'I have voted in several elections and now this is the first time I have been told that my vote is not here'
In order to help voters make informed choice, Bharti Airtel said it is offering its pre-paid users 50 MB free Internet usage on Thursday.
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Congress has fielded 121 candidates with declared criminal cases and 61 with serious criminal cases.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party falling short of a majority in the Lok Sabha and needing the National Democratic Alliance partners to form the government at the Centre, Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United head Nitish Kumar and Telugu Desam Party's N Chandrababu Naidu have emerged as potential kingmakers.
The RJD polled the highest vote share in Bihar, but it was not reflected in the number of seats it won.
Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, who appeared for the petitioners in the court, said at least 30 shell companies purchased electoral bonds worth over Rs 143 crore.
From steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal to billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal's Airtel, Anil Agarwal's Vedanta, ITC, Mahindra and Mahindra, and a lesser-known Future Gaming and Hotel Services were among the prominent buyers of the now-scrapped electoral bonds for making political donations.
The priority in ticket distribution will be given to youth, women, and those with a clean image, he said.
Twitter users voted on Monday for Elon Musk to quit as head of the social media giant in a poll the technology tycoon ran on his future and promised to abide by its results.
Aiming to breach the Bharatiya Janata Party's Gujarat bastion, the Aam Aadmi Party fielded its candidate to contest all 182 assembly seats and carried out a high decibel campaign in the run-up to the polls in Gujarat.
Of the 3,893,149 registered applicants on the MP Rojgar portal, only 21 individuals have been successfully placed in government and semi-government positions since April 2020.
From the Sensex basket, Asian Paints, Sun Pharma, HDFC Bank, Tata Consultancy Services, Axis Bank, Tata Steel, JSW Steel, Larsen & Toubro, ICICI Bank and Power Grid were the major gainers. Tata Motors dropped over 8 per cent despite reporting over three-fold jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 17,528.59 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2024. NTPC, Bharti Airtel, Titan, State Bank of India and Nestle were the other major laggards.
IT and interest rate-sensitive bank, realty, and auto stocks ended with sharp gains.
The welfare schemes of the government, particularly Lakshmir Bhandar, have had a major impact on the electoral outcome.
From the Sensex firms, Wipro, NTPC, Sun Pharma, Mahindra & Mahindra, ITC and Reliance Industries were among the biggest laggards. IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank, Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank, Larsen & Toubro and State Bank of India were among the major gainers.
The final voter turnout figures in the state were released by the EC on Wednesday after addition of data from the polling parties deployed in remote areas of the hill state.
As the Bharatiya Janata Party grapples with a potential shortfall in its Lok Sabha tally, its ally Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has unequivocally pledged allegiance to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), dismissing any speculation of a pivot towards the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
Fresh order wins for capital goods and industrial companies may have seen a major slump due to Lok Sabha polls in the first quarter of the current financial year (Q1FY25). At the same time, revenue and profit growth trajectory is expected to have stayed the course, according to brokerage firms. Elara Capital, Motilal Oswal, and InCred Equities expect this sector universe to report a 12- 21 per cent growth in revenue, 21 -36 per cent growth in Ebitda and 24-38 per cent growth in profit on a year-on-year (Y-oY) basis.
Here are the 10 key issues likely to be the centre of discussion in the seven-phase general elections that begin on April 19.
While conditions have improved over the last decade in western UP, there are still unfulfilled needs.
A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta referred to a larger bench, preferably of five judges, for in-depth consideration of three questions on the aspect of "need and necessity of arrest" under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
'The biggest change that the BJP can initiate in the run-up to 2024 is appointing new faces as chief ministers.' 'In doing so, it will send a message well beyond 2024.'
The opposition INDIA bloc has written to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai over their social media platforms' alleged role in "aiding communal hatred" in the country and demanded that the platforms maintain neutrality in the upcoming elections.
For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
The US presidential election slated to be held in November appears to have tightened as a series of latest national polls projected that Republican Donald Trump has gained some ground in the last week against Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party.
The announcement came after the chief minister held a high level meeting with senior government officials on Thursday to discuss the implementation of both schemes, which are part of five poll guarantees of the Congress.
'The fraud is the electronic voting machine is being manipulated by humans, and not counting the votes that is shown on VVPAT.'
Gujarat has registered a voter turnout of 64.33 per cent for the recently-concluded elections to 182 assembly seats, a drop of more than 4 per cent as compared to the turnout registered in the 2017 polls.
At least one commentator felt that both the BJP's reach and popularity had been underestimated in Kerala. They have shown systematic gain; one that seems personality-neutral and therefore institutionalised, explains Shyam G Menon.
The share of such voters has shrunk to 1.9 per cent of registered voters in 2024 from 2.7 per cent in 2014.
Amid a debate on the freebies, the Election Commission on Tuesday proposed amending the model code to ask political parties to provide authentic information to voters on the financial viability of their poll promises.
Putin received more votes in comparison to the 2018 elections where he bagged 76.69 per cent of the total votes counted. The performance of the other candidates was lower than that of the previous competitors of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018, according to reports.
Majority of these constituencies are in Uttar Pradesh and the party that is on the third slot even as the counting is still underway on several seats is the Bahujan Samaj Party, a party neither with the National Democratic Alliance nor the opposition INDIA bloc.
The lawmakers expressed concerns about "pre- and post-poll rigging in Pakistan's recent parliamentary elections" and urged the US Congress to "withhold recognition of a new government in Pakistan until a thorough, transparent, and credible investigation of election interference has been conducted".
Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited was the top donor to the Bharatiya Janata Party at Rs 584 crore and the Bharat Rashtra Samiti at Rs 195 crore.
The government on Tuesday introduced a constitutional amendment bill reserving 33 per cent seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, reviving a proposal pending for years and blending history, politics and societal imperatives on the first day in the new Parliament building.
November 14 was the last day for filing nominations for the high-stakes Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections for 250 wards.
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 policy focus of the government should have been on creating more good quality jobs but that was not their focus.'
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