The Congress on Friday released a list of 30 star campaigners for the February 20 Punjab Assembly elections and left out names of Tewari and Ghulam Nabi Azad, who are among the prominent members of the 'G-23' leaders who had written to the party leadership seeking an organisational overhaul.
The star-studded TPL auction saw the presence of the tennis icons Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza, who gathered together after many years to promote the sport, along with Bollywood celebs Rakul Preet Singh and Sonali Bendre.
Ahead of Amarinder Singh's resignation as Punjab chief minister on Saturday, over 50 Congress legislators from Punjab had written to party chief Sonia Gandhi seeking his replacement, highly placed party sources said.
Making the announcement at a press conference in Chandigarh, Sidhu, however, said he will assume charge the day Punjab will get a new advocate general.
Aam Aadmi Party's Ferozepur Rural candidate Amandeep Ashu Banger on Monday quit the party and joined the ruling Congress in Punjab, alleging that Arvind Kejriwal's outfit runs like a "multinational company" with only Delhi leaders calling the shots.
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
The overall voting percentage in the bypolls to 51 assembly seats was nearly 56.84 per cent, the Election Commission said while releasing data available till 7 pm, adding that the polling passed off peacefully.
'The honourable prime minister virtually handpicked me for the Amritsar East seat.' 'Amit Shahji announced that if I am elected, the whole of Punjab will be drugs free.'
Here are some of the glimpses.
Polling was by and large peaceful in the bypolls for three Lok Sabha and seven assembly seats spread across five states and Delhi on Thursday barring an incident of stabbing of a policeman in Tripura, where polling was the highest at 76.62 per cent.
Rahul Gandhi had earlier talked to the MLAs over the phone ahead of the meeting of the AICC panel on Punjab.
A Bharatiya Janata Party MLA in Punjab was allegedly thrashed and his clothes torn by a group of farmers at Malout in Muktsar district on Saturday, police said.
Counting of votes for the bypolls in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand will be taken up on Sunday.
Kejriwal's centralised way of governance might work in Delhi, but Punjab will call for delegation, observes Sanjeev Nayyar.
Pakistan's election commission on Sunday declared the final result of Thursday's general elections in which independent candidates backed by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan's party got the biggest piece of the cake by winning 101 seats.
Among these are Labh Singh Ugoke, who defeated former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi in the Bhadaur assembly segment by a margin of 37,558 votes, and Gurmeet Singh Khuddian, who beat Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal in his traditional Lambi seat by 11,396 votes.
Over 56 per cent turnout was recorded on Monday in 54 assembly seats, including in Varanasi, in the seventh and last phase of Uttar Pradesh polls, marking the end of the voting process spread over two months in the crucial state.
In a blow to Punjab Congress, two of its senior leader resigned from the party and joined the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal on Friday.
The ruling Aam Aadmi Party on Monday said it has put the ball in Bharatiya Janata Party's court by demanding early elections in Delhi in November, and now it is up to the opposition party to decide whether it was prepared to face CM Arvind Kejriwal.
Even as the assembly elections in Punjab are around the corner, Congress MP Preneet Kaur, wife of former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh, continues to stay away from poll campaigning in Patiala.
Sidhu had replaced Sunil Jhakhar as PCC chief in July this year.
Amid speculation about a possible change of guard in the Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh, chief minister Bhupesh Baghel on Saturday asserted that his state can never become Punjab, and said the two states bear only one similarity -- that of having numbers in their names.
The letter to Sonia Gandhi reminded her of the party's 18-point agenda "given to the last chief minister" of Punjab and said that those were "equally relevant today".
Sidhu further said that electing a good chief minister is only in the hands of the voters of Punjab.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal mounted a blazing campaign in the hot summer after he was released from the Tihar jail on interim bail on May 10, drawing huge crowds at rallies and roadshows, but it proved insufficient to propel his Aam Aadmi Party past the Bharartiya Janata Party challenge in the national capital.
Atwal is the son of Charanjit Singh Atwal, who was the deputy speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009 and also served as the speaker of the Punjab assembly in the past.
Channi slammed the AAP government over his date of appearance date being advanced and alleged it was part of the dispensation's "vendetta politics".
Some Congress leaders consider Kishor as an "overrated" person and argue that in 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, he led to the decline of the party.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Sunday appointed Navjot Singh Sidhu as the new president of the party's Punjab unit, notwithstanding the opposition from Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.
Incidentally, Khali had lent his support to the year-long farmers' agitation against the three farm reform laws, now repealed.
The election expenditure limit for candidates has been hiked to Rs 95 lakh from Rs 70 lakh for Lok Sabha elections and to Rs 40 lakh from Rs 28 lakh for assembly polls, the Election Commission said on Thursday citing a law ministry notification.
In a race to woo voters with freebies ahead of the upcoming state assembly elections, Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu on Monday promised Rs 2,000 per month for women homemakers if his party returns to power.
When events like these take place, it is easy for the BJP to portray the Gandhis as latter-day versions of the Borgias or Medicis, who toy with their nobles and promote favourites, points out Vir Sanghvi.
The governments of Tamil Nadu and Punjab have moved the Supreme Court alleging delay by the state governors in giving assent to bills passed by the respective state assemblies.
A team of three Union ministers will hold talks on Monday with a delegation of farmer leaders, who are planning to march towards Delhi to press for their demands.
After Parineeti Chopra and Aam Aadmi Party leader Raghav Chadha were spotted together on several occasions, rumours linking them have been doing the rounds.
The marathon polling process to elect the 18th Lok Sabha ended on Saturday with the seventh phase of elections witnessing an approximate voter turnout of 62.36 per cent, amid clashes between Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party supporters in Sandeshkhali and some other parts of West Bengal.
The assembly polls are seen as a test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity, especially in the wake of demonetisation.
The government on Friday scrapped a minimum price threshold that it had set previously for exports of onion as it looked to pass on the benefit of international glut to Indian farmers. The government had previously fixed a $550 per tonne as the minimum export price (MEP), which essentially meant farmers could not sell their produce overseas at lower than this rate.
On Wednesday, Punjab Governor Banwarilal Purohit will swear Bhagwant Mann as Punjab's first AAP chief minister at Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of iconic freedom fighter Shahid Bhagat Singh.
