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Civic Polls
Forty-six per cent of the more than 51 lakh eligible voters for civic body polls in Haryana exercised their franchise on Sunday, officials said. The polling was peaceful, they added. Voting was held to elect the mayors and ward members of seven municipal corporations -- Gurugram, Manesar, Faridabad, Hisar, Rohtak, Karnal and Yamunanagar. Bypolls for the mayors' posts in Ambala and Sonipat were also held. The voting was held from 8 am to 6 pm. The turnout in the civic polls was recorded at 46 per cent, the officials said, adding that the overall percentage may slightly increase once the entire data is collected. Elections were also held for the posts of presidents and ward members in four municipal councils -- Ambala Sadar, Pataudi Jatoli Mandi, Thanesar and Sirsa. A bypoll was also held for the president's post in the Sohna Municipal Council. Voting also took place for the election of the presidents and ward members in 21 municipal committees. Bypolls for the presidents' posts
Nagaland witnessed a significant political shift this year as the Congress made a comeback by winning the lone Lok Sabha seat in the state after decades of political marginalisation and elections to Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) were held for the first time in 20 years with 33 per cent reservation for women, marking a pivotal moment in its political landscape. In the parliamentary elections held earlier this year, Congress candidate S Supongmeren Jamir clinched the state's only Lok Sabha seat, delivering a win that many political analysts termed as a historic resurgence for the party in a state where it had long been absent from the political limelight. Jamir's victory marked the end of a 20-year hiatus for Congress in the state's Lok Sabha elections. The last Congress candidate to win the seat was K Asungba Sangtam, who served from 1999 to 2004. For the state's people, Jamir's triumph carries a deep, symbolic significance, marking a shift in the state's political dynamics, which had be
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday met six newly elected mayors and askes them to make their municipal corporations "self-reliant" in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat.' The Chief Minister also instructed all the mayors to promote a positive image of the municipal corporations by boosting their income and resolving local issues, an official release issued here said. He suggested improving the municipal tax as a way to increase the local bodies' income. He said the common man must be able to conveniently pay his taxes and must be informed about the importance of paying them. Advising all mayors to do "something good" and "something new," the CM asked them to give priority to the work of underground cabling and solid and liquid waste management. He also asked them to treat the stray dog menace in urban areas as a top priority. Adityanath directed the mayors to stay in touch with the public representatives and work in coordina
The Haryana Cabinet on Monday accepted the State Backward Classes Commission's report on the proportion of reservation for the communities in urban local body elections, according to an official statement. The commission has recommended that every municipal body shall have at least one councillor belonging to backward classes Block-A if its population is not less than two per cent of the total population of the urban local body, it said. There are as many as 78 backward classes in the state and more than 70 of them fall in Block-A sub-category. The commission, headed by Justice (retired) Darshan Singh, conducted an empirical assessment of the political backwardness of the backward classes. In the assessment, the commission found that the backward classes Block-A are not adequately represented in the political setup, so they require the support of reservation in the elections of urban local bodies and municipalities for adequate participation in the grassroots democratic setup, ...
More than 43 per cent of the electorate cast their votes in the Shimla Municipal Corporation elections till 2 pm on Tuesday, officials said. Polling in 34 wards began at 8 am. Rain in the morning hours played a spoilsport but polling picked up as the day progressed and weather improved, they said, adding 43.60 per cent voters cast their votes till 2 pm. The results of the elections, which are being held on party symbols, will be declared on Thursday. The civic body's five-year term ended in June 2022 but the elections were delayed by 11 months. The state's ruling Congress and the BJP are the main rivals in these elections. The BJP accused the Congress of influencing the election process and lodged a complaint with the State Election Commission against changing of the sequence of names in electronic voting machines in two wards. The Congress dismissed the charge as "ridiculous". BJP state president Rajiv Bindal said that the sequence of names of BJP candidates in EVMs have been cha
A little over 90,000 voters will determine the fate of 102 candidates from 34 wards contesting the Shimla Municipal Corporations elections, scheduled to be held on Tuesday. The results of the elections, which are being held on party symbols, will be declared on Thursday. According to State Election Commission data, 93,920 voters are registered to exercise their franchises in the elections. These include 49,759 male and 44,161 female voters at 153 polling booths. Vikas Nagar ward has the maximum number of voters at 4,161 while Malyana has the lowest at 1,166. During the campaigning for the elections, the contesting parties have made lofty promises to the electorate. From highways to skywalks and parks to parking spots, the parties made a plethora of promises during roadshows, street corner meetings and door-to-door campaigns. The Congress has promised to introduce policies for the regularisation of multi-storey buildings and a uniform tax regime for both old and merged areas, a rop
The BJP on Wednesday released its first list of 24 candidates, which included 16 women, for the Shimla Municipal Corporation (SMC) polls while the Congress named nine more nominees for the civic body elections slated to be held on May 2. BJP leader Ganseh Dutt, who is the president of the "Drishti Patra" committee for the polls said the party would fight the election on issues of drug-free Shimla, cleanliness and clean drinking water. He also said that suggestions are being sought from the people to finalise the party's vision document. The BJP's list of candidates included Saroj Thakur (Ruldu Bhatta), Sapna Kashyap (Annadale), Shelly Thakur (Summer Hill), Minakshi Goyal (Totu), Nirmala Chauhan (Majath), Kiran Bawa (Boileauganj), Alka Kanwar (Kachhi Ghati), Hema Kashyap (Nabha), Kalyan Dhiman (Phagli), Bittu Panna (Krishna Nagar), Bharti Sood (Lower Bazar), Anup Vaid (Benmore) and Satya Kaundal (Sanjauli Chowk). The other candidates are Kamlesh Mehta (Upper Dhalli), Seema (Lower ..
