Lok Sabha News

Nirmala Sitharaman and Jaishankar) will contest the Lok Sabha elections. It has not been decided yet from where they will fight, whether it is in Karnataka or some other state," Joshi told reporters on Monday. When questioned if the Union Ministers will contest from Bengaluru, Joshi, who holds the Coal and Mines portfolio, said he cannot answer it since nothing has been finalised yet.

Upper House are elected for a term of six years, and hence polls are held every two years for 33 percent of the seats. Rajya Sabha Seat Allocation Currently, the Rajya Sabha has a strength of 245 members representing States and Union Territories including Delhi and Puducherry. Out of the total 245 members, 12 are directly nominated by the President who are veterans in the fields of art, literature, sports, science, etc. Based on population, each state is allocated a certain number of seats in the Upper House. For instance, Uttar Pradesh has 31 Rajya Sabha seats while Goa has one. Members of the state legislative assemblies choose Rajya Sabha members through an indirect election system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote (STV).

Congress on Monday described the killing of Indian National Lok Dal's (INLD) Haryana unit president Nafe Singh Rathee as the state's «first political murder» and demanded a probe into the incident either by a high court judge or a high court judge-monitored CBI investigation. Senior Congress leader Raghuvir Singh Kadian said Rathee's death was not natural. «It is a political murder and the first such incident in Haryana after it was carved out as a separate state (in 1966),» Kadian said in the Assembly. At the beginning of the day's proceedings, the Haryana Assembly paid tributes to former Lok Sabha speaker Manohar Joshi, who died recently.

Seat-sharing in West Bengal for Lok Sabha Election 2024: Amid reports of the revival of seat-sharing talks between the Congress and TMC, the leaders of both parties have once again come up with conflicting statements indicating that there is no clarity yet on whether or not the two parties will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha election 2024 together in West Bengal. TMC leader Derek O’Brien said on Friday that his party will fight the general elections solo. The Rajya Sabha member said there was “no change" in the party’s stand of contesting all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, a few in Assam, and one in Meghalaya, news agency PTI reported.

Trinamool Congress leader Derek O'Brien on Friday said there has been «no change» in the party's stand of contesting all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, a few in Assam and one seat in Meghalaya, amid reports about the Congress soon finalising its seat-sharing arrangements with the party. The Congress and the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC, which are part of the opposition bloc INDIA, are said to have revived their talks to unitedly take on the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha polls, due in April-May. However, O'Brien, the TMC leader in the Rajya Sabha, said, «A few weeks ago...West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee stated that TMC is fighting all the 42 seats in Bengal. We are also in the fray in a few seats in Assam and the Tura Lok Sabha seat in Meghalaya. There is no change in this position.»

Gadge Maharaj on his birth anniversary. Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency is one of the 80 Lok Sabha (parliamentary) constituencies in Uttar Pradesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won the Lok Sabha seat from this constituency in the past two General Assembly elections.

BJP on Monday slammed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for questioning the version of some of the complainant women in Sandeshkhali, saying she has made «very cheap» remarks and that it was time to throw out her government. BJP MP Locket Chatterjee said women's protests in Sandeshkhali were spontaneous and there was no politics in it as her party has only tried to protect them and raise their voice. She also claimed that what happened to women in Sandeshkhali was a reminder of atrocities against women in countries like Iraq and Pakistan. The local TMC strongman Shajahan Sheikh, who is seen as a key accused in the complaints of sexual atrocities and land grab, is being protected by Banerjee, the Lok Sabha member alleged.

Nakul Nath, son of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, has removed reference to the Congress party from his social media bio. This comes just a day after the Madhya Pradesh BJP chief publicly stated that some Congress leaders are unhappy with the party's decisions. Reports of Kamal and his son Lok Sabha MP Nakul Nath flying down to Delhi on Saturday resulted in speculation that the veteran Congress leader could switch sides to the BJP. Meanwhile, party veteran and Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh sought to play down the reports saying that he had spoken to Nath on Friday night and he was in Chhindwara.

ANI reported. She reportedly handed over her resignation to TMC chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Chakraborty was an MP from Jadavpur constituency in West Bengal.

Sonia Gandhi left her residence early on Wednesday morning for Rajasthan from where she set to file her nomination for the Rajya Sabha elections. Sonia Gandhi will file nomination papers from Rajasthan. This will be the 77-year-old leader's first term in the Upper House after serving five terms as a Lok Sabha MP.

Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi on Saturday attacked the BJP saying the chants of 'Jai Shri Ram' by its members reflect anger and hatred, and urged it to shun the tradition of worshipping Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi's assassin. Participating in the debate in the Lok Sabha on the construction of historic Ram Temple and Pran Pratishtha of Shri Ram Lala, Gogoi said Lord Ram belongs to everyone and is with everyone all the time. «He is in every part of us every moment,» Gogoi said. The deputy leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha said the definition of «Ram Rajya» means an era when everyone is happy and no one is unhappy.

Read more The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) on Thursday decided to keep its key policy rates unchanged for a sixth straight meeting. Shaktikanta Das-headed six-member MPC maintained the repo rate at 6.5% with five out of six members voting in favour of the rate decision. Read more The RBI projects a 7% real GDP growth for the upcoming financial year 2024–25 from the previous projection of 6.6%.

