The son-in-law of Punjab deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa was among two advocates appointed as additional advocate general in the state on Monday, drawing sharp criticism from the Opposition Aam Aadmi Party.
The game intensified after Congress fielded Channi from a second seat and Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia chose to take on Sidhu from the Amritsar East seat.
The sixth round of Uttar Pradesh assembly polls will see voting for 57 seats on Thursday sealing the fate of political heavyweights such as Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the Congress' Ajay Kumar Lallu and Samajwadi Party's Swami Prasad Maurya.
Offering to trade second preference votes with the Congress, Janata Dal-Secular leader H D Kumaraswamy on Tuesday said his main agenda is to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party in the contest for fourth seat, during the June 10 Rajya Sabha polls from Karnataka.
Often credited with his party's victory in the 2012 assembly polls, now 59, he became the youngest chief of the Shiromani Akali Dal, when he was elevated to the post in 2008.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Karnataka minister for rural development and panchayat raj KS Eshwarappa on Wednesday claimed the Bhagwa dhwaj (saffron flag) may become the national flag some time in the future.
Patole made a veiled reference to Pawar's exit from the Congress over two decades ago.
For Pinarayi, a victory in Thrikkakara would have come as public endorsement of his development initiatives, including controversial K-Rail project, which has witnessed widespread protest
Expressing concerns over another round of crisis in the Punjab unit of Congress, Anandpur Sahib MP Manish Tewari said that he is 'extremely distressed' after Navjot Singh Sidhu's resignation as party's state unit chief and claimed that the only people who are happy with what is going on in the border state is the 'deep state of Pakistan.'
Amarinder Singh on Monday held the Gandhis totally responsible for the rout of the Congress in the assembly polls, claiming that the party was "comfortably placed" in Punjab before he was unseated as chief minister.
Pandemonium prevailed in the Karnataka assembly on Wednesday with Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj K S Eshwarappa and State Congress president D K Shivakumar charging towards each other stopping short of coming to blows.
While the ruling party blamed unnamed forces behind the arson, all opposition parties hit out at the Jagan Mohan Reddy government over its "gross failure" in controlling the situation.
Any adverse electoral fallout in Thrikkakara by-poll may have an impact on Rahul Gandhi because this falls in the state he represents as a member of Parliament and KC Venugopal because it is his home state, reports Shine Jacob.
Amarinder Singh failed spectacularly in these assembly elections -- his new party failed to open its account, his ally BJP fell flat and he failed to even win his own constituency.
Reacting to TMC's jibe, West Bengal Congress president Adhir Chowdhury said "agents of BJP" should not advise the party how to fight against the saffron camp.
The annual threat assessment of the US Intelligence Community released by the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) also said that the 'expanded military posture by both India and China along the disputed border elevates the risk of armed confrontation between two nuclear powers that might involve direct threats to US persons and interests and calls for US intervention'.
The party wants to give time to Sidhu, but if he does not agree, then strict steps can be taken, the sources said.
Home minister and state government spokesman Narottam Mishra claimed the screenshot of the TET paper which has gone viral was forged and called it a conspiracy to malign the image of a senior bureaucrat, who is an aide of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
'Today, after mustering courage, I am resigning from the party post and primary membership of the Congress'
A day after Punjab Advocate General A P S Deol accused Navjot Singh Sidhu of spreading misinformation and obstructing him, the state Congress chief on Sunday hit back, alleging that the AG's 'earnest inaction' was subverting justice in the sacrilege and drug cases.
Sidhu and Amarinder Singh has been at loggerheads for the past some time, with the Amritsar (East) MLA recently attacking the CM over the desecration cases.
Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari on Thursday left the Vidhan Bhavan premises without completing his address to the joint session of the state legislature amid slogan-shouting by legislators.
The Congress is likely to declare its chief ministerial face for Punjab on February 6 when former party chief Rahul Gandhi will visit the poll-bound state, party sources said.
Jakhar, the former president of Punjab Congress, said the party had never named its CM face adding that it was only an exception that the Congress high command had declared Captain Amarinder Singh as the chief ministerial candidate in the run-up to the 2017 state assembly polls.
The police arrested a man in Madhya Pradesh for allegedly making objectionable remarks on Facebook over the death of chief of defence staff General Bipin Rawat and others in a helicopter crash near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu, an official said.
State Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra, who along with two other ministers had offered to resign in a letter to party's national president Sonia Gandhi, had moved a proposal in this regard at the beginning of the meeting following which all ministers resigned.
"The two (the Pradesh Congress Committee chief and the chief minister) consult each other, but the final decision is of Channi, who is the chief minister, not Sidhu," the former chief minister told reporters at the Chandigarh airport.
The MLAs, who are seemingly unhappy with their leadership, arrived in Surat on Monday night and are camping at the Le Meridian Hotel, they said.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Friday said his government will not make public the report of the judicial commission, headed by former judge of Chhattisgarh high court Justice Prashant Mishra, on the May 2013 Jhiram valley Maoist attack, because it is 'incomplete.'
According to official sources, there was stone pelting when the body of the deceased Harsha was being taken from District McGann Hospital in Shivamogga.
One of the G-23 leaders also pointed out that "we are not political tourists" and said the party leadership has to be conscious of "rumour-mongers and naradmunis".
The Charanjit Singh Channi-led government in Punjab on Thursday shunted Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan and appointed Anirudh Tewari in her place.
In a series of interviews, Capt Amarinder Singh said, "Priyanka and Rahul are like my children. This should not have ended like this. I am hurt."
'Russia has got inherent military strength, they have a very good military equipment manufacturing infrastructure and by and large they are self-sufficient in their production capabilities'
Referring to differences between Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Governor B S Koshyari over various issues, the Bombay high court on said Wednesday it was "unfortunate" that the two highest constitutional functionaries in the state "did not trust each other".
Raijor Dal president Akhil Gogoi said on Thursday that his party has not accepted the Trinamool Congress's proposal of a merger as it does not want to compromise on its Assamese identity.
Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal, Randeep Surjewala and Jairam Ramesh of the Congress and Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut were among the 16 candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha from four states where polling was held on Friday after tussle over cross voting and alleged breach of election rules delayed the counting by around eight hours in Maharashtra and Haryana.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka had the last laugh as it won all the three Rajya Sabha seats it had contested in, out of total of four from the state that went for polls on Friday, while the Congress managed to win only one of the two seats to which it had fielded its candidates.
The prominent faces among the 676 candidates for 57 seats spread across 10 districts in this phase included Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath from Gorakhpur Urban and state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu from Tamkuhi Raj.
Here is the lowdown of the each state and parties.