengal and left 371 persons injured in 398 incidents, the Election Commission said on Monday.
Senior Indian Administrative Services officer Ashok Singhvi, who is the Principal Secretary (Mines) in Rajasthan, was arrested in the wee hours of Thursday by the state Anti Corruption Bureau in the eighth arrest in a bribery case involving clearance for reopening of six closed mines of a miner.
11,292 km. 20 million (Nitish Kumar says 30 million) Biharis. 45 minutes.
Telangana and Rajasthan are the last states to go to the polls in the current round of assembly elections, which also covered Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram.
This time round, even 'petrol coupons' were reportedly distributed for those attending campaign rallies, especially those addressed by top leaders, cutting across party lines. If this owed to the rising cost of petrol and diesel -- which is a poll issue this time -- there were the customary coupons for 'quarter' (liquor bottle size) and non-vegetarian biryani. Some media reports claimed that some of these 'crowds' attended more than one political rally on the same day in the last week, and at times for rival political parties in adjoining constituencies or districts, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Innovative methods like transfer of funds through the RTGS banking system and concealment of currency wads inside car bonnets were detected by Election Commission as it took steps to curb the use of black money during the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls.
It said the sleuths have recovered Rs 14.6 crore of "unaccounted" cash and seized diaries and computer files of suspect payments made between Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.
The Election Commission's decision is "unfortunate", highly arbitrary, motivated and "biased" and was taken at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party, she said in the letter.
Enforcement Directorate to approach court to attach industrialist's properties worth Rs 4,000 crore
As many as 69 assembly constituencies in the Yadav heartland, considered crucial for the ruling Samajwadi Party in the state, went to the polls in this phase.
'Votes-for-notes no longer only means cash and goodies for fence-sitting voters,' points out Sunil Sethi.
Counting of votes in the high-stakes close-to-call Bihar assembly elections, billed as a hot battle between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will take place on Sunday.
Why did such a 'socially conscientious' people adapt to cash-for-votes and the like, as fish to water? N Sathiya Moorthy offers an explanation.
The Election Commission has a fight on its hand as candidates use ingenious methods to smuggle in money to Voters.
Dept to focus on real estate, infra, mining and manufacturing to detect evasion.
The ruling AIADMK is leaving no stone unturned to win the Vellore Lok Sabha poll and push its tally to two in the state, with its candidate even donning the skull cap to woo minority votes. But the DMK's stars are clearly on the ascendant in the lone constituency that goes to the polls on August 5. A Ganesh Nadar reports.
In further escalation of infighting, Aam Aadmi Party dissident leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav on Friday mounted a no-holds-barred attack on party chief Arvind Kejriwal, accusing him of stifling internal democracy and adopting unfair means to capture power.
B R Ambedkar's fears about personality cults in politics and money power in elections seem to be coming true, says Nitin Desai
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