A voter turnout of 72.14 per cent was recorded in Assam till 5 pm on Saturday in the first phase of assembly elections in the state, the Election Commission said.
The commission said enforcement authorities have seized Rs 4,650 crore even before polling begins for the Lok Sabha elections and it is the "higher than total seizures" made in the 2019 polls
Accompanied by wife, Sakshi, and father Pan Singh Dhoni and mother Devki Devi, Thala made his way to the polling booth amid tight security.
The polling for 230 seats for Madhya Pradesh and 70 seats in the second phase of Chhattisgarh will be held on Friday, November 17, 2023.
President Droupadi Murmu, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and several other famous faces were seen at polling booths, exercising their franchise in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha polls on Saturday.
Here are some of the famous faces queued up to get ink mark on their fingers.
Officials said the polling went off peacefully in all segments including special polling stations along the International Border and Line of Control (LoC) with no untoward incident reported from anywhere.
Exit polls on Saturday predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain power for a third straight term, with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance expected to win a big majority in the Lok Sabha polls.
The strong statement from Union Home Minister Amit Shah's office came after former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah asked bureaucrats in the Union Territory to resist any pressure to "further disempower" the incoming elected government.
24 hours was all it took for the Congress to overturn its decision to boycott the TV debates on the exit poll results. Sudhir Bisht offers an explanation.
There will be eight more phases of Panchayat polls in Jammu and Kashmir.
The PDP looks a distant third in the race, observes Mohammed Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir politics.
The Election Commission will announce the schedule for the Lok Sabha polls on Saturday.
'Whenever the hike in voting percentage is more, the NDA gains more, and when the hike is negligible, the NDA falls.' 'I have established this in UP, Haryana and Jharkhand.'
Delhi recorded a voter turnout of over 19 per cent in the first four hours of polling on Wednesday across 70 assembly constituencies, with the highest voter participation witnessed in North East district.
The Election Commission on Monday said the voter turnout in Jammu and Kashmir this time was the highest in a Lok Sabha election in the last 35 years with the Kashmir Valley witnessing a 'massive' 30 percentage point jump in poll participation compared to 2019.
Voting for the seventh and final phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections covering 54 seats, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency Varanasi, will be held on Monday to decide the phase of 613 candidates.
Leaders of several Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties met on Saturday to take stock of the opposition's preparations leading up to the June 4 counting of votes polled in the Lok Sabha elections, and claimed they will get more than 295 seats, enough for them to form the next government.
Taking strong cognisance of the matter, Brahm Prakash, the sub-divisional magistrate-cum-assistant returning officer in Haryana's Kaithal, ordered the suspension of five computer operators and directed police to conduct a thorough probe.
The elections in this phase are seen as a big test for the Bharatiya Janata Party
The Kukis have already declared that they are not fielding any candidate in the parliamentary polls as an act of boycott.
The BJP, which has allied with a few smaller parties, has sought to upend the state's conventional politics, which has so far been indifferent to Hindutva politics, by taking the ruling DMK head-on for its alleged insult of Sanatan Dharma besides involvement in corruption.
In April this year, Umar's mother also issued an appeal to him to surrender before the forces.
Sporadic incidents of violence were reported on Tuesday in some areas where voting is underway in the third phase of the West Bengal assembly elections, even as the overall situation by and large remained peaceful with 34.71 per cent turnout recorded till 11 am, officials said.
The final phase of polling on Saturday will cover 78 constituencies spread across 19 north Bihar districts.
Single-phase voting was held in Mizoram on Tuesday, while 20 constituencies in Chhattisgarh voted in the first phase of assembly elections in the state.
The commission said polling was held at 15,940 polling stations spread across 44 assembly constituencies in this phase of polls.
Additional sessions judge Chander Jit Singh granted the relief to Rashid, who had moved the court seeking interim bail to campaign in the upcoming Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections.
Gujarat will go to polls in two phases on December 1 and 5 with the counting of votes on December 8 along with that of Himachal Pradesh, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar announced.
A delegation of opposition party leaders on Friday met the top brass of Election Commission to raise its concerns over poll code violations by the ruling party leaders, and also flagged concerns over delay in release of voter turnout figures for the first two phases of the polls.
Sawant asserted that none of the Shiv Sena-UBT MPs had received any phone calls and condemned the attempts to "spread rumours" about mass desertions from the Thackeray-led party.
Polling in 70 constituencies began at 8 am and will conclude at 5 pm, except in nine polling booths in the Maoist-affected Bindranawagarh seat in Gariaband district, where voting began at 7 for security reasons, a poll official said.
The second round of the voting was held in the 17 districts amid tight security and strict coronavirus guidelines in place. The voting percentage at 10.30 pm was 54.64, according to the Election Commissions Voter Turnout Apps provisionally data.
At Thamnapokpi under Moirang constituency in Bishnupur district, armed men fired several rounds in the air near a polling booth prompting voters to flee, police said on Friday, adding additional security personnel were rushed to the spot to contain the situation.
Of the 59 assembly constituencies, three have been categorised as 'sensitive' and 590 localities marked as 'vulnerable,' according to the police.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh posed questions for the prime minister ahead of his rallies in Karnataka.
Reasi district of Jammu region recorded 75.20 per cent voting, the highest in the union territory, State Election Commissioner (SEC) K K Sharma said, adding that 50.53 per cent voter turnout was recorded in the third phase of the maiden DDC polls in J-K.
A total of 71 assembly segments of the state's 243 constituencies are voting in the first phase in which nearly 2.15 crore voters will decide the electoral fate of over 1,000 candidates.
More than 40 per cent of the 908 candidates contesting the assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir are Independents, leading to claims that a large number of them have been propped up by the Bharatiya Janata Party to divide votes.
The BJP's Central Election Committee had met on Sunday evening to finalise the party's candidates for the polls.
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