Iraq announces success in early voting for parliamentary polls
Iraqi authorities announced the success of the early voting with a 69 per cent turnout ahead of snap parliamentary elections…reports Asian Lite News
Judge Jalil Adnan Khalaf, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners at the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), said in a press conference that the participation in Friday’s early voting “indicates the beginning of successful legislative elections”, reports Xinhua news agency
Iraq announces success in early voting for parliamentary polls
Khalaf stressed that no irregularities were registered during the early voting, and the results of early voting will be combined with the result of Sunday’s snap elections, which will be announced 24 hours after the end of the general polls.
However, an IHEC statement posted on its official website showed that 821,800 voters cast their ballots out of 1,196,524, which is 69 per cent of the early voting voters across the country.
Early voting for Iraq’s security forces, prisoners, and displaced people began at 7 a.m. and ended at 6 p.m.
The Iraqi parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for 2022, were advanced in response to months of protests against corruption and a lack of public services.
According to the electoral commission, about 24 million Iraqis are eligible to cast their ballots for 3,249 candidates, running individually and within 167 parties and coalitions, vying for 329 seats in the legislature.
Strict Covid-19 related protocols prescribed by the ECI in line with the central government’s guidelines will be in place during the poll process, including the campaign period…reports Asian Lite News.
The Election Commission of India has announced bye-elections to fill vacancies in three Parliamentary Constituencies and 30 Assembly Constituencies in different states on October 30.
Bye-elections will be held in one Parliamentary (Lok Sabha) constituency
each in the Union Territory of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu (Dadra & Nagar Haveli seat), Madhya Pradesh (Khandwa seat) and Himachal Pradesh (Mandi seat).
The 30 Assembly Constituencies where bye-elections will be held are spread across 14 states:
* Five seats in Assam
* Four seats in West Bengal
* Three seats each in Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya
* Two seats each in Bihar, Rajasthan, Karnataka
* One seat each in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Nagaland
Counting of votes for all the Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies will be taken up on November 2.
The Model code of conduct shall come into force with immediate effect in the district(s) in which the whole or any part of the Assembly constituency going for election is included, the ECI said.
Strict Covid-19 related protocols prescribed by the ECI in line with the central government’s guidelines will be in place during the poll process, including the campaign period.
The Commission said it had reviewed the situation related to pandemic, flood, festivals, cold conditions in certain regions, feedback from concerned States/UT and taken into consideration all facts and circumstances before finalizing the schedule.
The Election Commission also said it had decided to use EVMs and VVPATs in the bye-election in all the polling stations.
Adequate numbers of EVMs and VVPATs have been made available and all steps have been taken to ensure that the polls are conducted smoothly with the help of these machines, it added.
Singh said that AAP’s Tiranga Sankalp Yatra will be taken out in all 403 constituencies of the state in the coming days…reports Asian Lite News.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), has set to rest all speculations about alliances for the upcoming UP Assembly elections.
The party has announced that it will field candidates for all 403 seats in the in the 2022 state election.
Sanjay Singh, AAP’s Uttar Pradesh in-charge, has asked party workers to get involved in the preparations for the elections at the booth level in order to fight the imminent polls with full force.
Singh said that AAP’s Tiranga Sankalp Yatra will be taken out in all 403 constituencies of the state in the coming days.
“Through this, we want to tell the people what real nationalism is. Our nationalism is that every poor child should have access to a better school to study. As in Delhi, the dream for better schools should be achieved in Uttar Pradesh too. Like mohalla clinics in Delhi, every village should have better hospitals or clinics. There should be electricity in the homes of the poor – 300 units should be available free of cost.” Sanjay Singh said.
He said that the nationalism of AAP is that they will provide good health and education to the people of Uttar Pradesh.
“We do not have a cremation-making ideology. The BJP made crematoriums in every village during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2017, they had said that they would do so,” he said.
Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh slammed the ruling government in Uttar Pradesh. He alleged that many incidents that hurt the pride of the tricolour had taken place in Uttar Pradesh under the BJP government.
“Everyday incidents of rape against daughters take place here. Instead of providing justice, the government forcibly burns the victim’s body in the dark of night,” he alleged.
He also slammed the BJP for allowing scams to take place in the state.
“Whether it is the purchase of medical equipment like oximeter, oxygen cylinders and thermometer or purchase of land for Ram temple or the scam in the Jal Jeevan Mission, the state government has no answer to our questions,” he said.
AAP leader Sanjay Singh also mentioned the party’s recently concluded membership drive in Uttar Pradesh during the meeting on Tuesday. He claimed that around one crore new members from Uttar Pradesh had joined the party in one month’s time.
The Uttar Pradesh election is scheduled to be held early next year.
This is the first time that the AIMPLB has issued a statement on voting preferences….reports Asian Lite News
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), in a departure from tradition, has issued a statement saying that Muslims were free to vote for any individual or party in the elections.
This is the first time that the AIMPLB has issued a statement on voting preferences.
AIMPLB chairman, Maulana Rabey Hasani Nadwi said that people should vote after introspection but no one should be compelled to vote for a particular party or individual.
“The AIMPLB has never issued any appeal in favour of any party and will neither do so in future. People should use their own discretion to cast their vote,” the statement said.
The Maulana further said that the Board, as a tradition, has never issued any appeal in favour or against any political party. He said that the Board had nothing to do with politics.
The statement also warned the community against misleading statements being issued by some people for political gains.
Sources in the Board said that the statement was issued to clarify that the Board had no role in Asaduddin Owaisi’s party contesting the state elections.
Owaisi is a member of the AIMPLB and his party men have been using social media to convey that he enjoys the support of Board members.
: A woman holds up a presidential campaign poster during a street campaign rally in Tehran, Iran, on June 15, 2021. (Photo by Ahmad Halabisaz/Xinhua/IANS)
Raisi, who has been the Chief Justice since 2019, has formerly held several other posts in the country judicial branch following the 1979 Islamic Revolution…reports Asian Lite News
Ebrahim Raisi, the incumbent Chief Justice of Iran, has won the country’s presidential election by a landslide, according to preliminary results released on Saturday by the Interior Ministry.
Deputy Interior Minister Jamal Orf said 28.6 million Iranians participated in Friday’s election, and with around 90 per cent of the votes counted so far, Raisi has garnered over 17.8 million ballots, reports Press TV.
In the second place was Mohsen Rezaei, a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and current secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, with 3.3 million ballots.
Meanwhile, former Governor of the Central Bank of Iran Nasser Hemmati garnered 2.4 million votes, and conservative MP Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi won almost one million votes, the Ministry figures revealed.
Orf added that vote counting was still ongoing an official announcement will be made later.
Tehran, May. 27, 2020 (Xinhua) — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addresses the opening session of Iran’s new parliament in Tehran, Iran, on May 27, 2020. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz/IANS)
Raisi, who has been the Chief Justice since 2019, has formerly held several other posts in the country judicial branch following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Although associated with the Principlist camp, Raisi said he ran in the election this year as an independent.
He was campaigning with the slogan “Popular Administration, Strong Iran” aimed at uprooting corruption in the executive branch, fighting poverty, creating jobs and containing inflation.
“It is always Himanta for me and our children. I cannot relate to him as the CM. It would take some time for me to feel that he is the executive head of a state,” said Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, a media entrepreneur…reports Asian Lite News.
“Inform your mother, I will be the Chief Minister one day”, new Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, then a student of Cotton College, had told his future wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, in their university days.
After the swearing-in-ceremony at the famous Srimanta Sankardeva Kalakshetra, she said that this was the answer the then 22-year-old Sarma gave her when she asked what should she tell her mother about his future career.