MCD Commissioner Gyanesh Bharti on Thursday presented the civic body's budget to the civic body's Special Officer, official sources said. The annual budget has to be presented by a commissioner before December 10, as per statutory requirements. The budget is eventually approved by the Leader of House in a special meeting of the House chaired by the mayor, they said. While the results of the high-stakes December 4 civic polls were announced on Wednesday, the new House is yet to be convened, and thus the city is yet to get its new mayor after the election. The civic body in Delhi had 272 wards across its three corporations -- NDMC, SDMC, and EDMC, which existed from 2012-2022 - before being reunified into a sole MCD which formally came into existence on May 22 this year. The commissioner presented the MCD budget which includes the revised budget estimate for year 2022-23 and budget estimate for 2023-24, an official source said. Since there is no House currently, the budget was pres
The BJP's top leadership, including its national president J P Nadda, went into a huddle with the Delhi unit leaders to assess the party's campaign for the December 4 civic body polls in the city. Several leaders, including some Delhi BJP MPs and MLAs, said Nadda advised a "focussed, door-to-door campaign" in the coming days to reach out to voters effectively. "The BJP national president also emphasised on a well-coordinated campaign by the party's parliamentarians and legislators in Delhi," said a city BJP MP present in the meeting. During the interaction, Nadda assessed the BJP's poll readiness, he said. The meeting also discussed the BJP's prospects in the polls. Some Delhi BJP leaders claimed that the party's campaign was headed in the right direction and currently 140 to 150 of the 250 MCD seats were within reach. Apart from all BJP MPs and MLAs from Delhi, those who attended the meeting included the party's national organisation secretary B L Santosh and its city unit presid
Amid discontent over ticket distribution for the upcoming civic body polls, Delhi BJP president Adesh Gupta on Tuesday replaced working presidents of the party's six districts units with immediate effect. On Monday, Gupta had appointed working presidents of six district units but the appointments were withdrawn within hours. In the latest list, three working presidents, whose name was in the first list issued on Monday, have been dropped. Party sources claimed that the move was triggered after senior leaders including party MPs expressed discontent with some of the working presidents appointed by Gupta. According to the fresh list, Sardar Kuldeep Singh has been appointed the president of Chandni Chowk, Manoj Tyagi of Navin Shahdara, Lata Gupta of Shahdara, Naresh Vashishth of Mehrauli, Vinod Sehrawat of Northwest Delhi and Ramesh Shokhanda of Najafgarh. In Monday's list, Dipak Gauba was appointed as working president of Shahdara, Azad Singh of Mehrauli and Sunil Mittal of Northwe
The Delhi Nurses Federation has withdrawn its call for mass casual leave on November 16 due to the model code of conduct in place ahead of the civic polls, an official said on Tuesday. The 250-ward Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) goes to polls on December 4 while the results will be declared on December 7. On November 4, the Delhi Nurses Federation (DNF) announced that its members would go on a mass casual leave since its symbolic three-day strike did not yield a positive outcome. The federation held a symbolic strike from 9-11 am from November 2-4 to put forward their demands, which include regularisation of services and long-due promotions. "Due to rising cases of dengue, we have decided to take any further course of action after three weeks from now. If our mass casual leave protest doesn't move authorities to look into our demands, we will go for indefinite strike from November 30," DNF Secretary General Liladhar Ramchandani had said earlier. On Tuesday, he said, the ...
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday released the first list of 134 candidates for the high-stakes Delhi civic polls. The names were announced following a long meeting of the Political Affairs Committee of the party. The list has more than 60 women candidates. Ninety per cent of the tickets have been awarded to AAP workers working at grassroots level, the party said in a statement. More than 20,000 workers had applied to get a ticket to contest the MCD polls, it said. Earlier in the day, the party had released its list of 30 star campaigners while it's national convener Arvind Kejriwal also released the party's 10 guarantees for the polls, that included clearing the three landfill sites, corruption-free MCD, among other points. The 250-ward Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) goes to polls on December 4 and the counting of votes will take place on December 7. The BJP has been in power in the MCD -- trifurcated in 2012 into north, south and east corporations and then unified this