New Delhi:

A 25-year-old man was found hanging from the ceiling of a hotel room in central Delhi’s Paharganj Thursday morning, police said.

The body was found in PK Hotel, said police, which suspect it be a case of suicide as the room was shut from inside.

No suicide note was recovered from the body, an officer said.

According to police, the person was identified as Mohammad Qasim, who lived with his family in east Delhi’s Indira Vihar area.

Qasim’s father works in a plastic pipe manufacturing factory, they said.

The officer said Qasim had on Wednesday told his family that he was going to meet his friend but reached the hotel.

He stayed in the room and asked the staff to wake him up at 6 am.

When the staff came to wake him up next morning, there was no response from inside, the officer said.

They then informed police and the fire department, who broke open the door and found Qasim hanging. The matter is being investigated.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Bengaluru:

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday said that the Congress government led by him in the state has not made any changes to the backward class reservations while terming the claim arising in the matter a “blatant lie”.

In a statement, Mr Siddaramaiah said that Muslims have been part of the backward class reservation since the L.G. Havanur Commission Report in 1974.

“The current Karnataka government has not made any changes to the backward class reservations. The previous government had taken away the 4 per cent BC (backward class) reservation under category 2B to Muslims and the matter has been pending in the Supreme Court with the previous BJP government headed by Bsavaraj Bommai giving an undertaking that it will not implement the changes during the pendency of the case in the Supreme Court,” he stated.

“As the matter stands thus, the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) in a politically motivated move, has issued a press note on an issue that does not concern it. The law is clear that the state governments have the power to determine their own list of castes and communities to be categorised as Backward Classes. The NCBC has no role in it,” CM Siddaramaiah said.

He further said “the NCBC press note is motivated to create confusion in the state when it is going for election”.

“It gives the impression that the Congress government of Karnataka has given a new reservation to Muslims. This is a blatant lie. The fact remains that the backward class reservation of Muslims has been in existence since 1977 (04.03.1977) and it has withstood legal scrutiny,” he said.

Successive Backward Class Commissions, namely, Havanur, Venkataswamy, Chinnappa Reddy, Prof Ravi Verma Kumar Commissions have recognised Muslims subject to income ceiling as Backward Class. This has been the position of law, the statement read.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

The second phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections is scheduled for today when a total of 88 parliamentary constituencies across 13 states and Union Territories will go to polls. Dr Naresh Kumar, a senior scientist from the India Meteorological Department, spoke to NDTV about the heatwave forecast in the places where voting will take place.

Key battlegrounds in Phase 2 include 20 seats in Kerala, 14 in Karnataka, 13 in Rajasthan, eight each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, six in Madhya Pradesh, and five each in Bihar and Assam. Three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal and one each in Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir will also go to polls, on Friday as will the remaining part of the Outer Manipur constituency.

Here is a summary of Dr Naresh Kumar’s forecasts:

West Bengal

Several parts are likely to see a heat wave or a severe heatwave. A Red Alert has been issued for the next three days.

Bihar

Heatwave conditions are anticipated with both the maximum and minimum temperatures expected to be above average. An Orange Alert has been issued for the next five days.

Uttar Pradesh

Heatwave conditions have been forecast in both Western and Eastern Uttar Pradesh tomorrow.

Karnataka

Interior Karnataka will witness heatwave-like conditions for the next four to five days and an Orange alert has been issued. Coastal Karnataka is also expected to experience above-average temperatures, with a warning for hot and humid weather.

Kerala

Hot and humid conditions will persist in the south Indian state, said Mr Kumar.

Rajasthan

Normal temperatures are expected in Rajasthan. An active western disturbance. currently over Iran, It will impact weather conditions in Northwest India after two days.

The seven-phase Lok Sabha elections got underway on April 19 and the first phase covered 102 seats across 21 states and Union Territories.

New Delhi:

In September last year the INDIA opposition bloc – formed to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha election – met in Mumbai, after which it released a joint resolution that said it would contest the election “together as far as possible”. 

The phrasing raised eyebrows and underscored doubts (already raised) about the longevity of a mix of national, state, and regional parties with varying political ideologies and goals, and drew barbs from the BJP, which prophesied a collapse before the turn of the year.

READ | “Will Contest Together As Far As Possible”: INDIA Bloc On Polls

Of particular concern were seat-sharing exercises, as the next few weeks and months would show.

The bloc leader, the Congress, struggled to close deals with the Trinamool in Bengal, Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, and the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi and Punjab, while talks in Maharashtra also dragged.

