Opposition leaders on Saturday stepped up pressure on Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla for stringent action against Bharatiya Janata Party's Ramesh Bidhuri over his derogatory remarks against Bahujan Samaj Party MP Danish Ali in the House.
A fierce competition among parties to offer freebies and guarantees, a scramble for tribal, OBC, women votes and a touch of Hindutva -- all have combined to make the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls a high-stakes battle with main rivals BJP and the Congress pulling out all the stops to gain power.
Speaking to reporters after attending the MVA meeting at NCP chief Sharad Pawar's residence 'Silver Oak' in Mumbai, Patil said the MVA -- comprising the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray, the NCP, and the Congress -- will work out a seat-sharing formula ahead of the Lok Sabha and the Maharashtra assembly elections, due in the second half of the next year.
Here's how some of the heavyweights fared in the Karnataka elections.
Amid speculation about the number of MLAs supporting him and senior party colleague Siddaramaiah for the post of Karnataka chief minister, state Congress president D K Shivakumar on Monday said his strength is 135, as under his presidency, the party won the said number of seats in the assembly polls.
It looks like he struck an instant chord with the people, with the voters rewarding the Congress with a comfortable majority of 136 seats in the 224 member Karnataka Legislative Assembly for which elections were held on May 10, and the votes counted on Saturday.
Outgoing Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Wednesday said the 'inability' of the Congress to decide on the new chief minister early, despite having a complete majority, reflects on the internal situation of the party.
Ahead of the day-long Opposition meeting on Friday, Samvad Bhavan, Rajkiye Atithisala and Sadaquat Ashram have got a facelift.
The Bharatiya Janata Party will have an understanding with former prime minister H D Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal-Secular for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, former Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa said on Friday, an announcement that shot up political temperature in Karnataka.
Both of them said, the legislature party meeting has been called, most probably on Thursday, as part of a routine exercise to discuss various programmes and policies of the government, and to ensure coordination between government and party MLAs.
Hours after asserting that there was no split in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar is its leader, party chief Sharad Pawar on Friday claimed that he did not make any such statement.
Legislator Ved Prakash Solanki, who is considered close to former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, also criticised Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot for his recent remarks praising Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including Vasundhara Raje, for helping him survive the 2020 revolt by some Congress MLAs.
The incident happened around 4.30 pm in Uttar Pabiacherra in Kumarghat during the 'Ulta Rath Yatra' or return car festival organised by ISKCON, they said. During this festival, the sibling deities -- Lord Balabhadra, Devi Subhdara and Lord Jagannath -- return to their abode in a chariot, a week after Rath Yatra.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's speech in Dholpur reflects that his leader is Vasundhara Raje and not Sonia Gandhi, Sachin Pilot said in a no holds barred attack against his party colleague on Tuesday.
Sudhakar and Somashekar were earlier with the Congress. They were among the 17 Congress-Janata Dal Secular legislators who quit and defected to BJP that led to the collapse of the coalition government and paved the way for BJP to come to power.
Gandhi drove to Kharge's residence and held a closed-door meeting with the Congress chief.
The two-day deliberations, which will be held at Grand Hyatt in the suburbs, will begin in the evening of August 31 and from 10am on September 1. The meeting will be followed by a press conference, Raut informed.
On Tuesday, the former minister also claimed that he wanted to table the diary in the assembly.
The body of Kaka Arjun (52) was found on Wednesday evening on Kongupalli-Ilmidi road in Bijapur, located more than 400 km from state capital Raipur, they said.
Opposition Congress claimed that the accused was linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party. The ruling party, however, denied the allegation.
Congress in-charge for Rajasthan Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa on Wednesday started one-to-one meetings with state ministers and MLAs amid attempts by the party's central leadership to broker peace between Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and dissident leader Sachin Pilot ahead of assembly polls due later this year.
In its first list for the upcoming assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, the ruling BJP has focused on seats it lost in 2018 and some of them even in 2013, and has reposed faith in 14 candidates, including three former ministers, who lost last time.
Uday K M, also known as 'Kadalur Uday Gowda, was welcomed into the party fold in the presence of state Congress president DK Shivakumar.
'The linking of Aadhaar to births and deaths will revive the debate around citizenship.'
Modi slammed the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) as the most directionless the country has ever seen and cited reviled names, such as East India Company and Indian Mujahideen, to assert that people cannot be misled merely by the use of the country's name.
Mallikarjun Kharge, former Congress President Rahul Gandhi, General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attended the swearing in ceremony, while former AICC President Sonia Gandhi was absent. Chief Ministers of Congress ruled states Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan), Bhupesh Baghel (Chhattisgarh) and Sukhvinder Singh Sukku (Himachal Pradesh) and several top party leaders were also in attendance.
As Madhya Pradesh goes to polls, all eyes will be on 29 key assembly seats, out of the total 230, where the contest will be keenly watched.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nearly hour-long address to the United States Congress evoked multiple standing ovations, applauses and cheers from American lawmakers and chants of 'Modi, Modi' from members of the diaspora community sitting in the grand House Chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
Justice Ziyad Rahman AA said that if Sudhakaran is arrested, he shall be released on bail on furnishing a bond of Rs 50,000 with two sureties of the like amount.
Following the post, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan accused Congress leaders of spreading "misinformation" and creating social hatred by sharing a "false" post on Golwalkar.
The Karnataka government can have 34 ministers. Ten of them, including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy D K Shivakumar, were sworn in on May 20.
The TMC has won in 34,560 gram panchayat seats, besides leading in 705 seats, according to the SEC as of 11.30 am on Wednesday.
The Congress in Maharashtra has a plan in place in the event of alliance with anti-Bharatiya Janata Party outfits doesn't materialise, state unit party president Nana Patole said on Wednesday amid buzz about the future of tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA).
Medical seats for under-graduates and post-graduates remaining vacant in the NEET era, together with the Centre 'freezing' the number of medical colleges and seats in (Dravidian) Tamil Nadu and the launch of the PM's 'Vishwakarma Scheme' for the nation's craftsmen, are all seen as a bid to further reverse the state's progressive socio-economic agenda of and its achievements of the past hundred-plus years, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
In Jharsuguda, Dipali Das secured a total of 1,07,198 votes receiving 60.93 per cent of the votes polled, while Tripathy bagged 58,477 votes (33.24 per cent).
'Having India as a credible deterrent vis-a-vis Chinese ambitions in the Indian Ocean and South Asian region is a desirable short-term outcome.'
A meeting of Opposition parties, organised by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will be held in Patna on June 23, his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.
The political war of words over Manipur intensified on Saturday with the BJP raising the incidents of atrocities against women in West Bengal and Rajasthan and questioning the 'silence' of the opposition, which termed it as a diversionary tactic to avoid debate on the situation in the north-eastern state.
Pilot said he is not backing down from the stand he has taken against the state Congress government saying he is "politely requesting" it to take action in corruption cases from the previous dispensation.