MM Joshi/File
From Murli Manohar Joshi's ticket denial to Shatrughan Sinha's Congress love, unexpected turns and twists are marking the onset of the world's biggest election. India TV's election wrap brings you election updates of March 26 on the platter. Have a look:
1. Veteran leader Murli Manohar Joshi has been denied a ticket by the Bharatiya Janata Party to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Uttar Pradesh Minister Satyadev Pachauri will be contesting in his place. After LK Advani, Joshi is another veteran party leader who has been dropped from its list of contestants.
2. Actor-turned-politician Jaya Prada has been pitted against old party colleague Azam Khan in Uttar Pradesh's Rampur seat in the upcoming national election. As Prada joined the BJP, she made her fifth party move today.
3. BJP swapped the seats of Union Minister Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi. She will now contest from Sultanpur, while Varun Gandhi has been fielded from Pilibhit.
4. The Bharatiya Janata Party released its list of 42 star campaigners for phase 1 and 2 of Lok Sabha elections from Bihar. PM Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Nirmala Sitharaman, Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari, Yogi Adityanath, Hema Malini were among the names featured on the list.
5. Bollywood actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, who has been associated with BJP for about three decades, will join Congress on March 28. Sinha has been openly critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah. Speculation had been rife for some time that he would join the Congress, which is an ally of the 'Mahagathbandhan' which also consists of the RJD and other political parties.
6. With less than 15 days for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh has announced a tie-up with Janwadi Party (Socialist) and the Nishad Party. Akhilesh Yadav made the announcement at a press conference but did not share details about seat sharing with the two parties. He said his party will conduct research to come up with a scheme to eliminate poverty. "We are studying a pro-poor scheme so that a package can be given to them."
7. Supporters of senior BJP leaders -- Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Rajya Sabha member RK Sinha -- clashed outside the Patna airport on Tuesday after the party decided to field Prasad from the Patna Sahib Lok Sabha seat. Sinha's supporters showed him black flags and shouted slogan against him. Police and Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel dispersed the mob.
8. Congress releases list of star campaigners for the first and second phase of Lok Sabha elections from Maharashtra. Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Priyanka Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Jyotiraditya Scindia were featured among others.
9. Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi will kick off the second leg of her three-day Lok Sabha election campaign in Uttar Pradesh from Amethi on Wednesday. She will reach Lucknow by air on Wednesday morning from where she will travel by road to visit her brother and party President Rahul Gandhi's constituency Amethi, according to party leaders. She will go to her mother Sonia Gandhi's constituency Rae Bareli on Thursday and visit Ayodhya on Friday before returning to New Delhi.
10. In a surprise move, the BJP has fielded party's youth wing leader Tejaswi Surya from its bastion of Bangalore South from where the widow of union minister Ananth Kumar, a six-time MP from this prestigious Lok Sabha constituency, was denied the ticket. It was widely expected that the BJP would field Tejaswini given her active participation in scripting her husband's victories from the seat six times, but Surya emerged as the dark horse. Surya filed his nomination papers Tuesday.