These states together account for 190 seats. 

It wasn’t till a double boost in February – the Chandigarh mayoral election and a 17:63 split with the Samajwadi Party for UP’s 80 seats – that the bloc seemed to find some momentum.

And while a deal with the Trinamool never materialised, the Congress, fueled by the Chandigarh win, also struck a deal with the AAP for Punjab’s 13 and Delhi’s seven seats.

Eventually, though, the bloc did manage a few deals, including Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, and Jammu and Kashmir, and is now a firm challenger to the BJP’s hat-trick bid.

But all isn’t smooth sailing because INDIA vs INDIA subplots have emerged not only in states where there are no seat-share deals – like Kerala and Bengal – and in states where there are. 

READ | 

The Congress-led group faces ‘friendly’ fire in all 13 states voting in this phase.

Kerala 

In Kerala, the Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist) – INDIA members outside the state – will contest all 20 seats against the Congress. 

READ | Shashi Tharoor’s Thiruvananthapuram Winning Streak In BJP’s Crosshair

This means three of the party’s senior-most leaders – Rahul Gandhi (the Amethi question is still unanswered), Shashi Tharoor, and KC Venugopal – must all fight Left leaders and BJP rivals in their contests from Wayanad, Thiruvananthapuram, and Alappuzha, respectively.

READ | BJP Lurks, As INDIA Battles INDIA In Rahul Gandhi’s Wayanad

Bengal 

It is also obviously the case in Bengal, where the Congress and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool had quite a dramatic falling out over failed seat-share talks. 

This means a Trinamool-less INDIA, rebadged as the Secular Democratic Alliance, has fielded candidates for the Darjeeling and Raiganj seats, while the Revolutionary Socialist Party will contest from Balurghat. All three of these were won by the BJP in the last election.

Maharashtra

The Congress is part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance, which includes the Shiv Sena faction led by ex-Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and the Nationalist Congress Party unit of Sharad Pawar.

The three have agreed a seat-share deal between themselves, but it wasn’t one the smaller parties – the CPI, CPM, All India Forward Bloc, and Bharat Adivasi Party – liked.

As a result, four of the eight seats in this phase will see a ‘friendly’ contest.

Amravati will see a Congress vs AIFB contest, while Hingoli and Parbhani will see Thackeray camp leaders against those from the CPIM and CPI. And in Wardha, Mr Pawar’s NCP faction will contest against another AIFB candidate.

Rajasthan 

The Congress, as head of the INDIA bloc has agreed a 22:1:1:1 split, with the BAP, Rashtriya Lok Party, and CPIM getting a seat each. 

But the BAP has also fielded candidates in five other seats, setting up a contest the Congress could probably do without in a state that it was thumped – by the BJP – in the last Assembly election. 

Other States

Similar contests are on the cards in Assam’s Silchar (Congress vs Trinamool), Bihar’s Purnia (Rashtriya Janata Dal vs AIFB), Jammu (Congress vs AIFB), and Damoh in Madhya Pradesh (Congress vs BAP). 

There are two such contests in Karnataka, including the Bengaluru Rural seat being contested by Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar’s brother, DK Suresh, who will face a Viduthalai Chiruthaigai Katchi candidate.

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New Delhi:

The focus will be on Kerala during the Phase 2 voting of Lok Sabha elections 2024 as all 20 seats in this southern state go to polls on April 26.

One of the most keenly watched constituencies in this phase will be in the serene backwater gateway of Alappuzha where Rahul Gandhi’s trusted aide KC Venugopal will try to wrest his stronghold back from the CPM’s AM Ariff. It will also witness the BJP’s Sobha Surendran challenge the Left-Congress binary that the state has traditionally voted for.

Mr Venugopal is not new to Alappuzha, a constituency he has represented twice (2009-2019) in the Lok Sabha. He did not contest the 2019 elections since he was playing a key role in the Congress’s overall strategy.

His absence marked a stark political vacuum in Alappuzha, which became the only seat to be clinched by the CPM even as Congress swept the state, winning 19 out of 20 seats, in the 2019 general elections.

The move to bring him back to his old constituency is an attempt to regain the lost stronghold from the CPM, which remains a Congress rival in Kerala though the two parties have joined hands at the national level.

Mr Venugopal, who has been a junior minister for power and civil aviation in the Manmohan Singh cabinet, has strong electoral stats: he has won the Alappuzha Lok Sabha seat twice and recorded a hattrick in the Alappuzha assembly seat (1996-2009).

