Election Financial News

Prime Minister Narendra Modi for diverting attention from the real issues in the run up to Lok Sabha Elections 2024, and said he will follow the Congress decision on whether he should contest in Amethi. Gandhi, who addressed a joint press conference with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav in Ghaziabad, termed the Prime Minister “champion of corruption." “The Prime Minister gave a scripted interview recently. He said Electoral Bonds were brought in to ensure transparency in poll funding.

Rahul Gandhi kept the suspense on over his candidature from the high-profile Amethi constituency in Uttar Pradesh, saying the party's Central Election Committee (CEC) takes such decisions for the Lok Sabha elections. During a joint press conference with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi was asked whether he will contest the Lok Sabha elections from Amethi or Rae Bareli. “This is BJP's question, very good.

LiveMint to track live updates on Lok Sabha elections. Lok Sabha Polls 2024: The Trinamool Congress will hold a Shobha Yatra in West Bengal’s Howrah to mark Ram Navami.

Congress is contesting the Ghaziabad seat, apart from other seats in UP, in alliance with SP as part of opposition’s INDIA bloc.Ghaziabad is going to polls in second phase of voting on April 26. The two leaders have not campaigned together for any of the ten seats of Western Uttar Pradesh going to polls in the first phase of polling on April 19. AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi will also be holding a roadshow in western Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur on Wednesday.

₹1 lakh every year to a woman member of every poor household. Even if just half the free-food beneficiaries are found to qualify for being under the poverty line, this basic income scheme would cost the exchequer over ₹8 trillion, 16.8% of the interim budget’s entire outlay of ₹47.7 trillion for 2024-25. Yet, how it will be funded finds no mention in its manifesto.

Donald Trump's hush money trial were seated Tuesday after lawyers grilled the jury pool about their social media posts, political views and personal lives to decide who can sit in fair judgment of the former president. The panelists who were selected are an information technology worker, an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers.

Read here: Stock market holiday: Is Indian stock market shut for Ram Navami on April 17? The Commodity Derivative Segment on the Multi Commodity Exchange of India Limited (MCX) is closed only for the morning session today, while the evening session will remain open. On MCX, commodity market trading will commence in the evening session from 5 pm to 11:30/11:55 pm today.

Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Social media platform X on April 16 said that it had restrained certain posts in India featuring political content from elected officials, political parties, and candidates for office following directives from the country's Election Commission, Reuters reported. X (formerly known as Twitter), owned by Elon Musk, expressed disagreement with the orders issued by the election commission.

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath's son Nakul couldn't have expected more odds against him than in this Lok Sabha election, where he is fighting to retain the Chhindwara seat that he had inherited from his father in 2019. The BJP is leaving no stone unturned to corner the lone winner from the Congress camp in the state in the previous general election and his lackadaisical performance in the past five years has aggravated the challenge. Though the BJP has fielded a seemingly lightweight candidate, Vivek Bunty Sahu, who had lost to Kamal Nath in the last two assembly polls, the party is banking on the support of Congress defectors, including one sitting MLA and a former MLA, the Ayodhya Ram temple issue and its own sweep in the 2023 state polls. Nakul Nath is the richest candidate in the first phase of 2024 Lok Sabha polls, with assets worth Rs 716 crore, has largely been an absentee MP, according to locals. His father remains his biggest strength as he did not make much of an impact inside or outside Parliament in the past five years. Locals said the exodus to the BJP from the Congress in Chhindwara was as much on account of the rising graph of the saffron party and the Ram temple issue as it was due to Kamal Nath promoting his son.

Tamil Nadu, which host Congress' sitting constituencies such as Kanyakumari, Sivaganga and Virudhunagar, besides Tirunelveli where it is in the fray, are witnessing interesting contests with the Congress leaning a lot on the DMK, while its traditional rival here, the AIADMK, banking on the hope of its core vote base remaining intact in the absence of a charismatic leader even as the BJP is trying to make inroads by attempting a caste concoction. As the southern part has traditionally being lenient for the Congress in the Dravidian political landscape, the BJP is also trying its luck by tapping the local socio-political flavour. While these seats display Congress' fight to retain its bases, it also showcases BJP's experiments with local social engineering as a vehicle for its Hindutva plank.

BJP government in Rajasthan, the Congress is trying to turn the parliamentary election into a local fight on state-specific issues while the BJP is pushing the «double engine ki sarkar» model (entailing the same party in power at the Centre and the state) and keeping the focus on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As 12 Lok Sabha constituencies of northern and eastern Rajasthan go to the polls on Friday, the Congress is talking about the first 100 days of governance under the BJP chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma. Law and order in the state tops the Congress agenda during its election campaign. The party is raking up the murder of a businessman by the son of an inspector posted in chief minister's office in Jaipur. At the same time, the way the BJP chose Sharma to lead the new government is being used by the Congress to paint him as an ineffective administrator inflicted on the state. BJP veteran and former chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia's reaction of surprise to a chit passed to her declaring Sharma's name as CM has given the Congress a new phrase — «parchi ka CM» (CM of a chit) — to beat the BJP with.

