Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was stopped by the authorities in Uttar Pradesh’s Mirzapur while travelling to Sonbhadra, where she wanted to meet the families of people killed in a shooting over a land dispute. Prohibitory orders under Section 144 were in force in Sonbhadra. Sit-in and detention Priyanka sat on the road with supporters in protest and was soon taken into preventive custody. She told reporters she would cooperate even though she had not been told where she was being taken. State police chief OP Singh said sheRead More

Karnataka Assembly Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar on Friday rejected suggestions that he was holding up voting on Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy’s confidence motion, which will decide whether his government survives. He spoke as the day’s sitting began, with Governor Vajubhai Vala having fixed 1.30 pm that day as the deadline for the chief minister to prove his majority. Speaker answers his critics Kumar said there had been talk and “indirect comments” implying that he was stalling the process. Visibly hurt by the suggestion, he said: “I don’t haveRead More

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday asked BJP president Amit Shah in New Delhi to approve a month-long ‘Vikas Rath Yatra’ across the state in August, as the party prepares to defend its government in the coming assembly election. The yatra plan Fadnavis intends to begin the tour on August 1, using it to showcase his government’s record and to meet voters directly. The newly appointed state BJP president, Chandrakant Dada Patil, has set the party a goal of 220 seats, and the plan is to concentrate on assemblyRead More

Shrimant Patil, a rebel Congress MLA in Karnataka who was taken to a Mumbai hospital on Thursday with chest pain, has denied that he is being held by BJP legislators. His explanation came in an email that Speaker KR Ramesh Kumar read out in the state Assembly on Friday, while the House was in the middle of a tense trust vote. What Patil said In his message, Patil said he had gone to Chennai from the Bengaluru resort where legislators were staying and fell ill on the way back. HisRead More

The Election Commission on Thursday sent show-cause notices to the Communist Party of India, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Trinamool Congress, asking each to say why it should not lose its national party status following its showing in the Lok Sabha elections, sources said. Deadline and background The three parties have until August 5 to reply. The CPI, the BSP and the NCP also faced the possibility of losing national recognition after weak results in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, but were spared when the Commission changed its rulesRead More