Page 20 - Election Commission Of India

LG govt has shaken up administration: NC asks EC to suspend transfer

The National Conference on Friday called on the Election Commission of India (ECI) to thoroughly investigate the massive transfers in the police and civil administration, and demanded immediate suspension of the implementation of such orders. National Conference general secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar said the move seems "clearly intended to undermine" the integrity of the electoral process, which restricts such transfers to prevent the ruling party from gaining an undue administrative advantage over the opposition. "Why has a massive reshuffle been ordered in the police and administration since last evening, and today morning, seemingly to pre-empt the Election Commission's announcement? It appears to have been orchestrated by a BJP-appointed LG to benefit his party and its allies," Sagar said in a statement. "The LG government has strategically shaken up the entire administrative set up compromising the principles of free and fair elections," he added. The National Conference called

Election Commission to release poll schedule for key states at 3 pm

The terms of legislative assemblies in Haryana and Maharashtra will expire on Nov 3 and Nov 26, respectively. J&K elections are expected to be held before Sept 30, as ordered by the Supreme Court

Committed to conducting elections in J&K at earliest: CEC Rajiv Kumar

Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Friday said that the EC was committed to conducting polls in Jammu and Kashmir at the earliest and would not allow any internal or external forces derail the electoral process. Addressing a press conference here, Kumar said all parties in Jammu and Kashmir are "batting strongly" for holding assembly elections. "We are committed to conducting polls in Jammu and Kashmir at the earliest and we will not let any internal or external forces derail the election," Kumar said. "All political parties in Jammu and Kashmir are batting strongly for holding assembly elections as soon as possible," he added. An Election Commission delegation led by Kumar is in Jammu and Kashmir on a three-day visit to review the preparedness of the administration as well as the security agencies for the conduct of the polls. On the second day of their visit on Friday, the EC delegation that also includes Election Commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and S S Sandhu, held discussi

Elections to 12 vacant Rajya Sabha seats from 9 states on September 3: EC

Elections to 12 vacant Rajya Sabha seats in nine states will be held on September 3, the Election Commission said on Wednesday. Ten Rajya Sabha seats fell vacant as the sitting members, including Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Sarbananda Sonowal and Jyotiraditya Scindia, were elected to the Lok Sabha. Bypolls are also being held for two seats in Telangana and Odisha. K Keshava Rao from Telangana resigned recently from the House after quitting the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) to join the Congress while Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP Mamata Mohanta resigned from her Rajya Sabha seat and primary membership of the party. Besides Goyal, Sonowal and Scindia, the other Rajya Sabha members who won the parliamentary polls and moved to the Lok Sabha are Kamakhya Prasad Tasa (BJP), Misha Bharti (RJD), Vivek Thakur (BJP), Deepender Singh Hooda (Congress), Udayanraje Bhosle (BJP), K C Venugopal (Congress) and Biplab Kumar Deb (BJP). The notification for the Rajya Sabha elections will be issued on Aug

Assembly elections in J&K to be held in Sept: Union minister G Kishan Reddy

A new J&K has emerged where terrorism, stone-pelting, hoisting of Pakistani flags, and an insult to the Tricolour are history, said the minister in Jammu rally

Maharashtra BJP prez Bawankule alleges conspiracy in voters registration

Chandrashekhar Bawankule, BJP president in Maharashtra, said that at least 3000 voters were registered for two Assembly constituencies, who, according to him, belonged to one particular community

ECI gives aggrieved candidates choice on how they want to check EVM

Aggrieved candidates, who have applied for Supreme Court-directed checking of EVMs for tampering post Lok Sabha and assembly results, have been given various choices by the Election Commission, including picking machines from any polling station in an assembly segment and opting for a mock poll and mock VVPAT slip count. According to standard operating procedure issued on Tuesday by the Election Commission, the candidates who came number two and three have been given a vast number of random tests to choose from. The Election Commission said that by going beyond controlled environment check and verification process of burnt memory eliminates the possibility or apprehension of any bias or hidden functionality in the firmware. The Election Commission has received eight applications from aggrieved candidates, including those from the BJP and the Congress, for verification of tampering or modification in micro-controller chips embedded in the EVMs post declaration of the Lok Sabha electi