“When we first met, he was 22 and I was 17,” a smiling Riniki Bhuyan Sarma said.
They had married on June 7, 2001 when he became the member of the Assam Assembly for the first time.
“He was a Minister for several years, but when I was watching him taking the oath as Chief Minister today (Monday), I could not believe it,” she told the media. She said that even last night, he told her that he is the Chief Minister-designate and “I asked him ‘kun’ (who), he replied ‘moi’ (I am)”.
“It is always Himanta for me and our children. I cannot relate to him as the CM. It would take some time for me to feel that he is the executive head of a state,” said Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, a media entrepreneur.
“A person in public life has to face many odds and challenges but I am confident that he would solve the issues and tasks as he is a person who thinks positively both with his heart and mind besides both sides of the issues,” the CM’s wife said.
The couple have two children – Nandil and Sukanya. Nandil did his schooling at the Doon School and passed his Class 12 in 2020 and Sukanya passed the secondary exam in the same year.
Perseverance and courage were going to distinguish her from her fellow travellers and that she has proved time and again in her more than 37 years of legislative political career…reports Saibal Gupta.
May 2, 2021 is perhaps one of the three dates that Mamata Banerjee will remember all her life, not just because she became the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the third time in a row by defeating the all-powerful BJP single-handedly, but because her tryst with dates such as this is part of her historical evolution to weave a political narrative that she is in true sense a ‘Giant Killer’.
It was in 1984 when Rajiv Gandhi and Arun Nehru threw a challenge to an aggressive young woman demanding a ticket to fight the parliamentary polls in the post-Indira election, and they offered her an impossible Jadavpur – a constituency so decisively red that a non-Communist would not even dream of contesting from there. Anybody else would have politely turned down the offer, but not Mamata Banerjee.
She returned to Kolkata, preparing to wage a war against CPM stalwart Somnath Chatterjee with her shrill voice, rubber sandals and ‘jhola’ in which she carried her world. The rest is history.
She can never forget December 29, 1984 when the gutsy woman, a raw street-fighter undeterred by the mammoth election machinery of an organised CPM, defeated the unassailable Chatterjee in her first political battle and announced her arrival as a politician.
Perseverance and courage were going to distinguish her from her fellow-travellers and that she has proved time and again in her more than 37 years of legislative political career.
What singles out Banerjee from the other politicians is her indomitable spirit. Nobody ever thought that after being bludgeoned and brought down by a CPM thug at the Hazra crossing in south Kolkata, she would be able to come back. But she bounced back with more vigour and aggression.
Through the 90s, she toyed with charting a separate path of her own, pushed to the brink by a host of Congress leaders, most of them rudderless and devoid of new ideas.
When even the high command in Delhi refused to let her assume the state unit’s leadership, she adopted the mantra of ‘Ekla Cholo Re’ (walk on your path alone). In 1998, she broke away and launched the Trinamool Congress. Her party won seven seats.
This was not the only instance but all through her life she has proved to be a path-breaking politician who has reacted more on impulse than on political doctrine and diplomatic calculations.
That is the reason perhaps she has occasionally been termed as erratic and crazy, but her apparent political naivety has been best termed by one of her close cabinet ministers — “There is method in her madness” and that political madness is perhaps the nucleus of her political identity.
That is the reason why she can easily leave her convoy and walk alone in a tribal village in West Midnapore or brew tea at a village stall during her visit to the state’s coastal town Digha or share ‘muri’ with the police constable waiting at her door.
“The wait at the antechamber or the halo of politicians is very much missing in Mamata Banerjee. She is the girl next door where she prefers to share her personal details with everybody,” said another close aide of Banerjee, who has been with her from her early days.
Naturally, the Trinamool slogan for this election — ‘Bangla nijer meyeke chai’ (Bengal wants her own daughter) — matched her personality.
What seemed so impossible — to oust the Left from power — became possible. She single-handedly wrecked the red bastion in West Bengal, ending the Left Front’s uninterrupted 34-year-old rule after perfecting the art of the impossible.