Lakhimpur spread across Upper Assam and North bank of Brahmaputra will go to the polls on Friday. This is the first election in Assam after the delimitation exercise of last year during which constituency boundaries were redrawn after 27 years and the state's political landscape changed. In Lakhimpur, it is a direct fight between the BJP and Congress. BJP MP Pradan Baruah, former Congress MLA, is seeking a third consecutive term from the seat against the Congress candidate Uday Shankar Hazarika. A total of nine contestants are in the fray from Lakhimpur constituency where recurring annual floods is an issue among the voters. In Sonitpur, the Aam Aadmi Party has fielded Rishiraj Kaundinya while the Congress has nominated Prem Lal Ganju, despite being members of the INDIA bloc. The BJP has fielded its former state unit president and former minister Ranjit Dutta from the seat.

BJP's nominee from this seat Nitin Gadkari. Gadkari is seeking a third term from this high-profile seat, where the RSS headquarters is located. He is targeting to win by a margin of over 5 lakh votes. His main challenger is local MLA and Congress Nagpur unit chief Vikas Thakre. Nagpur, which was once a Congress bastion, has been with the BJP since 2014 when Gadkari first contested from here. Prior to that, the BJP won only once in 1996. While the BJP is counting on the development brought in by Gadkari, his personal appeal and connection, the Congress is relying on the 'DMK' (Dalits, Muslims and Kunbis) factor. Thakre is an OBC and hails from the Kunbi caste.

Amit Shah on Tuesday said the BJP strives to win hearts of the people of Jammu and Kashmir as the party is in no hurry to see lotus bloom in the valley. Shah, while addressing an election rally in Jammu Lok Sabha constituency to campaign for BJP candidate Jugal Kishore, said that the regional parties are propagating the perception that BJP is out to occupy Kashmir, which is not correct. He added that assembly elections in J&K would be held within the Supreme Court deadline of September this year. «We are not among the occupiers, we are among those who win hearts. You don't have to worry. I want to tell the electorate of the valley that BJP has no urgency. When we get your love, lotus will bloom in the valley on its own as well,» said Shah.

The consumer space also saw 88 PE deals, highest in five quarters by volume. However, the consumer industry reported a decline in M&A activity with volumes declining to 14 deals from 17 a year ago although the value surged to $925 million from $79 million in 2023. «This is potentially an outcome of the impending elections leading the businesses to adopt a cautious approach, coupled with sluggishness in consumer spending, leading to slow revenue growth. However, it evidenced substantial increase in terms of deal value, primarily driven by Tata Consumer Goods' acquisition of Capital Foods valued at $615 million and Organic India valued at $229 million. Together these two deals contributed to a 91% share in M&A values, at $843 million,» said Naveen Malpani, partner and consumer industry leader, Grant Thornton Bharat.

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said on Tuesday that if Prime Minister Narendra Modi comes to power at the Centre, there will be «no Constitution, no election in future and the federal structure will cease to exist». Banerjee was speaking at a public rally in Jalpaiguri Lok Sabha constituency's Moynaguri. «If Modi comes to power, there will be no election in future in the name of One Nation-One poll. Federal structure will not exist — there will be one nation, one poll, one man, one code and one food,» Banerjee lashed out. Banerjee also claimed that BJP will not cross the 200-seat mark in the country as opposed to what the BJP leadership claims that it will cross 400 seats. «In Bengal, we will win while Stalin will win in Tamil Nadu and Akhilesh will win in Uttar Pradesh.

₹5 per litre," said Swarnendu Bhushan, co-head of research at Prabhudas Lilladher Pvt. Ltd. Shares of OMCs have been volatile over the past week; however, in the last one month, they have seen an uptrend.

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a petition by MyPillow founder and election denier Mike Lindell to consider his challenge to the legality of the FBI’s seizure of his cellphone at a Minnesota restaurant drive-through

₹2.5 lakh, while that of AgustaWestland 109S, a twin-engine helicopter, has increased by about 27% to ₹3.5 lakh. Rates for Beechcraft Super King Air 250, a civil aircraft, have spiked 57% to ₹2.75 lakh an hour. Meanwhile, data from the Airports Authority of India, the body responsible for managing the country’s civil aviation infrastructure, hints at increased usage of private jets for election campaigns.

Tejashwi Yadav on Tuesday questioned the absence of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar from the BJP's election rallies in the state. The former deputy chief minister made the remark while referring to the absence of Kumar, the JD(U) president, from rallies addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Gaya and Purnea earlier in the day. «Where is Nitish Kumar ji? Why is the BJP not inviting him to its rallies? He could not be seen at either rally of the PM on Tuesday. I still have respect for the CM… BJP, which is his current ally, needs to come clean on the matter,» Yadav, whose RJD lost power after Kumar's return to the NDA in January, told reporters here in the evening. Retorting sharply to the PM's charge that the RJD was against development and his question whether the party's election symbol lantern could charge a smartphone, Yadav said, «What does it mean? Can the mud in which lotus (BJP poll symbol) grows be used for charging mobile phones?»

Lok Sabha elections 2024: As Congress continues to maintain suspense over its candidates for Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli and Amethi seats, party chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday said sometimes it's good to give surprises in politics. In an interview with news agency PTI, Kharge said, "It is not good in politics if I open all the cards. Sometimes, in politics, we have to give surprises and form strategies.