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Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge dismissed the BJP's '400 paar' claim as «bakwas», or nonsense and said the party will not cross 200 seats in the Lok Sabha polls. Addressing the media in Amritsar, Kharge said the BJP's seats were declining as compared to the last elections while the Congress and the INDIA bloc were making gains. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has been claiming that it will get over 400 seats in the Lok Sabha elections. Replying to a question on it, Kharge asked the basis of such claims by the BJP.

Naveen Patnaik's close aide and senior BJD leader VK Pandian on Tuesday claimed the opposition BJP has «committed nine self goals» during the ongoing Lok Sabha and Odisha Assembly polls thus boosting the regional party's electoral prospect. Pandian claimed that the BJP's self-goals will help the BJD and none can stop the regional party from forming the government for the sixth consecutive time. Lok Sabha and Assembly elections are being held simultaneously in Odisha. He also claimed that the BJD has so far by the end of the third phase of Assembly polls, already secured majority to form government in the state and the next and final phase of voting will be held in BJD's stronghold areas.

tribal population was decreasing in the Santhal Parganas because of infiltration, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday accused the JMM-led ruling alliance in Jharkhand of «patronising» infiltrators, who he said were grabbing land and putting women at risk. Addressing an election rally in Dumka, he alleged that the JMM and Congress were indulging in «rampant loot» and vowed that action against corruption would be intensified in the country after June 4. «A big crisis looms over Jharkhand and that is infiltration. The Santhal Parganas is facing the challenge of infiltration. In many areas, the population of tribals is declining fast and the number of infiltrators is on the rise. The infiltrators are grabbing tribal lands. Tribal daughters are the target of infiltrators. Their security and safety are at risk. Their lives are also at risk,» he said. Apparently referring to two incidents that happened in 2022, Modi said, «Tribal daughters are being chopped into 50 pieces… Being burnt alive… Someone's tongue was pulled out. Who are these people who are targeting tribal daughters? Why is the JMM government patronising them?»

Chandigarh's Sector 25, a stage has been set up. It is a show of unity — Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and Samajwadi Party leaders are sitting side by side and patiently waiting for their candidate, Congress spokesperson and former minister Manish Tewari. As soon as he enters the ground, two youths approach him and carry him on their shoulders with party workers thronging to garland him. By the time he reaches the stage, the garlands are almost covering half his face. He gets on the stage and local leaders begin their speeches. Tewari keeps it short as he is on a clock. He has just wrapped up a rally with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and has to catch up on the day's campaign schedule. «Dakshin Bharat mein BJP saaf hai, uttar Bharat mein BJP half hai. They are not crossing 150. INDIA bloc is forming the next government,» he says adding, «When I say we will give free 200 units of power to any family with an income below ₹20,000 per month, BJP says I have lost my mental balance. But I am not taking out money from their pockets. It is government's money that we will use.» Tewari is running a high-pitched campaign with the help of the Congress and AAP cadres.

Congress government in Himachal Pradesh is a bunch of thugs, alleged Union information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur while addressing a gathering in his constituency Hamirpur. He is pitted against Congress candidate Satpal Singh Raizada. Ten years of Modi government have made India world's fifth largest economy and your vote for BJP will ensure that Modi government makes India world's third largest economy in the next five years, he said at the gathering. In an interview with ET during his campaign, Thakur said soaring heat seems to have contributed to low voter turnout. One doesn't see much enthusiasm in the Opposition cadres, he said, adding that the morale of Congress and Opposition party workers is not high at all. That is why they «are not turning up to caste votes».

Lok Sabha member Prajwal Revanna on Monday said that he would appear before the police on May 31 to face investigators in a case of alleged sexual abuse of women registered against him. In a video message from an undisclosed location, the MP who is seeking re-election from Hassan in Karnataka, said he would appear before the special investigation team (SIT) probing the case at 10 am on that day. Grandson of former prime minister HD Deve Gowda and son of senior JDS leader HD Revanna, the sitting MP fought the April 26 Lok Sabha polls as NDA candidate. He said he left the country on April 26, as per his scheduled tour plans, and a few days later, on learning about the developments from news channels, decided to seek a week's time to appear before the investigators.