The Congress general secretary has projected a sweep by the UDF, the regional alliance that it leads, and zero seats for the BJP in the state, besides a victory for himself.

Last year, Mr Venugopal was appointed as a member of the Coordination Committee of the INDIA bloc. Before entering national politics, he won the assembly elections thrice and served as a Dewaswom and tourism minister in the Oommen Chandy cabinet in Kerala.

His CPM rival, AM Ariff has been repeated to defend his seat, banking on the strong performance of the Left parties in the 2021 assembly elections. In 2019, he defeated the Congress’s Shanimol Usman, a loss that came after KC Venugopal chose not to contest. He is among the three Lok Sabha MPs that the CPM has, and the only one from Kerala.

As many as 194 candidates, including 25 women, will be contesting in the 20 seats that go to polls on April 26. The state has a total electorate of 2.8 crore. The results will be counted together for all 543 constituencies on June 4.

New Delhi:
After a voter turnout of over 65% in the first and biggest phase of the Lok Sabha elections, all eyes are now on Phase 2, which will see voting take place in 88 seats from 13 states and UTs. The fate of many big faces will be decided in this phase.

Here Are Five Facts About The Second Phase:

New Delhi:

The second of seven phases of the Lok Sabha polls will take place on Friday and the stage is set for exciting contests in some of the 88 constituencies across 13 states and Union Territories where votes will be cast.

Here’s A Look At Five Gripping Fixtures:

Rahul Gandhi Vs Annie Raja 

Polling will be carried out in all 20 seats in Kerala and the state will see some of the most-watched face-offs. In Wayanad, sitting MP and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will contest for the second time and his primary opponent in the largely bipolar state is the CPI’s Annie Raja. While it is unclear whether Mr Gandhi will also contest from Amethi, the Gandhi family bastion where he suffered a shock defeat in 2019 to the BJP’s Smriti Irani, winning this seat will be crucial for the Congress leader either way.

In 2019, Mr Gandhi had defeated the CPI candidate from Wayanad, PP Suneer, by a margin of over 4 lakh votes.

Ms Raja, a member of the national executive of the CPI and the wife of party general secretary D Raja, has criticised Rahul Gandhi and promised more consistent representation. The CPM-led LDF government in the state has also been critical of Mr Gandhi and the attacks against him have been led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, drawing counter-attacks from the Congress. 

The sharp exchanges are all the more significant given that the Congress and the Left Front are partners in the INDIA bloc at the Centre but are giving no quarter to each other in their battle in the state. The Congress had won 15 of the 20 seats in 2019.

Giving the contest another interesting dimension is that the BJP has fielded its state president K Surendran from Wayanad as part of a concerted effort to open its Lok Sabha account in the state and do better in the south in general. In an earlier interview with NDTV, Mr Surendran said he stood a good chance of winning the seat because people are disappointed with the work done by Rahul Gandhi. 

Shashi Tharoor Vs Rajeev Chandrasekhar

About 400 km south of Wayanad lies Kerala’s capital of Thiruvananthapuram, which is going to see a battle of heavyweights. The Congress’ Shashi Tharoor, a three-time MP from the constituency, will face off against Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar. 

Despite having held the seat for three terms, Mr Tharoor is seen as a popular MP and has previously said that the only way the BJP’s claim of winning seats in the double digits in Kerala can be true is if both digits are zero. “The issue with the BJP is that they don’t understand Kerala’s history and culture… Communalism cannot go beyond a small limit here,” he had said. 

Mr Chandrasekhar, who is making his electoral debut, has said Mr Tharoor has failed to get any work done in the constituency and that the contest would be between the “politics of performance” – a reference to the BJP-led central government’s work – and “15 years of non-performance”

The third most-watched candidate from the seat is the CPI’s Pannyan Raveendran, a veteran leader who was the MP from Thiruvananthapuram – winning a bypoll in 2005 – before Mr Tharoor began his winning streak. The CPI leader had also contested the Kerala Assembly polls in 2011, but lost to a Congress leader. 

KC Venugopal Vs AM Ariff

Alappuzha is the only seat in Kerala that the CPM had won in 2019 and what makes the constituency even more interesting is that it will see a contest between senior Congress leader KC Venugopal, who was elected from there in 2009 and 2014, and the sitting MP, the CPM’s AM Ariff.

Mr Venugopal, who is a Rajya Sabha MP and the General Secretary (Organisation) of the Congress, had decided not to contest the Lok Sabha polls in 2019 because he had larger responsibilities and said he is doing so this time because Congress workers want him to. 