Election Commission to conduct mock polls to check EVMs post LS polls

The EC received eight applications for verification of EVMs used in the 18th Lok Sabha elections and three for the Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha

Assembly bypolls: INDIA bloc wins 3 seats, leading in 8; BJP leading in 1

INDIA bloc parties won three assembly seats and were leading on eight, while the BJP and an Independent were ahead on one each as votes were counted on Saturday for the by-elections held earlier this week, according to the trends on the EC website. AAP's Mohinder Bhagat won the Jalandhar West seat in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife and Congress candidate Kamlesh Thakur won in Dehra and TMC's Krishna Kalyani in West Bengal's Raiganj. The Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), AAP and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) are the INDIA bloc parties that fielded candidates in the bypolls held on Wednesday in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu. In Punjab, Bhagat won the Jalandhar West seat by defeating his nearest rival and BJP nominee Sheetal Angural by a margin of 37,325 votes, the Election Commission (EC) said. The seat fell vacant after Angural resigned as the AAP legislator and joined the BJP in

Congress candidates lead in Manglaur, Badrinath seats of Uttarakhand

Congress candidates for the Badrinath and Manglaur assembly bypolls in Uttarakhand were leading in both the seats on Saturday, officials said. The counting of votes for the by-elections in the two assembly constituencies, held on Wednesday, began at 8 am. Congress' Qazi Nizamuddin was ahead by 87,365 votes against the BJP's Kartar Singh Bhadana in the sixth round of counting in Manglaur. BSP's Ubaidur Rahman, who was behind Nizamuddin at the second spot in the initial rounds of counting, is now trailing at the third spot in the seat. The seat was with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) but fell vacant after Rahman's father and sitting MLA Sarwat Karim Ansari died in October 2023. In the Badrinath assembly seat, Congress' Lakhpat Singh Butola was leading by 1,935 votes against BJP's Rajendra Bhandari in the seventh round of counting. The seat fell vacant after Bhandari resigned from the Congress and the state assembly to join the BJP just before the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year.

Kashmir 'Martyrs Day': Mehbooba, others claim they are under 'house arrest'

Several political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir, including PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, on Saturday claimed authorities have put them under house arrest to prevent them from visiting the 'martyrs' graveyard' to pay homage to the 22 Kashmiri people killed by the army of a Dogra ruler on this day in 1931. However, there was no official word on the claims made by the politicians. Mehbooba, a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, alleged that she was put under "house arrest" at her residence in Khimber in the outskirts of the city. "The gates of my house have been locked up yet again to prevent me from visiting Mazar e Shuhada - an enduring symbol of Kashmir's resistance and resilience against authoritarianism, oppression and injustice," she said in a post on X. The PDP chief said the "sacrifices of our martyrs is a testament that the spirit of Kashmiri's cannot be crushed" and added that "today even observing it in remembrance of the protesters martyred on this day has been ...

Himachal Pradesh bypolls: Cong leading in all three assembly by-polls

Congress' candidates, including Himachal Pradesh Chief Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife, are in the lead in all three assembly constituencies in the state where bypolls were held earlier this week, officials said on Saturday. The counting of votes for the by-elections in Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh, held on Wednesday, began at 8 am. Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur was leading by 636 votes against her nearest rival and BJP candidate Hoshiyar Singh after the fifth round of counting, the officials said. In the Hamirpur assembly seat, Congress' Pushpinder Verma was ahead by 1,704 votes against BJP candidate Ashish Sharma after the second round of counting, they said. Congress candidate Hardeep Singh Baba was leading by 646 votes in the first round against BJP candidate K L Thakur in the Nalagarh assembly seat, the officials. Thirteen candidates were in the fray from the three seats. The Nalagarh assembly constituency had recorded the highest polling at 79.04 per cent, followed by Hamirpur

'Ladki Bahin' scheme: Maha Govt to use existing data of women beneficiaries

The existing data of women beneficiaries available with various departments will be used for the Maharashtra government's recently-announced 'Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin' scheme, an official said. Officials from various departments held a meeting in this connection on Wednesday. Under the scheme, announced ahead of state assembly elections due in October, eligible women will get Rs 1,500 per month. "The idea is to use the existing data to reduce the burden of data collection to some extent," an official in the Women and Child Development (WCD) department said. "Departments like Rural Development and Food and Civil Supplies already have the database of women beneficiaries, collected for older schemes. These departments have been asked to share the data with the Women and Child Development department which is going to implement the Ladki Bahin Yojana," an official from the Food and Civil Supplies department said. The WCD department will consolidate the data, bank accounts and oth

