While the major fronts, the CPI-M led LDF and Congress-led UDF have given three and one seat respectively to women, the BJP-led NDA has set aside five seats for their female politicians in the upcoming LS polls.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday blamed India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's "two major blunders" -- declaring a ceasefire without winning the entire Kashmir and taking the issue to the United Nations -- for the sufferings of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
Polling is scheduled in all 20 seats of Kerala, 14 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, eight seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, six seats in Madhya Pradesh, five seats each in Assam and Bihar, three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and one seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
With 19 border polling stations along the Line of Control in Rajouri and Poonch, a contingency plan has been worked out to deal with cross-border shelling though chances are negligible given the ongoing ceasefire between India and Pakistan that came into effect in February 2021, officials said.
The passage of the women's reservation bill has ignited hope among stakeholders about attaining gender equality in India's political landscape, especially at the policy-making level, even as some raised concerns over its effectiveness given the uncertainty in the deadline for its implementation.
Sujay Vikhe Patil, son of senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, joined the BJP in presence of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and state BJP chief Raosaheb Danve.
'We are not opposed to any Indian language. We are against Hindi imposition.'
Nearly two years after the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two UTs and revocation of its special status, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday held talks with top political leaders from the erstwhile state, and said the Centre's priority is to strengthen grassroots democracy there for which delimitation has to happen quickly so that polls can be held.
Modi said the new Parliament reflected the aspirations and resolve of the "new India" to set and work towards achieving new targets.
Actor-politician Kamal Haasan on Wednesday said discussions were on for his party Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM)'s political alliance and stressed it would support any bloc that would 'selflessly' think about the nation but desist from being part of 'feudal politics'.
Babbar was elected from Agra as its Lok Sabha MP twice -- in 1999 and 2004. However, following delimitation in 2008, the Lok Sabha seat became reserved for the scheduled castes.
The term 'love jihad' is used by right-wing groups to allege a ploy by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into religious conversion through marriage.
The government has to specify what it intends to do with caste census data. It will be closely tracked if the government would simultaneously move towards removing the present 50% bar on reservations using means which are permitted in law. If this is not done, the entire exercise will become meaningless and could boomerang on the BJP, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The value of the vote of a Member of Parliament is likely to go down to 700 from 708 in the presidential polls scheduled in July due to the absence of a legislative assembly in Jammu and Kashmir, officials said on Saturday.
With 7 per cent economic growth, India is not creating enough jobs as reflected by the number of applicants for vacant posts in some states, Reserve Bank's former governor Raghuram Rajan said and suggested the government needs to focus on promoting labour-intensive industries to generate employment. Rajan further said some Indians, especially those at upper level, are comfortable and have high incomes, but consumption growth from the lower half of the country has still not recovered to pre-pandemic level.
Given the possibilities that next year's assembly elections could throw up, Stalin told the state assembly that an interim report had to be submitted by January 2026. The outcomes may well find its way into the DMK's poll manifesto, thus seeking to keep the electoral focus still on the BJP-ruled Centre and Prime Minister Modi, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The BMC election will hold the key to a new shift in political power -- not just in Mumbai but in Maharashtra, reports Sarthak Choudhury.
Sarma, while responding to reporters' questions on high price of veggies in Guwahati, had said, "Vegetables are not priced so high in villages. Here the Miya vendors charge us more. Had it been Assamese vendors selling vegetables, they wouldn't have fleeced their own people."
Deriving from Narendra Modi's continuing charisma, the proposed scheme, if and when implemented, can cut both ways. That is to say, if Modi can win, he can lose. Or, someone else in his place, later on, could lose as much as he could win in his time, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'There is no link between Article 370 abrogation and a rise in voting percentage.'
Singh defeated Bharatiya Janata Party's Dara Singh Chauhan in the bypoll to the Ghosi Assembly constituency in Mau district with a margin of 42,759 votes on Friday.
With the total number of municipal wards set to be revised following the passage of the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill-2022 in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, experts have said that the civic polls in New Delhi is unlikely to take place before a year from now as a fresh delimitation exercise will be required.
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar and Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey carried out a review and directed the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Electoral Officer to map the redrawn assembly constituencies.
RJD president Lalu Prasad's daughter Rohini Acharya has entered the fray to wrest back her father's erstwhile pocket borough.
'BJP insiders acknowledge that the party needs to be helmed by someone who can match Arvind Kejriwal's stature.' 'A Sudhanshu Trivedi or Bansuri Swaraj could bring the freshness the party needs in Delhi,' points out Aditi Phadnis.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Friday expressed his regret that the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota was not provided under the Bill brought by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2010.
"Our electoral rolls revised according to the newly delimited constituencies will be ready by August 31," the CEC told reporters when asked whether the commission was ready to conduct Lok Sabha elections as per the redrawn constituencies.
Kerala's election discourse operates surreptitiously. Its explicit face focuses on important national and local issues. At the same time, it seeks to secure apt communal equations to ensure votes, notes Shyam G Menon.
'Everyone is unhappy with the lieutenant governor's administration, which is ignorant, high-handed, and inaccessible.'
The value of the vote of a member of Parliament has gone down to 700 from 708 in the presidential poll scheduled for July 18 due to the absence of a legislative assembly in Jammu and Kashmir.
Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Thursday headed for a second straight win from the urban constituency of Ghatlodia, where he had taken a comfortable lead of almost 20,000 votes over his nearest rival after five rounds of vote counting.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on Thursday scotched speculation about any threat to his position after a meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi. "All is well. I am satisfied," he said after the meeting, the first after the defeat of the NCP-Congress candidate in the Thane Lok Sabha bypoll.
Gandhi also said the idea of 'One Nation, One Election' was aimed at distracting from real issues of the people.
'We think we can do anything and everything when we have an overwhelming majority in the legislature. But that should not be the case'
The Congress on Monday promised that a government led by it will conduct a nationwide caste census and implement 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies at the earliest, including adequate representation for women belonging to the OBC community.
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea challenging the government's decision to constitute the delimitation commission for redrawing the legislative assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies in the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
Modi wants the BJP to gets an additional 10% of the vote share from what it won in 2019. Plans are afoot to get new faces to replace MPs with poor chances of winning. Sources say more than 100 MPs are like to be axed, notes Modi biographer Ramesh Menon.
Well ahead of the November 12 assembly elections, the BJP projected Thakur as the next chief minister.
The vote value of an MLA is calculated on the basis of the total population of the state, based on the 1971 census.
President Ram Nath Kovind on Monday appointed Chandra as 24th CEC on Monday.
