Madanjit Hota was among 10 contestants from across the country who were invited for one of the episodes of the programme.
Naveenbabu turned 75 last October and there have been rumours of ill health, which he denied last Friday.
Congress put up five demands at the all-party meeting convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with leaders of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday including early statehood, conducting polls to restore democracy and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits.
Reshuffling her 18-month-old ministry in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday inducted eight new faces, mostly from rural Bengal, with an eye on the coming panchayat elections in the state.
If the concerns over risking political capital are overcome, the long-term gains for the Indian economy will be immense, asserts A K Bhattacharya.
The Congress leader also lamented the exclusion of current Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge from the committee
It said the chief justice-led bench of the high court shall be at liberty to pass appropriate order in the petition after hearing all the objections, if any, of Adhikari both on the merits and maintainability of the plea.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday said 166 criminals were killed and 4,453 injured in encounters with the Uttar Pradesh police in the past five years, highlighting his government's zero-tolerance policy on crime.
A Ganesh Nadar meets Thadagati, the 102-year-old woman who had contested, won and then lost the panchayat elections in her village
The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Examinations have been postponed.
Mamata Banerjee and Singur share a history that dates back to 2006.
Notably, after coming to power in November 2019, the then MVA government scrapped certain policy decisions of its predecessor BJP-Shiv Sena government led by Fadnavis.
Caught on television cameras casting a vote for another person, a Trinamool Congress candidate lamely admitted that he did so to help the voter who was 'inebriated', during the first phase of the panchayat elections at Jhalda in West Bengal's Purulia district on Thursday.
In a blunt message to the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha demand, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday ruled any division of West Bengal.
However, Rajya Sabha being a continuing chamber is not subject to dissolution, and bills introduced and pending in this House remain on the live register, unless withdrawn by the government.
'The Election Commission is in the process of updating electoral rolls.' 'Once that is done, the dates for elections will be announced by the ECI at an appropriate time.' 'What can be more democratic than this?'
Meanwhile, home minister Rajanth Singh said 90 per cent people in J&K keen to participate in panchayat polls.
The counting of votes for the politically senstive Nandigram assembly by-election started on Friday amidst tight security, official sources said.
Gupkar Alliance, which includes mainstream political parties of Jammu and Kashmir, has accepted the invitation of the all-party meeting called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 24.
Lamenting that the country is busy in elections throughout the year, former president A P J Abdul Kalam said parliamentary, assembly and panchayat elections should be held on a single day.
A group of Maratha reservation activists torched the first floor of the Majalgaon Municipal Council building and vandalised it in Maharashtra's Beed district, soon after setting on fire the residence of local NCP MLA Prakash Solanke on Monday, the police said.
Police said Siddik, elected president in the recent civic poll, and four others, including a councillor and DMK youth wing functionaries, were proceeding in a car when a four-member gang waylaid them in two wheelers and hurled country bombs at them.
'After a month of working on the new machine, I realised that the black glass on the VVPAT lets the programmer manipulate not just the electronic system, but the paper vote too.' 'And it will not be detected even during the mock poll or the actual voting because of the black glass.'
An effective booth-level strategy, strong organisational manoeuvre and the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan are among the key factors that turned the tide in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls.
Claiming that Maoists were planning to kill her, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Wednesday dared them to touch her, saying they can't scare her with guns.
Officials said most of the preparations are complete and the counting will start at 8 am on Saturday.
There are 763 registered voters among around a thousand residents of this remote village in Alirajpur assembly constituency, reserved for the Scheduled Tribes, but no candidate has bothered to visit the place, locals said on Thursday.
Sharing his experience of the yatra so far, the Congress leader said he felt sad while talking to farmers, youth, and tribals.
The Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) on Thursday stayed the elections to 92 municipal councils and four nagar panchayats in view of the next week's hearing on OBC reservations before the Supreme Court.
The BJP has played the social engineering card in Rajasthan with an eye on the Lok Sabha election where the party will try and retain all the 25 seats that it had won in the 2014 and 2019 elections.
'Rahul Gandhi is the face of the INDIA alliance. If he contests against a BJP candidate and defeats her/him, it will send a strong message.'
Sources said the report of the law panel on simultaneous polls is not yet finalised. They said "some more things are required to be done", indicating that the law panel will be invited again by the high-level committee.
'Indian politics is still very much a closed shop, with leaders in their 80s and 70s still refusing to go into vanaprastha, or retirement.'
A division bench of Justice D K Upadhyay and Justice Saurav Lavania also annulled the draft notification issued by the Uttar Pradesh government on December 5 for reservation of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the urban local body elections.
Battling allegations of corruption and nepotism, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on Wednesday said he would soon release "documentary evidence" on scams during the Congress and Janata Dal-Secular regimes in the state.
Trinamool Congress on Saturday stayed away from the all-party meeting convened by the state Election Commission in Kolkata to discuss the upcoming panchayat polls in West Bengal, prompting the opposition Congress and Communist Party of India-Marxist to accuse the ruling party of disrespecting a constitutional body.
Two poll personnel were killed and two injured on Sunday in a landmine blast triggered by suspected Maoists near Chhurchuriya village in Bihar's Jamui district. The poll personnel were going to Chhurchuriya booth on a tractor when the landmine planted by Maoists went off, sources said. Two poll personnel on duty for the ongoing panchayat polls died on the spot and two others were critically wounded, officials said.
The panchayat polls or those for district panchayat chiefs are not held on a party symbol but candidates enjoy the tacit support of various parties.
Vishnu Deo Sai, a prominent tribal face of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Chhattisgarh, will be state chief minister after he was elected as leader of Bharatiya Janata Party's legislative party during a meeting of 54 newly-elected MLAs in Raipur on Sunday.
