Politics

Traditional voting patterns in Madhya Pradesh suggest that the state’s electoral preferences are generally diametrically opposite in rural and urban belts.

The trends in the first half of the day suggest that the Congress is losing big in the state of Maharashtra.

Twelve of 14 exit polls predicted the BJP led-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) getting a full majority ranging from 282 to 365 seats. On the other hand the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is predicted to get 82 to 165 seats.

Suspected NSCN militants on Tuesday gunned down sitting MLA and National People's Party candidate for the state assembly polls, Tirong Aboh and 10 others, including his son, in Tirap district in eastern Arunachal Pradesh.

Pawar is keen that these three parties back the Congress-led UPA if it is in a position to form the government.

A delegation comprising representatives of opposition parties had asked the commission to conduct the VVPAT verification process before the counting of votes begins.

Apart from banking on religious polarisation, which it hopes will garner a bulk of the Hindu votes, the BJP is also looking to gain traction from an unlikely corner: erstwhile Left voters in Bengal.

The attempt by Congress to gather booth-wise data is also seen as a step towards strengthening the party’s organizational structure in the state.

Muddahanumegowda SP of the Congress is the sitting MP from the Tumkur Lok Sabha Constituency.

In 2014 General Election, Congress's Anto Antony had defeated the Left backed Independent candidate Peelipose Thomas with a margin of 56,191 votes.

Nagpur has been the bastion of the Congress for years. However Gadkari ousted four-time Congress MP Vilas Muttemwar in 2014 to gain the seat.

Congress condemned the incident and lodged protests against the birth anniversary celebrations of Gandhi’s assassin.

Chandrababu Naidu, who has raised the issue of VVPATs earlier too, said they fought the elections with “hard-core criminals” and were thus insisting on at least 50 per cent counting of VVPAT slips.

Chief Electoral Officer Ranbir Singh said that after the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) counting is over, the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPATs) will be counted as per the Supreme Court guidelines.

Almost all exit polls released at the end of the seven-phase 17th Lok Sabha elections predicted a clear majority for BJP-led NDA with nearly or above 300 seats, out of total 542 Lok Sabha seats.

The major issues were lack of jobs, prices of farm produce, water scarcity and national security in the tourism-dependent state.