States

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday emerged as the single largest party in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), breaking the nearly three-decade-long dominance of the undivided Shiv Sena, and registered a strong victory in the Pune civic polls.   According to trends and results available so far, the BJP-led alliance is set to secure around 125 of the 227 seats in the BMC, India’s richest civic body with a budget of ₹74,427 crore for 2025-26.   Counting of votes for elections to Mumbai and 28 other municipal corporations, including Pune, was held on Friday, a day after polling recorded…

The arrest of two journalists of a popular Telugu news channel “NTV”,  for airing a controversial report insinuating a relationship between a woman IAS officer and a state minister, has triggered a political storm in Telangana.The TV channel’s input editor Donthu Ramesh, along with Paripurna Chari and Sudheer, were also taken into custody by the police. They were granted conditional bail by the 14th Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) in Hyderabad in the early hours of Thursday.  The arrests were made based on a complaint filed by the secretary of the Telangana IAS Officers’ Association and Special Chief Secretary to…

Exit polls on Thursday predicted a decisive victory for the BJP and its ally, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections, signalling a dramatic shift in the power balance of India’s richest civic body after nearly three decades of Shiv Sena dominance. An aggregate of six exit polls projected the BJP-Sena alliance winning around 132 of the 227 seats, comfortably crossing the majority mark of 114. The opposition bloc led by Shiv Sena (UBT) and its allies was forecast to secure about 63 seats, while the Congress was pegged at around 20. The projections suggest that…

The NDA government in Andhra Pradesh has been spending the last one and a half years on just targeting former Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy and suppressing the party’s protest against the alleged privatisation of government medical colleges, said the YSRCP leader Ambati Rambabu in a press conference.   For the last 18 months, instead of addressing the grievances of the general public, and fulfilling election promises, the government has been working with only one agenda—hounding Reddy and obstructing the YSRCP’s movement against the privatisation of government medical colleges, the leader added.   He alleged that Deputy Chief Minister Pawan…

Raising questions on the appointment of the Leader of Opposition in the state legislature, Shiv Sena (UBT) President Uddhav Thackeray accused the Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis of shielding his "corrupt" cabinet colleagues. In a statement on Thursday, he takes a dig at the Maha CM over the corruption issue and alleged inaction on his part, saying Fadnavis has "changed" over the years.   Talking to the media at the party office in Vidhan Bhavan premises in Nagpur, where the state legislature is having its winter session, he alleged that corruption of some minister or the other was coming out…