Assembly by-polls today: In Himachal's Dehra, CM Sukhu's wife in fray. List

Assembly by-polls update: By-elections for Himachal's Hamirpur, Dehra, and Nalagarh seats were announced following the resignation of three independent MLAs who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party

EC to update voters' list in poll-bound states, including Jammu and Kashmir

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said on Thursday that assembly elections would be held soon in Jammu and Kashmir and plans are underway to restore statehood to the UT in the near future

EC begins J&K Assembly polls prep, electoral roll expected by Aug 20

State and UT Assembly elections will be conducted in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), Haryana, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra, along with 47 by-polls

EC begins updating electoral rolls for Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, J-K

The Election Commission on Friday said it has initiated preparations for forthcoming assembly elections in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand with updation of electoral rolls in these states. July 1, 2024 will be the qualifying date. For the just-held Lok Sabha polls, the voters list was updated with January 1 as the qualifying date. Qualifying date helps establish number of voters on a given date in a state or in the country. The term of the existing legislative assemblies in the three states are going to end on November 3, November 26 and January 5, 2025 respectively and elections to these legislative assemblies are required to be conducted before the completion of their terms. Besides, assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir are also to be conducted for constituting a new house after delimitation of constituencies, the EC said. "Witnessing the huge participation of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, the Commission has also directed

EC should invite Musk to attempt hacking EVMs, says Andhra BJP chief

BJP's Andhra Pradesh unit chief D Purandeswari on Monday appealed to the Election Commission to invite global technocrat and Tesla founder Elon Musk to come and attempt hacking Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Reacting to a social media post by Musk that EVMs should be eliminated as they can be hacked by humans or Artificial Intelligence (AI), Purandeswari made this plea to the poll panel. "According to Elon Musk, any EVM can be hacked. Request election commission to please invite him to India to attempt hacking our EVMs," she said in a post on X. According to the state BJP chief, despite "numerous opportunities provided by the Election Commission, no one has succeeded yet'. On June 15, Musk, a top global serial entrepreneur, called for the abolition of EVM in a post on the micro-blogging site X owned by him. "We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high," said Musk. However, this social media post by the

SC, EC need to take drastic decision on EVM irregularities, says AAP

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday joined the political slugfest over the electronic voting machines (EVMs), saying the Supreme Court and the Election Commission need to take a drastic decision on the issue. AAP's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said that his party has been raising the incidents of irregularities related to the EVMs for long but were mocked by the BJP. Singh alleged that there were 80 Lok Sabha seats won by the BJP in the recent polls and claimed "if proper counting of votes on these seats happened, the current BJP government will collapse". These 80 seats are in Maharashtra, UP, Bihar and other states, he said. Citing the controversy related to EVM in North West Mumbai Lok Sabha seat, Singh said "The Supreme Court and the Election Commission should now take a strict decision over the EVM issue." A fresh political slugfest has erupted over EVM tampering claims with the Congress and other opposition leaders citing a media report that alleged that a relative of the Shi

Rahul, Aaditya should apologise for remarks over EVMs: Sanjay Nirupam

Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Nirupam on Monday said Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Aaditya Thackeray should apologise for disseminating "false" information based on a news report on the EVMs. A political slugfest erupted on Sunday over EVM tampering claims with Gandhi, Thackeray and other opposition leaders citing a media report which alleged that a relative of Shiv Sena's Mumbai North West Lok Sabha seat candidate Ravindra Waikar was found using a mobile phone "connected" to an EVM during the counting of votes on June 4. The media report said a relative of Waikar, who won from seat by just 48 votes, had used a mobile phone to "unlock" an electronic voting machine (EVM) when the votes were being counted. Vandana Suryavanshi, returning officer of the constituency, however, dismissed the report in 'mid-day' newspaper as "false news" and said a defamation notice has been issued to the publication. She asserted that the EVM is a standalone system, not programmable and has