Trinamool Congress member of Parliament Tapas Pal tendered an unconditional apology on Tuesday for his threat to kill Communist Party of India-Marxist workers and having their women raped after he was asked by an embarrassed party leadership to do so following widespread outrage.
'Mamata's fascination with stars is so deep-rooted that she uses her clout as chief minister to get close to them.'
BJP claimed close to 116 lawmakers from rival parties appeared to have voted for Kovind.
Complaints of electronic voting machine malfunctioning poured in from several booths on Tuesday during the third and largest phase of Lok Sabha polls which saw voters turning out in large numbers to cast their vote in 116 seats, including all constituencies of Gujarat and Kerala.
Scripting history, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday stormed to power in Assam bagging a government in the north east for the first time dethroning the Congress which also lost Kerala while Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee retained power in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal with spectacular victories.
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
Those who claim the Maheshtala rape case was only a road accident, are unable to answer why four people were arrested and a gangrape case was registered. Indrani Roy and Dipak Chakraborty report
This time however, the poll panel did not share the overall polling percentage at its briefing.
