L Ganesan to replace Najma Heptullah in Rajya Sabha

Monday will see L Ganesan, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) veteran from Tamil Nadu, elected to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh. He will fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Najma Heptullah, now governor of Manipur. The election to one seat in the Telangana Legislative Council will also be on Monday. The vacancy was caused following the resignation of state minister T Nageswara Rao. Counting for the bypoll to the council (with MLAs as voters) will be completed on Monday. Rao resigned from the House as he was elected to the Legislative Assembly in a bypoll.

Electoral literacy: India to host meet, Pak invited

An international conference to which delegates from Pakistan have also been invited, hosted by the Election Commission (EC) of India, will be held this week from 19 to 21 October. The conference aims to showcase and elicit good practices - as well as their potential for replication in other contexts - and to provide ECs from across the world with comparative information, data, experiences and examples to mainstream electoral literacy. The conference will aim at coming up with conclusions emerging from the experience of all participants on how to strengthen qualitative and ethical electoral participation, be it through legal frameworks or different policies. Papers will be presented on such diverse topics as electoral literacy in formal education; inclusive electoral literacy through informal education channels, etc. Reaching out to those outside schools and other marginalised groups, i.e. persons with disability, women, people working in the unorganised labour sector, tribals, etc will also get attention. Papers will be presented on use of technology for a dialogue with stakeholders.

Amit Shah to visit Assam to discuss bypolls

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah will be in Guwahati this week to take stock of the Party-led government's performance in the state. He will also discuss the coming byelections to the Lakhimpur parliamentary seat and Baithalangshu assembly seat. Lakhimpur was vacated by Sarbanand Sonowal after he became chief minister (CM), while Baithalangshu became vacant after Congress legislator Mansing Rongpi resigned and joined the BJP. "The Lakhimpur seat will be a test for us. Retaining the seat, which we won in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, will show that people are still with us," a BJP leader said. A new chief for the state unit has to be named. Sonowal was the chief but quit when he became CM.

Modi to inaugurate Vadodara airport
After Ludhiana, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Vadodara to inaugurate the Vadodara International Airport at Harni on 22 October. It's his first visit to the city after shifting to New Delhi in 2014. Modi, who had vacated the Vadodara Lok Sabha seat in favour of Varanasi, will also distribute artificial limbs and other equipment to the differently abled. It was at Vadodara that Modi gave his victory speech after the the Bharatiya Janata Pary-led National Democratic Alliance win in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He, however, visited other places in Gujarat, including Limkheda in Dahod district, about 125 km away from Vadodara last month.