Karakat in south Bihar has pitted one Kushwaha against another. The area in also known for its Leftist leanings, and was once the stronghold of the Triveni Sangh, a grouping of Yadavs, Kurmis and Kushwahas in the early 1930s. In pre-Independence days, Triveni Sangh was a symbol of growing political ambition among the three backward castes. Almost a century later, and after waves of social engineering, Yadavs are now with the RJD, while the Kushwaha-Kurmi combination traditionally favour NDA, especially its ally JDU, headed by Bihar CM Nitish Kumar. The Triveni Sangh has become history. This time around, the Mahagathbandhan, an alliance of RJD, Congress and Left parties, has kept its eye on the Kushwaha vote by giving seven members of the community tickets in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a BJP plea challenging a Calcutta High Court order restraining it from publishing any kind of derogatory advertisement against All India Trinamool Congress. The petition was dismissed as withdrawn as a bench of justices JK Maheshwari and KV Viswanathan said it was not inclined to interfere with the Calcutta High Court order. Significantly, the bench verbally observed that prima facie the advertisements issued were «disparaging».

Narendra Modi's infamous "mujra" jibe, former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi on Monday sought to pay him back in the same coin. «And what does Modi do? Play the tabla?», quipped the once shy homemaker, who reacted with horror when journalists drew her attention to the remark, before responding with a sarcastic smile. Modi had used the colourful imagery at rallies in Bihar addressed on Saturday when he accused the INDIA bloc, in general, and RJD in particular, of Muslim appeasement and keeping mum on the humiliation of migrants from the state by leaders of parties other than the BJP. Rabri Devi, whose husband Lalu Prasad is the RJD's founding president, also claimed that the BJP-led NDA will be routed in the elections, a reason why they had «gone crazy and taken to blabbering».

(This story originally appeared in on May 27, 2024)

polling stations, mostly located in North and South 24 Parganas districts of West Bengal, were damaged due to the impact of Cyclone Remal, a senior poll official said on Monday. The disaster also adversely affected preparations for the upcoming seventh and final phase of polling scheduled on June 1, he added. «Most of these polling stations have been badly hit by the cyclone. They are submerged in water or have sustained other types of damage,» the official told PTI. Polling for the nine Lok Sabha seats — Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Jaynagar, Mathurapur, Diamond Harbour, Jadavpur, Kolkata Dakshin, and Kolkata Uttar — is scheduled on Saturday. Among these, several assembly constituencies under Diamond Harbour and Basirhat seats were hit by the cyclonic storm.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday hit out at the Modi government on the state of the economy, exports and the rising trade deficit besides the 'Make in India' programme and accused him of practising «fake» nationalism by making China its biggest trade partner. "Narendra Modi ji speaks about Mangalsutra, Mutton, Machhali, Mughal and Mujra, but does not talk about 'Make in India'? Why Modi ji does not utter a single word on the economy in his numerous election speeches? The answer lies in his Government's abject failure," Kharge said in a post on X. «The 'Make in India' programme has flopped, the PLI Scheme floundered and exports are in a free fall,» he alleged. Drawing a parallel between the Congress-led UPA and 10 years of the BJP-led NDA government, he said the manufacturing growth (at constant 2015 USD) during the Congress-UPA rule from 2004 to 2014 was 7.85 per cent while that during the Modi's NDA rule from 2014 to 2022 was 6.0 per cent.

injunction was filed on Monday against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) leader and Prime Minister Modi Narendra Modi over defamatory remarks on the Indian corporate house, Adani Group. This comes amid heavy campaigning by both star leaders, who have time and again included Adani Group in their election campaign speeches. The plea in Delhi Court seeks to restrain alleged defamatory statements including when Rahul Gandhi accused the Centre of waiving loans worth Rs 15-16 lakh crore for industrialists, including Gautam Adani.

HAMIRPUR: The Sujanpur assembly by-election in Himachal Pradesh is seeing a repeat of the 2022 election with two old rivals Rajinder Singh Rana and Ranjit Singh up against each other, except that they have swapped their parties this time. While Rana is a Congress rebel who recently switched to the BJP, Singh, a retired captain, joined the Congress after Rana was given a BJP ticket for the Sujanpur bypoll. Rana, who contested the 2022 election on a Congress ticket and defeated Singh by a slender margin of 399 votes, had raised the banner of revolt against Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu. He was among the six Congress MLAs who voted in favour of the BJP nominee in the Rajya Sabha polls and had to face disqualification.

