Addressing reporters at his residence soon after the meeting ended, Chowdhury said six names came up before the panel for the selection of the two ECs and the names of Sandhu and Kumar were finalised by a majority of members of the high-powered panel.
A high-level committee on Thursday recommended simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha and state assemblies as the first step followed by synchronised local body polls within 100 days.
A councillor of the Aam Aadmi Party has moved the Supreme Court challenging a Punjab and Haryana high court order that has refused to grant any interim relief to the party seeking fresh mayoral polls in Chandigarh.
In the 35-member municipal House, the BJP has 17 councillors. The number of BJP's strength increased from 14 to 17 after three Aam Aadmi Party councillors switched over to it on February 19. The AAP has 10 members while the Congress has seven. The Shiromani Akali Dal has one councillor.
Eleven states and Union territories -- Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Telangana, Gujarat, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand -- had a voter turnout lower than the national average of 67.40 percent in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Democracy is the heart of our body politic and elections are its life blood. Because there is some disease that affects it, we cannot apply leeches to drain it off, killing the body in the process, asserts Shreekant Sambrani.
The court noted that no appreciable steps have been taken ever since an order was passed by it on June 13 to deploy central forces in sensitive areas for the poll process.
Moderate to high turnout was recorded in 13 assembly constituencies across seven states where bypolls were held on Wednesday amid sporadic incidents of violence in Uttarakhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
'Priyanka did draw huge crowds and eventually all of those ended up voting for the Samajwadi Party.' 'The voters today are smart enough to vote for the party which they know is going to win or they know this party will come second, but no way will they vote for a party which will come third or fourth.'
Tandon, son former Chhattisgarh governor late Balramji Das Tandon, assured everyone that he will live up to the expectations and the trust which the BJP has reposed in him.
We used to hear of the Modi-Shah pair as the hyphenated top of the BJP leadership. Lately, the hyphen has disappeared and it is only Modi at the top. Yogi Adityanath gets honourable mentions, but he is still a good distance away from being anointed a worthy successor, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
The order came on the petition filed by Kuldeep Kumar, an Aam Aadmi Party councillor, who challenged the administration's order to postpone the polls.
AAP is working on its new strategy to build a strong organisational set-up with leaders from all sections of society, reports Nitin Kumar.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
Taking note of a plea of an Aam Aadmi Party councillor alleging wrongdoing in the polls, the court issued notices to the Chandigarh authorities, including the civic body.
The party is eyeing at expanding its footprint across the country and has tied up with the Congress to contest the Lok Sabha polls against the BJP in Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat.
Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party national convener Arvind Kejriwal on Friday met Shiv Sena (UBT) head Uddhav Thackeray at the latter's residence in Bandra in suburban Mumbai.
Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury while making these points however, spoke out against any need for change in the top leadership of the party, stating that both Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi have been 'trying wholeheartedly'.
The Congress now knows that it is the only force -- however weakened it might be -- that stands between the BJP and India's evolution into a single-party Republic. Because, once it is out of the way, the BJP could sort out the other regional powers: Co-opting some, demolishing others, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
New entrant Aam Aadmi Party has emerged as the leading party winning 13 of 35 wards so far as the counting of votes in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation polls is in progress here on Monday.
The petition was filed ahead of the Chandigarh mayoral polls on Thursday. The polls for the posts of mayor, senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor will be held.
It also ordered prosecution of the returning officer for the poll, Anil Masih, a BJP leader, for his 'misdemeanour', after finding serious faults in the conduct of the January 30 election.
As the Kejriwal empire spreads, will he be able to keep the momentum going? And will it be at the cost of greater centralisation of authority in the party, asks Aditi Phadnis.
"Professor Manjit Singh is suspended from the party pending enquiry against his anti-party activities. He will no longer represent the party in any forum in the media and outside," a press note said.
Six decades and more later, we are now captives of our identities. Every poll is based on elaborate calculations of electability of candidates on the basis of their castes and other narrow definers. That, along with voter promiscuity, is what defines our political culture, which remains stubbornly resistant to any change, asserts Shreekant Sambrani.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday said it will hold a "referendum" in Delhi and other parts of the country on whether Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal should resign if he is arrested by the Enforcement Directorate or continue to run the government from jail.
The BJP can't be sure if it should celebrate that the old rival is fading or worry that new ones are rising. Because the last thing the BJP wants to see is alternatives rising, if only to the Congress, observes Shekhar Gupta.
If Kejriwal is arrested, it will take very little for Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena to summon a meeting of the assembly, direct it to elect a new leader of the House, and, if it doesn't, dissolve it and impose President's Rule, predicts Aditi Phadnis.
Despite the AAP cutting into its votes, the Congress still polled 27 per cent votes and won 17 seats.
Assembly elections are due in five states including Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Punjab for next year.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of offering money to its municipal councillors and said it will install CCTV cameras at their homes to prevent any poaching attempt.
Chidambaram also stressed that there were lessons to be learnt by the Congress from the Gujarat loss, saying there is no such thing as a "silent" campaign in a hard-fought election.
Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal's bullet-proof car was damaged and four people were injured in a clash between Congress and Akali workers during the filing of nomination papers for the Jalalabad municipal polls in Fazilka on Tuesday, officials said.
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.
The party desperately needs another state where, unfettered by the Centre, it can fly its flag.
'Eventually the law of averages has to play catch up with Modi and the BJP, sooner or later,' says Rajeev Sharma.
An organisational overhaul in Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party is afoot in the light of the party's defeat in the MCD election, the party leaders said on Thursday.
In one state, the BJP sweeps in Modi's name -- and only because of Modi's name. In the other state, Modi's name did not work. Himachal underlines the limitations of Modi's magic, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Chandrashekar rejected the allegations of AAP leaders that he was trying to malign the image of the party and its leaders at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Delhi Municipal Corporation election in Delhi.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday thanked the people for helping the Aam Aadmi Party "breach the BJP's fortress" in Gujarat and asserted that the party would win the state the next time.