It was May 13, 2011, another date which she would perhaps not forget. That was the day when the raw street fighter was crowned as an administrator.
For the last 10 years, she has been the Chief Minister of West Bengal and she has broken protocols — contested the Central schemes and implemented her state-sponsored programmes, stayed absent during Prime Minister’s meeting with CMs, created diplomatic tension by going against the Central decision and denied sharing water of Teesta with Bangladesh — but one thing she has done with all diligence – she has been rooted to the ground and listened to the voices of the people.
She has created schemes like Swasthya Sathi – promising healthcare to all the citizens of the state, Kanyashree – giving education and freedom to women, and Khadya Sathi that promises food for all and that has perhaps paid her off.
She would perhaps never forget May 2, 2021 that eulogised her as a successful Chief Minister.
The pattern in what has been seen so far is there are quite a number of seats where the balance is shifting between the Left and the Congress-led UDF candidates…reports Asian Lite News
Pinarayi Vijayan led LDF govt is on hope for a second term as Counting of votes that began at 8 a.m. on Sunday in Kerala is showing that the Left after leading in the postal ballot, continued to maintain its lead when the EVMs were opened, while the Congress led-UDF made slight forward progress and the BJP was leading in two constituencies.
In the 140-member Kerala Assembly, according to the latest reports the Left leads in 80 constituencies while the Congress-led UDF is ahead in 58 and the BJP in two seats.
All the exit polls had predicted a clean victory for the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left with a minimum of 75 seats and a maximum of 120 seats.
The pattern in what has been seen so far is there are quite a number of seats where the balance is shifting between the Left and the Congress-led UDF candidates.
The BJP which presently has one seat at Nemom in Thiruvananthapuram, continues to lead and so is Metroman E.Sreedharan at the Palakkad constituency.
By now on an average two to three rounds of counting has been over and there are about 13 to 15 rounds in each constituency, and in the constituencies where the fight is close, one will have to wait till the last rounds to be counted.
All the leaders are leading, including Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Oommen Chandy, Ramesh Chennithala but two Ministers J.Mercykutty and T.P. Ramakrishnan are trailing.
At Badagara, K.K. Rema, the wife of slain former CPI-M leader T.P. Chandrashekeran, who has been supported by the UDF, is leading with over 3,000 votes.
The polls predicted a sweep for the DMK in Tamil Nadu, signalling the emergence of MK Stalin and an unprecedented return to power for Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala, reports Asian Lite News.
Exit polls for the latest round of assembly elections on Thursday predicted outcomes along expected lines in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, but seemed to suggest that West Bengal may be too close to call.
The polls predicted a sweep for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu, signalling the emergence of MK Stalin, 62, as one of the most powerful regional leaders in the country; an unprecedented return to power for the Left Democratic Front (LDF), headed by Pinarayi Vijayan, in Kerala; and a successful defence by the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Assam. But West Bengal, arguably the most intensely and bitterly fought state election in recent times, is also emerging the tightest, the polls indicated.
Some polls gave the BJP, which pulled out all stops in its campaign, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah leading from the front, the edge. Others pointed to an advantage for the incumbent Trinamool Congress (TMC). The truth will emerge on May 2, when votes are counted.
Opinion polls have been horribly wrong in the past, although, sometimes, they have also been prescient.
The BJP’s general secretary in charge of West Bengal, Kailash Vijayvargiya, said the party would form the government in the state. He attributed the indecisive opinion polls to the research firms’ lack of familiarity with the state, people’s fear of “voicing opinions freely” in a state with a culture of political violence, and the presence of a large number of “silent voters”.
The TMC’s Samir Chakraborty chose only to look at polls that gave an edge to his party. “TMC is getting a majority despite Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and top BJP leaders making Bengal their base camp,” he said.