Youth and Sports Affairs, Anurag Singh Thakur, on Sunday called Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's rally in Una as a flop show, asserting that all of his guarantees are mere "lies". Referring to Himachal CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Rahul Gandhi as «Chote Miyan» and «Bade Miyan», respectively, Thakur claimed that not a single guarantee from Sukhu has been fulfilled in the state, and Rahul Gandhi left after making even more empty promises. Thakur addressed over a dozen public meetings in the Una Assembly constituency of his parliamentary area, accompanied by local MLA Shri Satpal Singh Satti.

Final data across five phases of Lok Sabha elections indicates that 3-4 states have pulled down overall voter turnout, with Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Rajasthan leading the tally. Maharashtra has also reported lower turnout across several seats, but has made up on others, as per full data released by the Election Commission of India on Saturday. Overall, many more Lok Sabha seats have witnessed lower turnout in comparison to 2019. «We are disappointed with the turnout in UP, Bihar and Maharashtra. We expected them to do much better and that has affected overall turnout. Deeper examination of the reasons will be done to understand this dip,» a senior ECI official told ET.

Narendra Modi claimed on Sunday that people have decided to elect him for a third term in these Lok Sabha elections due to "good intentions, welfare policies and dedication to the nation" of his dispensation in the last decade. While campaigning in Uttar Pradesh, he alleged that the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government in the state would even release terrorists for appeasement politics. Modi addressed BJP public meetings in Mirzapur, Ghosi and Bansgaon in UP on Sunday where he attacked the Samajwadi Party and Congress on law and order issues and alleged plans of giving reservation to Muslims from the SC, ST and OBC quota.

Srinagar: Kashmir Valley has recorded a turnout of over 50% across the three Lok Sabha seats that went to polls on May 25, eclipsing the records since 1989, when terrorism started here. Elections for the three seats of Baramulla along the Line of Control in north Kashmir, Srinagar in central Kashmir and Anantnag-Rajouri, spread across the Pir Panjal mountains in south Kashmir, have concluded. Baramulla recorded 59% polling, Srinagar 38% and Anantnag-Rajouri 53%. Compared to the previous eight Lok Sabha polls since 1989, voting has increased by 15-20 percentage points.

Lok Sabha election in Punjab this time is unprecedented compared to the last few decades, as many prominent Sikh leaders are missing from the poll scene in multi-cornered contests and a new player -AAP — is in power in the state. Former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, who was a dominating face of Punjab politics in the state for the last two decades, is missing from the poll scene this season. Owing to his ill health, Singh has been keeping away. But family members of SAD patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, who passed away last year, and Amarinder Singh — Badal's daughter in-law Harsimrat Kaur and Amarinder Singh's wife Perneet Kaur are contesting elections.

election enters the last phase, the BJP leadership is going all out on a damage-control mission to avert possible setback in Bihar due to a caste imbalance in its support. There are eight parliament seats going for polls in the last phase in Bihar in the Magadh-Shahabad region.In 2019, NDA had won all eight with BJP winning five and ally JDU winning three. During the 2020 assembly elections, though, the RJD-led Grand Alliance performed better than NDA in this region. Now, in 2024, there is little change in the political equation and the ground situation. However, a clear division on caste lines is shaping up with the Kushwaha community, which used to be a strong support base of JDU leader and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, drifting away from NDA.

Balasore, a city in the coastal region of Odisha is quite different electorally from other parts of the state. This is one Lok Sabha seat, where the BJP has been stronger for the last 25 years. BJP won this seat consecutively in 1998, 1999 and 2004. But in the past three elections, Balasore has elected three MPs from three different parties. In 2009, it was Congress leader Srikant Jena; in 2014, it was Rabindra Kumar Jena of BJD and in 2019, BJP candidate Pratap Sarangi won this seat with a margin of 12,956 votes. Back to 2024, Sarangi is facing a triangular contest against Congress and BJD. Veteran Congress leader and former MP from the seat, Srikant Jena is challe.nging Sarangi's second term along with BJD candidate Lekhashree Samantsinghar.