The sitting MP, Mr Ariff, has released a 12-page booklet listing out his achievements, many of which have been claimed by the Congress and the BJP as their own. He has also dismissed the Congress’ claim of winning all 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state and alleged that the party does this during every election.

The third key candidate in the seat is the BJP’s Sobha Surendran, who has said the people will vote for her to make her part of PM Narendra Modi’s team. “During the UPA tenure, India’s economy was down like those of Pakistan and Sri Lanka in recent times. But ten years under Narendra Modi’s rule and India has become the fifth largest economy,” she was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Arun Govil vs Sunita Verma 

Over in Uttar Pradesh, eight of whose 80 constituencies are going to the polls in the second phase, Meerut is seeing a fight in which one of the contestants is being worshipped, literally, by some supporters. The BJP’s Arun Govil played the role of Lord Ram in the popular TV series Ramayan and, despite the godlike status accorded to him by some, he faces a tough contest in the seat from the Samajwadi Party’s Sunita Verma and the BSP’s Devvrat Tyagi. 

Mr Govil, who is making his electoral debut and lives in Mumbai, has been criticised for being an outsider and has admitted that he does not have a very strong understanding of local issues, but has promised to move to Meerut and speak to people to understand their problems after he is elected. The BJP, which had won 62 of UP’s 80 constituencies in 2019, will be fancying its chances in Meerut where it has been on a winning streak since 2009 and has won a total of six times. 

The main contender against Mr Govil is the Samajwadi Party’s Sunita Verma, who is a former mayor of the city. The finalisation of the face by the party, however, was a long-drawn-out affair and involved two declared candidates – Bhanu Pratap Singh and Atul Pradhan – being dropped. Ms Verma was earlier with the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Tejasvi Surya Vs Sowmya Reddy

The Bengaluru South Lok Sabha constituency, which has elected only BJP candidates since 1991, will see a battle between Tejasvi Surya and the Congress’ Sowmya Reddy. Mr Surya was elected with a margin of over 3 lakh votes in 2019, but the Congress is hoping that Ms Reddy’s pedigree – she is the daughter of state transport minister Ramalinga Reddy – and the party’s winning performance in the Assembly polls last year will swing things in its favour.

Mr Surya, 33, who is the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP,  has expressed confidence that his work towards improving Bengaluru’s infrastructure will win him another term. Another thing that is working in the BJP’s favour is that the Congress has emerged victorious in the constituency only once since 1977, when former chief minister R Gundu Rao was elected in the 1989 Lok Sabha polls. 

Ms Reddy, 41, is banking on the Congress’ guarantees, which had helped it win last year’s Assembly elections, to help it buck the trend. The Congress leader is a former MLA from Jayanagar and lost the constituency by just 16 votes was heart-broken when she lost by a mere 16 votes in her re-election bid in this city constituency in the Assembly elections last year.

Claiming that people are disappointed with Mr Surya because he has not been accessible and did not speak up for Karnataka in Parliament, Ms Reddy told PTI, “All he (Mr Surya) has been doing is spreading hate and doing divisive politics.” 

New Delhi:

The BJP’s Arun Govil — Lord Ram of the hugely popular television serial Ramayan — set against Samajwadi Party’s Dalit candidate Sunita Verma, Meerut is set to be the Ground Zero of one of the most interesting contests in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP swept the country’s largest and most crucial state in 2014 and 2019, but its total had dropped from 72 to 62 of the 80 seats. The party is now determined to recoup its losses — especially with the 370-seat target laid down by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Samajwadi Party — which is fighting alongside the Congress this time — had partnered Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party in 2019. Together, they had won 15 seats, but Meerut was not one of them.
The party’s candidate Haji Mohammad Yaqoob had lost to the BJP’s two-time sitting MP  Rajendra Agarwal.

Mr Agarwal, though, was winning with progressively narrower margins. In 2019, he won with a margin of around 5000 votes. Many said it was because of the division of the Muslim vote, with the SP, Congress and the BSP all picking Muslim candidates.

The BJP, in the pursuit of 370, has now decided to play safe, replacing Mr Agarwal with the hope that the enthusiasm over the Ayodhya Ram temple will speed Mr Govil over the finish line.

But the SP’s final choice of candidate has added some hurdles to the route, with Dalits and Muslims comprising around 50 per cent of the constituency.

The SP had initially picked Bhanu Pratap Singh — a Supreme Court lawyer and an outsider — to contest a seat that has voted for the BJP since 2004.

