New Delhi: At least 15 Muslim candidates have won Lok Sabha seats across the country, including the TMC nominee and former India cricketer Yusuf Pathan who secured a comfortable victory over Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in the Congress veteran’s Baharampur bastion.

A total of 78 Muslims were in the fray in the Lok Sabha elections this year, a significant drop from the last polls when 115 Muslim candidates were fielded by various parties.

Congress candidate Imran Masood from Saharanpur won by a margin of 64,542 votes while Iqra Choudhary, a 29-year-old Samajwadi Party candidate from Kairana, secured victory over BJP Pradeep Kumar by 69,116 votes.

Afzal Ansari, the incumbent MP from Ghazipur, won the seat by bagging 5.3 lakh votes while AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi retained his Hyderabad seat by a margin of 3,38,087 votes over his nearest rival BJP’s Madhavi Latha Kompella.

In Ladakh, Independent candidate Mohammad Haneefa secured a victory by a margin of 27,862 votes while another Independent candidate Abdul Rashid Sheikh won Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla seat by bagging 4.7 lakh votes.

In Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party’s Mohibbullah won the Rampur seat by securing 4,81,503 votes, while Zia Ur Rehman won in Sambhal by a margin of 1.2 lakh votes.

Mian Altaf Ahmad of the National Conference won in Jammu and Kahsmir’s Anantnag-Rajouri seat by 2,81,794 votes against former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti. In Srinagar NC candidate Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi secured 3,56,866 votes.

In West Bengal’s Baharampur seat, first-time contender Yusuf Pathan beat Congress’ leader in the Lok Sabha and six-time MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury by 85,022 votes.

Bengaluru : JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy on Wednesday said the Congress bid to form government at the Centre will not happen.

The Election Commission of India on Tuesday declared results for 542 of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies, with the BJP winning 240 seats and the Congress 99.

Speaking to reporters before heading for New Delhi, he said the NDA constituents meeting will be held in the national capital, and he would be participating on behalf of JD(S).

“Nothing will happen,” Kumaraswamy said, replying to a query on the Congress party’s exercise to form the government.

Kumaraswamy, the JD(S) second-in-command, won the Lok Sabha election from Mandya as an NDA candidate. Along with him, the party’s candidate Mallesh Babu won from Kolar. However, JD(S) candidate from Hassan, Prajwal Revanna, lost the election.

The NDA got 19 out of 28 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka. The BJP won 17 and JD(S) – 2.

The BJP won 25 seats in 2019 along with a party backed independent candidate.

The ruling Congress increased its tally from one seat in 2019 to nine this time.

New Delhi: Motorists using expressways will have to shell out more from Monday as the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has decided to hike tolls across the country by an average of 5 per cent.

The annual revision of highway user fee, which is expected to be in the range of average 5 per cent, was earlier to come into effect on April 1. But the hike was deferred due to the Lok Sabha elections.

“The new user fee will come into effect from 3.6.2024,” a senior NHAI official said on Sunday.

The change in toll fee is part of an annual exercise to revise the rates that are linked to the changes in the wholesale price index (CPI)-based inflation.

There are around 855 user fee plazas on the national highway network on which user fee is levied as per the National Highways Fee (Determination of Rates and Collection) Rules, 2008.

Out of these, around 675 are public-funded fee plazas and 180 are operated by concessionaires.

The repolling started at 7 am and would continue till 6 pm, they said.

The booth in the Barasat constituency is located at the Kadambagachi Saradar Para FP School in the Deganga assembly segment, while the one in Mathurapur is located at the Aaddir Mahal Srichaitanya Bidyapith in the Kakdwip assembly seat, they added.

The decision of repolling was taken on Sunday based on reports of the returning officers, the district election officers and observers concerned, officials said.

Voting in the two constituencies was held on June 1.

Thane : Police have detained a 24-year-old man after he and his father allegedly killed his sister’s 18-year-old boyfriend in Maharashtra’s Navi Mumbai township, officials said here Monday.

The incident took place on Sunday afternoon after the accused’s sister called the victim, a resident of Devichapada in Panvel, to her house in the same area.

The accused later came home and knocked at the door, but his sister did not open it. He then forced open the door and found his sister and her boyfriend in the house, an official from Taloja police station said.

The accused then called his father and both of them allegedly attacked the victim with a sickle and a spade and killed him, he said.

After being alerted, police rushed to the spot and sent the body to a government hospital for postmortem.

The police have detained the girl’s brother and registered a case against him and her 45-year-father under Indian Penal Code sections 302 (murder) and 34 (common intention), the official said.

Tokyo (AP): Earthquakes early Monday again struck Japan’s north-central region of Ishikawa, still recovering from the destruction left by a powerful quake on January 1, but the latest shaking caused no major damage.

A magnitude 5.9 temblor on the northern top of the Noto Peninsula was followed minutes later by a 4.8 and then several smaller quakes within the next two hours, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. There was no tsunami.