If the BJP manages to pull off a win, it will a remarkable achievement for a party that won only three of the 294 assembly seats in 2016, although it won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019. The party has long considered Bengal the last frontier, and a win in the state will complete its dominance of the east.
If the TMC manages to hold on — whichever party wins, the margin, if the opinion polls are any indication, will be slim — it will a remarkable achievement for chief minister Mamata Banerjee, whose party was weakened by desertions, faced significant anti-incumbency, and appeared to be behind the BJP for much of the campaign.
It will also elevate her standing in any anti-BJP grouping that coalesces at the national level.
Any such grouping will also have to make space for Stalin, fighting his first assembly election as leader of the party, although he did lead it to a sweep in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 (the DMK-led alliance won 38 of the 39 Lok Sabha seats in the state). It also means the Dravidian movement, bereft of a leader after the deaths of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (AIADMK’s) J Jayalalithaa and the DMK’s Muthuvel Karunanidhi, gets a new icon.
The polls also predicted the return to power of the BJP and the LDF in Assam and Kerala, respectively. Both were anticipated.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) was criticised for the eight-phase elections in West Bengal, which meant campaigning continued as cases continued to rise, with all parties flouting Covid-19 safety protocol. Elections in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Kerala, were held in one phase on April 6, and that in Assam, in three phases on March 27, April 1, and April 6.
Now it’s on to Sunday when all eyes will be on West Bengal.
Kolkata Port and Ballygunje recorded a voter turnout of 64 per cent and 59.5 per cent, respectively, as against 64.2 per cent and 66.2 per cent polling recorded during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, respectively…reports Asian Lite News.
According to the data available till 5 p.m., the four Assembly constituencies in South Kolkata, which went to the polls in the penultimate seventh phase on Monday, experienced a low voter turnout as compared to Lok Sabha elections held in 2019.
According to the latest data available, the four constituencies had an average turnout of around 60 per cent, whereas in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, it was little more than 66 per cent.
Bengal heads for penultimate phase of polling
Major Trinamool Congress, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Trinamool youth wing leader Abhishek Banerjee, state Power Minister Shovondeb Chattopadhayay and Urban Development Minister and former Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation Firhad Hakim, exercised their franchise on Monday.
Banerjee, a resident of Harish Chatterjee Street in South Kolkata, exercised her franchise at a polling booth in Mitra Institution school at around 3.50 p.m. Sitting on a wheelchair, she briefly paused before the photojournalists while coming out amid shouts of ‘Didi, Didi’, before boarding her car. She also flashed a victory sign towards the cameras.
However, former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who is a resident of Palm Avenue and a voter in the Ballygunje Assembly constituency, failed to cast his vote owing to poor health condition.
Among the four Assembly constituencies in South Kolkata, including Kolkata Port, Rashbehari, Bhowanipore and Ballygunge, Rashbehari recorded the lowest turnout at only 55.9 per cent, down from the 66.9 per cent polling recorded during the 2019 general elections.
Bhowanipur, which used to be the constituency of Chief Minister Banerjee, recorded a turnout of 60 per cent, compared to the 66.8 per cent polling recorded in 2019.
Similarly, Kolkata Port and Ballygunje recorded a voter turnout of 64 per cent and 59.5 per cent, respectively, as against 64.2 per cent and 66.2 per cent polling recorded during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, respectively.
As far as vote share is concerned, Trinamool had an edge over the saffron brigade in the last Lok Sabha polls.
Despite a strong BJP wind in the state that helped the saffron party win 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats, Trinamool was successful in holding back its forte in these four seats in South Kolkata.
The Assembly seat-wise analysis shows that Trinamool’s Mala Roy maintained her lead in three of the four Assembly constituencies. Rashbehari was the only constituency where BJP candidate Chandra Bose was able to win over his Trinamool counterpart.
Though the Election Commission deployed 64 companies of central forces, both the Trinamool and the Congress complained of excesses of forces.
