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Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs George Kurian has resigned from the council of ministers after his Rajya Sabha term came to an end. The BJP had decided not to renominate him in the recent Rajya Sabha polls. President Droupadi Murmu has accepted his resignation, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said on Tuesday. Kurian was also holding the charge as Union Minister of State in the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying. The President of India, as advised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has accepted the resignation of Kurian from the Union Council of Ministers, with immediate effect, the communique said. Kurian was probably the only minister in the Union government who belongs to the Christian community. His Rajya Sabha tenure ended on June 21. Two Union ministers -- Ravneet Singh Bittu and Kurian --- were not renominated for the June 18 Rajya Sabha elections even though their tenures were coming to an end.
The Supreme Court on Friday said once nomination of a candidate is rejected by the returning officer, the only remedy is to approach the Election Commission as it heard Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan's plea challenging rejection of her nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha polls. The court also asked Natarajan to show any judgement passed by the it where it has interfered in such cases. A bench comprising Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Atul S Chandurkar said, "However erroneous the decision may be, once a nomination is rejected, the remedy ordinarily lies elsewhere. Is there any judgment of this Court where we have interfered at that stage? Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for Natarajan, submitted that a candidate is supposed to disclose a criminal case which provides for a minimum sentence of two years and, in the present matter, only summons were issued. He said the nomination paper for the Rajya Sabha poll in Madhya Pradesh was wrongly rejected by the returni
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party's media cell head Pawan Khera besides BJP leaders Satish Poonia and Tarun Chugh were among 24 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Thursday. All but three of the 27 seats for Rajya Sabha were decided with NDA candidates declared elected unopposed in 19 and Congress in the remaining five. Elections for two seats in Jharkhand, where a keen contest is on the cards, and one seat in Mizoram will be held on June 18. The scrutiny of nominations for elections to 24 Rajya Sabha seats in 10 states besides bye-elections to one seat each in Maharashtra, Odisha and Tamil Nadu was on Thursday. All the candidates declared elected unopposed were handed over winning certificates by the respective returning officers. Elections would be held for the two Rajya Sabha seats in Jharkhand, where three candidates - JMM's Baidyanath Ram, Congress nominee Pranav Jha and Independent Parimal Nathwani, a director at Reliance Industries who has the suppo
Trinamool Congress MP Sushmita Dev on Wednesday resigned as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the second TMC MP to resign this week. Dev, a former Congress leader who had joined the TMC a few years ago, met Rajya Sabha chairman C P Radhakrishnan and resigned from the membership of the House. She is the second MP of the TMC to resign this week. Earlier, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray had tendered his resignation from the party as well as the Rajya Sabha. Sources said Dev is likely to quit the TMC and join the BJP. She has also met Assam chief minister Humanta Biswa Sarma. In her resignation letter, she said, "I do hereby resign from the membership of Rajya Sabha, which may please be accepted with immediate effect." "I convey my sincere gratitude to your excellency, hon'ble deputy chairman and all functionaries of the Rajya Sabha secretariat extending all help and cooperation during my tenure as a member of the Rajya Sabha," Dev said in the letter to the Chairman. The Trinamool Congress is facing
Top Congress leaders met the Election Commission on Wednesday, alleging that the nomination papers of Meenakshi Natarajan, its Rajya Sabha candidate from Madhya Pradesh, were wrongly rejected. A delegation of top party leaders, including K C Venugopal, Randeep Surjewala, Jairam Ramesh, Deepa Dasmunshi, Vivek Tankha and Abhishek Singhvi, along with Meenakshi Natarajan, met the commission and demanded that the decision should be reversed. They contended that no case is pending against Natarajan as no court has yet taken cognisance of a private complaint filed against her. Singhvi, who also heads the legal cell of the Congress, said on X that " the decision of the Returning Officer is indeed poor and absolutely partisan." Singhvi said he spoke to Natarajan and several other senior Congress leaders on Tuesday after he learnt of this "most remarkable and astonishing rejection" of her nomination papers by the Returning Officer. "This is, on the face of it, patently and blatantly illegal
The upcoming elections to three Rajya Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh took a dramatic turn on Tuesday with the nomination of Congress candidate Meenakshi Natarajan being rejected on charges of concealing information about a case in the affidavit. "Natarajan's nomination has been rejected by the Returning Officer on the grounds of hiding information about a case," an MP Assembly official told PTI. A complaint was submitted by BJP candidate Mahesh Kewat, contesting the third Rajya Sabha seat, to the Returning Officer alleging that Natarajan deliberately hid information about a case filed against her in Telangana. Sanket Gupta, the lawyer representing Kewat, told reporters that a criminal case is pending against Natarajan in a Telangana court and is not mentioned in the affidavit. He said the Returning Officer has rejected her nomination on this basis. "This information has been deliberately concealed. According to Supreme Court guidelines, you are required to provide this information
In a major blow to the TMC amid the political turmoil rocking the organisation, Rajya Sabha MP Sukhen Shekhar Ray on Monday resigned from the party and also stepped down as a member of the Upper House of Parliament. Ray, a veteran leader and one of the most articulate voices of the TMC in Parliament, submitted his resignation to the Rajya Sabha chairman and simultaneously announced his decision to quit the Mamata Banerjee-led party. The development comes at a time when the TMC is grappling with an unprecedented internal crisis, following a rebellion in its legislative wing and growing tensions among different factions within the organisation. In his resignation letter, Ray said he was relinquishing his parliamentary membership and severing association with the TMC.
Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha who switched from the AAP to the BJP recently has been appointed as the new chairman of the Committee on Petitions of the Upper House. After reconstituting the Committee on Petitions, Rajya Sabha chairman C P Radhakrishnan nominated 10 members of the house to the panel. "Raghav Chadha has been appointed Chairman of the Committee," a Rajya Sabha notification said. The panel has been reconstituted by the Rajya Sabha chairman with effect from May 20, it said. The members of the panel besides Chadha are: Harsh Mahajan, Gulam Ali, Shambhu Sharan Patel, Mayankkumar Nayak, Masthan Rao Yadav Beedha, Jebi Mather Hisham, Subhasish Khuntia, Rwngwra Narzary and Sandosh Kumar P. In another notification, the Rajya Sabha secretariat said, "The Chairman, Rajya Sabha has, on the 20 May, 2026, nominated Dr Menaka Guruswamy, Member, Rajya Sabha to be a member of the Joint Committee on the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026.
The Election Commission on Friday announced polls for 24 Rajya Sabha seats on June 18. In a statement, the EC said the elections for the Rajya Sabha seats will be held in 10 states where the incumbents are retiring on different dates beginning June 21 to July 19. The Rajya Sabha elections will be held in four seats each in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka, three seats each in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, two seats in Jharkhand and one seat each in Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. The last date for filing nominations is June 8.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, accompanied by party MLAs, departed for Delhi on Tuesday morning to meet President Droupadi Murmu regarding the recent defection of seven Rajya Sabha MPs to the BJP. On April 24, the Aam Aadmi Party suffered a jolt when seven of its 10 Rajya Sabha MPs -- Raghav Chadha, Ashok Mittal, Sandeep Pathak, Harbhajan Singh, Rajendra Gupta, Vikramjit Sahney and Swati Maliwal -- quit and merged with the BJP, alleging that the party had strayed from its principles, values and core morals. Six of the seven MPs who left AAP were from Punjab. Mann is scheduled to meet the President at 12 noon at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday. While departing for Delhi, Mann affirmed that all AAP MLAs stand united with the party. "Only I have been given time for the meeting," Mann said while speaking to reporters here. "The President is the guardian of the Constitution. She is the constitutional head of the country," he added. The MLAs and ministers gathered at the chief .
Rajya Sabha Chairman C P Radhakrishnan on Monday officially accepted the merger of seven Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MPs with the BJP, reducing the strength of Arvind Kejriwal's party in the Upper House to three. After this transition, the BJP's strength in the Upper House has increased to 113. Raghav Chadha, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Sandeep Pathak, Vikramjit Sahney, Swati Maliwal, and Rajinder Gupta are the seven MPs who have merged. The Rajya Sabha website now shows that the seven MPs are part of the BJP list of members. The seven MPs had on Friday petitioned the Rajya Sabha Chairman to be treated as BJP MPs after the merger and the same has been accepted, sources said. The AAP had on Sunday moved a petition before the RS Chairman seeking the termination of the membership of the seven MPs, who had switched sides. Aam Aadmi Party MP Sanjay Singh said he has submitted a petition to Chairman Radhakrishnan seeking the disqualification of the seven party MPs in the Upper House, who
AAP leader Sanjay Singh on Saturday said that the party will write to the Rajya Sabha chairman to seek the disqualification of seven of its MPs, who quit the party a day ago, from the Upper House. "Anti-defection law clearly states that any type of split or faction cannot happen in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. It does not carry any legal recognition, even if it's a two-thirds majority," Singh said. The AAP leader said that neither the anti-defection law nor the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution recognises any kind of split, breakaway faction, or group in the Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha, two-thirds majority notwithstanding. The seven MPs who have announced joining the BJP are completely "unconstitutional" and "illegal," he said. "I am writing to the vice president of India, and chairman of Rajya Sabha, to disqualify the seven MPs," Singh added. AAP Rajya Sabha MPs Raghav Chadha and Sandeep Pathak on Friday announced that they are joining the BJP along with five other MPs of the ...