Elections

Lok Sabha bypolls were held in two seats of Uttar Pradesh -- Rampur and Azamgarh -- and one seat of Punjab. Initial trends show that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was leading in Sangrur and the Samajwadi Party (SP) was ahead in Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats at 10 a.m. The BJP was trailing in the Rajinder Nagar Assembly constituency in Delhi. The counting of votes stated at 8 a.m. under multi-layer security and postal ballots were counted first.

The counting of ballots will take place on June 26. A total of 15,69,240 voters will be exercising their franchise at 1,766 polling booths of which 296 are vulnerable. The bypoll for AAP-stronghold Sangrur was necessitated following the resignation of Bhagwant Mann, who won the Assembly election in February from Dhuri constituency, and became the Chief Minister.

Both the seats fell vacant following the resignations of Mohd. Azam Khan and Akhilesh Yadav, both from the Samajwadi Party (SP). According to Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Ajay Kumar Shukla, more than 35 lakh voters are eligible to cast their votes in Azamgarh and Rampur bypolls to decide the fate of 19 candidates.

"We (opposition parties) have unanimously decided that Yashwant Sinha will be our common candidate for the Presidential election," Congress leader Jairam Ramesh told media persons soon after the meeting of the combined opposition parties held at the Parliament Annexe.The meeting was called by NCP top leader Sharad Pawar and attended by leaders from the Congress, TMC, Samajwadi Party, CPI, CPI-M, National Conference, and RJD among others.

"I sincerely appreciate the leaders of Opposition parties for suggesting my name as a candidate for the election of the President of India at the meeting held in Delhi. However, I would like to state that I have humbly declined the proposal of my candidature," Pawar tweeted on Wednesday evening. He has also requested all the Opposition leaders to consider more names as potential candidates for the country's top post when they converge again in Delhi on June 21.

A resolution passed in the opposition parties' Wednesday meeting, called to decide a joint candidate for next month's Presidential poll, said that they will field a common candidate to stop the Narendra Modi government from "doing further damage to Indian democracy and India's social fabric". Sources, however, said that the meeting turned chaotic over the resolution, accusing the Modi government, placed by Banerjee without prior notice.

In the meeting, a resolution was passed to field a common candidate in the next Presidential poll. "In the forthcoming Presidential election which is being held on the 75th anniversary of India's independence, we have decided to field a common candidate who can truly serve as custodian of the Constitution and stop the Modi government from doing further damage to Indian democracy and India's social fabric," it said.

Kamal launched the MNM with the thought that he would fill the void of the passing away of AIADMK's J. Jayalalithaa and DMK's M. Karunanidhi, the two stalwarts of Tamil politics. However, the party could not do well, getting 3.7 per cent of the votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but seeing its vote share decline to 2.6 per cent in the 2021 Assembly elections. Kamal himself had lost miserably to BJP's Vanathi Srinivasan from Coimbatore South Assembly seat.

However, debates and controversies that had been taking place since the last one month have continued even after his oath-taking. The oath was administered by the deputy Speaker of the state Assembly, Asish Banerrjee, as mandated by Governor Jagdeep Dhankar.

The first meeting of the four-member committee was held on Monday in the national capital. The four members of the committee are BJP national vice presidents -- Baijayant Jay Panda and Dilip Ghosh, national general secretary C.T. Ravi and national president of SC morcha, Lal Singh Arya. If required, more members will be included in the committee.