Five houses that had been damaged in the January 1 quake collapsed in Wajiima city, but no major damage or life-threatening injuries were reported, according to Ishikawa prefecture. A quake alarm in the town of Tsubata, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of the epicenter, surprised a resident in her 60s who fell from her bed but the injury was not life-threatening, prefectural officials said.

JMA seismology and tsunami official Satoshi Harada said Monday’s quakes were believed to be aftershocks of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake on January 1. Seismic activity has since slightly subsided, but Harada urged people to be cautious, especially near buildings that were damaged earlier.

Shinkansen super-express trains and other train services were temporarily suspended for safety checks but most of them resumed, according to West Japan Railway Co.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said no abnormalities were found at two nearby nuclear power plants. One of them, the Shika plant on the Noto Peninsula, had minor damage, though officials said that did not affect cooling functions of the two reactors.

Hokuriku Electric Power Co. said there were no power outages.

Monday’s rattlings rekindled fear among residents who are still struggling to recover from damages from the New Year’s quake. NHK public television showed a number of people who came out of their homes and temporary shelters to see if there were additional damage.

“Many people who have been living at evacuation centers must have been been frightened,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said, urging caution against potential falling rocks and landslides in areas that were shaken strongly.

Reconstruction comes slowly in mountainous areas on the peninsula, and many damaged houses remain untouched.

In Wajima, which was one of the hardest-hit areas, an inn operator told NHK that he immediately ducked under the desk at the reception when the first quake struck Monday. Nothing fell to the floor or broke, but it reminded him of the January shakings and made him worry that a big quake like that had occurred even five months later.

The Jan. 1 quake killed 260 people, including those who later died due to stress, illnesses and other causes linked to the quake, with three others still missing, according to the FDMA. Damages still remain, and more than 3,300 residents remain evacuated.

Bengaluru : Voting is underway on Monday in the biennial elections to six seats in the Karnataka Legislative Council from teachers’ and graduates’ constituencies.

Seventy-eight contestants are in the fray. Counting of votes will be held on June 6.

In the 75-member Upper House, the Congress has 29 members.

The polls are being held for the constituencies of Karnataka North East Graduates, Karnataka South West Graduates, Bangalore Graduates, Karnataka South-East Teachers, Karnataka South-West Teachers and Karnataka South Teachers.

These seats fell vacant following the retirement of six members.

The graduates’ constituencies and teachers’ constituencies have 3.63 lakh and 70,260 voters, respectively.

The Election Commission has set up 170 polling stations for the teachers’ constituencies and 461 polling stations for the graduates’ constituencies.

The Congress has fielded Marithibba Gowda (South Teachers constituency), K K Manjunath (South-West Teachers), Ayanur Manjunath (South-West Graduates), Chandrashekhar Patil (North-East Graduates), Ramoji Gowda (Bangalore Graduates) and D T Srinivas (South-East Teachers).

The BJP and its ally JD(S) are contesting the MLC elections together. The BJP is fighting in four constituencies and the JD(S) two.

The BJP has fielded Amarnath Patil from the Karnataka North-East Graduates constituency, Dr Dhananjay Sarji from the Karnataka South-West Graduates constituency, A Devegowda from the Bangalore Graduates’ constituency and Y A Narayanaswamy from the South-East Teachers constituency.

The JD(S) candidates are K Vivekananda from the South Teachers constituency and Bhoje Gowda from the South West Teachers constituency.

New Delhi: Congress leader Sonia Gandhi on Monday said her party is very hopeful that the results of the Lok Sabha elections will be totally opposite to what has been shown in the exit polls.

“We have to wait, just wait and see,” Sonia Gandhi told PTI when asked about her expectations from the results scheduled to be announced on Tuesday.

“We are very hopeful that our results are completely opposite to what the exit polls are showing,” the Congress parliamentary party chief added.

Sonia Gandhi made the remarks after attending an event held at the DMK office here. She paid tributes to DMK stalwart M Karunanidhi on his 100th birth anniversary.

Most exit polls have predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain power for a third straight term, with the BJP-led NDA expected to win a big majority in the Lok Sabha polls.

While some exit polls have given the NDA more than 400 seats, most have predicted that it will win over 350, which is way above the majority mark of 272 seats needed to form the government.

The Congress and other INDIA bloc parties have trashed the exit polls, claiming that these surveys were a work of “fantasy” and asserting that the opposition alliance will form the next government.

“This is not called an exit poll but its name is ‘Modi media poll’. This is Modi ji’s poll, it is his fantasy poll,” former Congress president Rahul Gandhi had said on Sunday.

Congress leaders have said that the INDIA bloc will win 295 seats and form the government.

Earlier, speaking at the event marking the 100th birth anniversary of Karunanidhi, Sonia Gandhi said, “It’s my pleasure to be here with my colleagues from the DMK on the very auspicious occasion of the 100th anniversary of Dr. Kalaignar Karunanidhi.”

“I had the good fortune of meeting him on many occasions, listening to what he had to say and benefiting from his words of wisdom and advice. I feel fortunate to have met him,” she said and extended her best wishes to those present on the occasion.