The selection had raised eyebrows and protests by the party’s local cadre prompted a change. Enter Sardhana MLA Atul Pradhan, but his ticket was swiftly passed to Sunita Verma.

Ms Verma is the former Mayor of Meerut. Her husband Yogesh Verma, a former MLA of the Samajwadi Party, is a well-known face in the constituency.

The contest, though, will be triangular, with the BSP fielding Devvrat Tyagi, playing on the caste considerations perennial to the state.   

New Delhi:

The Congress’ Shashi Tharoor is bidding for a four-peat of wins from Thiruvananthapuram, but arguably faces his toughest test yet in Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

The senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader, meanwhile, must shake off controversy over his poll affidavit – which said his taxable income for FY2021/22 was Rs 680, compared to Rs 17.5 lakh for FY20 – to win in a state that tends to look unfavourably on the BJP’s politics.

Mr Chandrasekhar has said he expects “the politics of performance” to give him an edge, and that the voters of Thiruvananthapuram would recognise the Congress and Shashi Tharoor had done nothing over the past 15 years. “People are sensible… they know.”

With a hat-trick of wins behind him, Mr Tharoor has exuded confidence.

Speaking to NDTV this week, he said the BJP was welcome to open a bank account in the state, but they should not expect any other kind, meaning they will not win any seats.

In 2019 Mr Tharoor, also an ex-Union Minister, scored his biggest win yet, polling over four lakh votes and more than 40 per cent of the vote share. He beat Kummanam Rajasekharan by nearly one lakh votes. The Communist Party of India’s C Divakaran was a distant third.

The win underlined Mr Tharoor’s hold; he won six of the seven Assembly segments in the seat, losing only Nemom by less than 12,000 votes. This time the CPI – which is part of the ruling Left Democratic Front – has turned to 78-year-old veteran Pannyan Raveendran.

That the CPI chose to field a candidate raised eyebrows because the party is, on paper, part of the Congress-led INDIA opposition bloc.

The Congress has played down the import of this contest. Party comms boss Jairam Ramesh emphasised that all Left parties remain a part of the group but “this does not preclude group partners from contesting against each other in different states, especially in Kerala”.

The choice of Mr Raveendran is to make a point to voters; the Left leader is quite unlike his rivals, who share similarities despite being on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

READ | “Irony Died When…”: Minister’s Jibe At Shashi Tharoor In Affidavit Row

Mr Tharoor and Mr Chandrasekhar are both highly educated professionals who turned to politics after careers in the diplomatic service and the IT industry.

Mr Raveendran, meanwhile, dropped out of middle school, has been a member of the party since his teen years, and has a strong distaste for the trappings of a politician’s life.

Perhaps as significantly, Mr Raveendran is a former MP from Thiruvananthapuram.

He won the seat in 2005 – after the party’s PK Vasudevan Nair, the sitting MP and a former Chief Minister died. And he did so by polling over 50 per cent of the votes. He chose not to defend his seat in the next full election – 2009 – when Mr Tharoor claimed his first win.

Mr Raveendran’s campaign, at least on a national level, has flown under the radar, particularly after the Congress and BJP began sparring over Mr Chandrasekhar’s poll affidavit, which led to Mr Tharoor being sued for defamation and getting a “strict warning” from the election Commission.

READ | “Strict Warning” To Shashi Tharoor Over Remark On Union Minister

The Congress leader, though, is confident of a win.

Thiruvananthapuram isn’t the only Kerala seat to feature an INDIA vs INDIA contest; in Wayanad the CPI has fielded Annie Raja against Mr Gandhi, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist), also an INDIA member, has nominated sitting Alappuzha MP AM Ariff against senior Congress leader KC Venugopal, who won this seat in 2014.

For the CPI, these seats are a litmus test. It has been leaking votes over the past few elections. In Thiruvananthapuram, for example, since polling over half of all votes in 2009, when Mr Raveendran won, the party came down to less than 30 per cent in 2019.

In Wayanad there was a big 13 per cent negative swing between 2014 and 2019.

In each case it has been the Congress and the BJP benefitting, and the latter party will hope the combination of its groundwork in the past few years and the fallout of the INDIA squabble will give it a boost to help win its first ever Lok Sabha seat from the state.

For 2024, the target of ‘abki baar, 400 paar’ will need the party to score seats in all states, even if it can count on a big chunk from its bastions in the Hindi heartland.

Kerala, and neighbouring Tamil Nadu, which has been almost as unfriendly to the party, together offer 59 Lok Sabha seats. In 2019 the BJP got only one of these. In 2014 it got zero.

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