Election News: Denied MCD Poll Ticket, Ex-AAP Councillor Climbs Tower; HP Polling Party Suspended for Taking EVMs in Private Vehicle

The party first released its fifth list with six candidates including Manhar Patel from Botad in place of Ramesh Mer. Later in the evening, it released a list of 33 candidates, taking the total number of candidates declared so far to 142.

Aam Aadmi Party’s Gujarat chief ministerial face, Isudan Gadhvi will contest the Assembly elections from Khambhalia seat in his home district of Devbhumi Dwarka, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal announced on Sunday. READ MORE

Himachal Pradesh registered a record voter turnout at 75.6 per cent in the assembly polls, according to data available with state poll authorities. The final turnout recorded in the 2017 assembly polls was 75.57 per cent.

Broken roads, waterlogging and garbage mismanagement are some of the key issues that the residents in the national capital have been facing for years, according to the Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA) of north, east and south Delhi. READ MORE

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections will be held on December 4 and the results will be declared on December 7. The Delhi elections come three days after the first phase of polling in Gujarat and one day before the second and last phase of polling in the state. The MCD poll results will be declared a day before the results for Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat are out on December 8. READ MORE

Samajwadi Party candidate for the Mainpuri Lok Sabha bypolls Dimple Yadav is likely to file her nomination papers on Monday, a senior party leader said.

The 44-year-old wife of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav will file her nomination at the Mainpuri collectorate on Monday afternoon, Alok Shakya, district president of the Samajwadi Party’s Mainpuri district unit, told PTI.

Dimple Yadav’s candidature is seen as the SP’s efforts to carry forward the legacy of her father-in-law Mulayam Singh Yadav on the seat, considered a stronghold of the party since 1996. Her selection is also seen as an attempt to unite party cadres ahead of the bypoll.

The by-election for the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat is fixed for December 5 and the result will be declared on December 8. (PTI)

After weeks of intensive poll campaigning and voting, the countdown has begun for D-day (results day) in Himachal Pradesh where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is hoping change ‘riwaaz’ (tradition) and retain the power and Congress put up a spirited fight to make a comeback. Despite starting off well, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) lost its steam through the campaign, making it a two-party battle in the hill state.

Since 1985, the ‘Devbhoomi’ has not repeated any government and picked between the BJP and the Congress. Both parties have consistently received around 40% of the stable vote share (except in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when the Congress vote share was reduced to 27 per cent). The outcomes have always been neck and neck. READ MORE

As part of his two-day visit to Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the BJP cadre in Hyderabad’s Begumpet Airport on Saturday. During his speech, he showed confidence that BJP will surely come to power in Telangana. Citing BJP’s performance in the recently concluded Munugode bypolls, PM Modi said he is inspired with the BJP activists from Telangana. “They are very courageous and fighting against oppression without fearing anyone,” he said. READ MORE 

With this promise, the opposition parties aim to garner the support of lakhs of government employees who are up in arms against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government over the new pension scheme.

At least one sitting Bharatiya Janata Party MLA and four former legislators have threatened to contest as independents after being denied tickets by the BJP for the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections.

While some of these disgruntled leaders have said they will make their next move after consulting supporters, former BJP MLA and the party’s known tribal face Harshad Vasava already filed his nomination papers on Friday as an independent from Nandod seat, reserved for Scheduled Tribe candidates.

Over 74 per cent voter turnout has been recorded in Himachal Pradesh which went to polls on Saturday, according to latest figures.

In 2017, the turnout was recorded at 75.6 per cent.

The hill state has an electorate of over 55 lakh.

A polling party in Shimla’s Rampur was suspended after it was intercepted by a group of Congress workers on Saturday night for allegedly transporting Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in private vehicles instead of government vehicles. Following protests by the Congress, the members were suspended by the district election commission authorities, reports ANI.

The main opposition party has fielded Rajguru from Rajkot East from where he had won in 2012 before quitting to contest from Rajkot West in 2017 against the then-Chief Minister Vijay Rupani of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He joined the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP after quitting the Congress in April this year, only to return to the principal opposition party, saying it was the best option for defeating the BJP in Gujarat.

When the election campaign in Gujarat will be at its peak between November 20 and December 5, Rahul Gandhi will be walking in those 16 days in the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh as part of his ongoing ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’.

The Congress has repeatedly said the Yatra is not about elections. But it would look stark to any political observer that Gandhi would be walking through the state next door while skipping Gujarat during the period which would see a confluence of political campaigners in the high-stake election battle. After all, it was Rahul Gandhi who was the top campaigner for his party in the 2017 Gujarat elections when his party ran the BJP close by winning 77 seats and reducing the saffron party to below the 100 mark. Gandhi’s ‘Temple Run’ had then caught eyeballs.

This time, however, Congress schedulers have inexplicably skipped Gujarat from the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ schedule. Rahul Gandhi also did not take a break from the Yatra to visit poll-bound Himachal Pradesh for a campaign, though Congress state chief Pratibha Singh had earlier told News18 that Gandhi had assured her he would come briefly. The Congress pitch in Gujarat seems lackluster in Gandhi’s absence with no clear chief ministerial face and many described the party to be on a ‘silent campaign’ with leaders like Hardik Patel leaving it.

Gujarat’s Saurashtra region, which accounts for 48 out of the total 182 Assembly seats in the state with a sizable Patidar and Other Backward Class (OBC) population, has the potential to tilt the power game in favour of or against the ruling BJP or opposition Congress in the next month’s elections.

In the 2017 Assembly polls, the Congress had bagged 28 seats in this region, improving its previous election’s tally of 15 and helping it restrict the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory count to 99. Political observers attributed the grand old party’s impressive show in the region to the 2015 Patidar community’s quota agitation that targeted the BJP government. (PTI)

Delhi CM and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann and Rajya Sabha MP Harbhajan Singh are among 30 AAP star campaigners for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on December 4.

MLA Rajendra Pal Gautam, who recently quit as minister amid a row over attending a religious conversion event in Delhi, Rajya Sabha members Sanjay Singh, Raghav Chadha and ND Gupta also feature in the list which also includes party MLAs such as Durgesh Pathak, Vishesh Ravi, Atishi, Saurabh Bhardwaj and ministers.

The 250-ward Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) goes to polls on December 4 and the counting of votes will take place on December 7.

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday accused the BJP of subverting the Election Commission to an extent that it was no more an independent body.

She alleged that the Election Commission has become “an extension” of the BJP. “It will do whatever the BJP tells it to do.” “Election commission has been subverted to an extent that it is no more the independent body of which the country was proud. Our election commissioners were invited by other countries to seek expert advice on conducting elections,” Mufti told reporters in Khiram area of Anantnag district.

It is virtually the end of the political road for former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani and his then deputy Nitin Patel after both `declined’ to contest the next month’s Assembly elections in the state.

The reason the two leaders, who were active in Gujarat politics for more than three decades, gave for not contesting the elections was that they wanted to make way for the next generation.

But political observers think that they were effectively denied tickets as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants to present more fresh faces this time to nullify the anti-incumbency factor.

“I have decided not to fight election this time. The BJP gave me the chance to be the chief minister of Gujarat for five years. Now they have made me in-charge of Punjab….I haven’t even demanded a ticket,” Rupani told reporters on Wednesday, a day before the BJP announced its first list of candidates.