BJP MP Manoj Tiwari flagged off a special train from Shahdara to Ayodhya Dham on Friday. Tiwari, a Lok Sabha member from North East Delhi constituency, said all arrangements are being made by the BJP so that passengers don't face any inconvenience. «After 500 years, Lord Ram has come to the temple, and a lot of devotees want a darshan (sighting of the deity). Many trains from Delhi are bound for Ayodhya Dham. In this sequence, we have arranged for 1,504 devotees from Naveen Shahdara to Shri Ram Lalla in Ayodhya Dham. We have ensured that passengers don't face any inconvenience,» Tiwari told on Friday.

NEW DELHI : The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and the opposition Congress party locked horns on Thursday, over a paper tabled in the Lok Sabha by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman accusing the previous United Progressive Alliance regime of undermining the country’s macroeconomic fundamentals, and the Congress hitting back at the government citing price rice and unemployment. The debate over the economic track record before and after 2014 highlighted major shocks that India’s economy underwent under both regimes, how the respective governments dealt with them, the effectiveness of the fiscal stimulus, given as well as the persisting issues of price rice and job creation not being commensurate with the demand from a large working age population.

Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is likely to meet the Governor today, say sources. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar has reportedly sought time to meet the Governor this morning and is likely to break away from the Mahagathbandhan government, per sources. Although the Bihar CM is mum over his next move, speculations of a rift between Mahagathbandhan and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar joining the NDA, have been soaring high. Notably, the Bhartiya Janata Party will also hold a meeting with its MLAs and MPs in Patna at 9 am today to chalk out the strategy over the latest political situation in the state. The ruling JD(U)-RJD-Congress coalition in Bihar is on the brink of collapse, as there is likelihood that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar could cross over to the NDA again, the alliance he parted his ways in 2022 to form the 'mahagathbandhan'. The BJP has the largest number of 17 MPs in Bihar, where the total number of Lok Sabha members is 40. The JD(U), headed by Nitish Kumar, has 16 while another NDA ally LJP, now split up between the uncle-nephew duo of Pashupati Kumar Paras and Chirag Paswan, has six. In the Bihar Assembly of 243, the RJD has 79 MLAs; followed by the BJP's 78; the JD(U)'s 45' the Congress's 19, the CPI (M-L)'s 12, two each of the CPI(M) and CPI, the HindustAwam Morcha (Secular)'s four seats, and the AIMIM's one, plus one Independent legislator. If Nitish crosses over, this would be the fourth time he would be switching sides. However, the Bihar BJP chief Samrat Choudhary set it aside, stating that the party's high command has 'no clue' about it. «Neither has Nitish Kumarji resigned nor has anybody withdrawn support.

election in-charges and co-in-charges for 23 states and Union territories in view of the Lok Sabha polls this year. BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde has been made the election in-charge for Bihar, while BJP Rajya Sabha member and former Jharkhand unit chief Deepak Prakash will be the co-in-charge, according to a party statement. Tawde is the BJP's in-charge for political affairs in Bihar.

Nitish Kumar may revive ties with the NDA has elicited mixed responses from political circles. On Friday, Kumar attended a high tea ceremony at the Raj Bhavan in Patna on Republic Day with his deputy Tejashwi Yadav of the RJD remaining conspicuous by his absence. Following is what has been said by leaders across the political spectrum about Kumar's likely switch to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA): * All is well in Bihar's ruling Mahagathbandhan and the media speculations are driven by some agenda.

Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal on Thursday said the government was ready to discuss all issues as per rules. The Budget session of Parliament, the last of the present Lok Sabha before parliamentary elections are announced, begins on January 31 and will conclude on February 9. Responding to a question on the opposition's allegation that the government was not allowing it to raise issues in the House, the minister of state for Parliamentary Affairs said, «We are ready to discuss every issue that the speaker of the Lok Sabha and the chairman of the Rajya Sabha decide under the rules.» «We have always done this.

Shiv Sena (UBT) on Wednesday attacked the BJP-led Centre for not conferring Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian award, on Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar. Addressing a news conference, Sena (UBT) leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut called the Centre's decision to honour former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur with the award posthumously a political move. Since the Narendra Modi government took charge in Delhi (in 2014), 11 people have been conferred the highest civilian award, but Savarkar has not found a place on the list, said Raut.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament Pratap Simha faced resistance from Dalits in a village in Karnataka's Mysore district. The village had played a significant role in supplying the stone used to craft the idol of Ram Lalla, slated for installation in the Ram Temple in Ayodhya later in the day. Accusations of neglect spanning a decade and alleged derogatory remarks fueled the confrontation, as Simha, a two-time Lok Sabha representative from the area, faced a vocal and angered crowd.

Eknath Shinde, former Union Minister Milind Deora Sunday said the Grand Old Party is not the same as it used to be when Manmohan Singh launched economic reforms in 1991, the Congress is now abusing industrialists, businessmen and calling them anti-nationals. Addressing a gathering at Varsha, the official residence of Maharashtra chief minister, Deora said, "It is not easy to make a decision to quit Congress with whom the Deora family has been associated for 55 years.