TMC's Alifa Ahmed secures victory in Kaliganj assembly by-elections in West Bengal
Nadia (West Bengal) [India], June 23 (ANI): Trinamool Congress' candidate Alifa Ahmed has secured victory in the Kaliganj assembly by-election by a margin of 50,049 votes.
Alifa defeated Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Ashish Ghosh and Congress' Kabil Uddin Shaikh and emerged victorious on the seat.
According to the Election Commission of India, Alifa received 1,02,759 votes while BJP's Ghosh received 52,710 votes. Congress' Shaikh managed to get 28,348 votes while 2,502 votes went to NOTA (None of the above).
The by-poll in the constituency was necessitated after the death of TMC leader Nasiruddin Ahmed.
Earlier today, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed her deep gratitude to the voters, thanking them for their overwhelming support after party took lead on the Kaliganj seat.
In a social media post on X, Chief Minister Banerjee wrote, 'In the by-election of the Kaliganj Assembly constituency, people from all religions, castes, communities, and all walks of life have overwhelmingly blessed us by exercising their voting rights. I humbly express my gratitude to them.'
She credited the victory to the guiding values of Maa-Mati-Manush (Mother, Soil, People), emphasizing, 'The main architect of this victory is Maa-Mati-Manush. My colleagues in Kaliganj have worked tirelessly for this, and I extend my sincere congratulations to them as well.'
Banerjee also dedicated the win to the late legislator Nasiruddin Ahmed, stating, 'In memory of the late legislator Nasiruddin Ahmed, I dedicate this victory to the people of Bengal- Maa-Mati-Manush.'
Along with the Kaliganj assembly constituency, the by-elections were held on Kadi and Visavadar seats of Gujarat, Nilambur of Kerala and Ludhiana West of Punjab.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Gopal Italia won the Visavadar seat while BJP's Rajendrakumar (Rajubhai) Daneshwar Chavda won the Kadi seat in Gujarat.
In a significant blow to the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government in Kerala, UDF candidate Aryadan Shoukath of Congress defeated LDF's M Swaraj of CPI(M) by a large margin of 11,077 votes in the Nilambur assembly by-election.
Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Sanjeev Arora has won the by-elections of Ludhiana West assembly seat in Punjab. (ANI)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
26 minutes ago
- Time of India
Anomalies in land acquisition for Gorakhpur corridor: SP chief
Lucknow: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday alleged irregularities in the acquisition of land for the heritage corridor being built in Gorakhpur. Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters here, he demanded that the land compensation for the heritage corridor be determined based on market value rather than consent-based agreements. The SP chief alleged that "govt is forcibly getting traders and residents to sign the consent letter by putting pressure through the administration and police so that they do not have to pay more compensation." "If the people of Gorakhpur speak up and reveal the secrets, then instead of a heritage (virasat) corridor, a custody (hirasat) corridor will have to be built there," he said. Akhilesh claimed there were irregularities in land acquisition for other heritage projects also due to which the BJP had to face electoral reverses in these areas. "This is not just about one district, but the whole state. In this game, a few BJP leaders benefit while the public is being cheated," he said. He said this was the reason why "BJP lost in Ayodhya and narrowly escaped defeat in Varanasi in LS polls. Now it's the turn of Mathura and Gorakhpur". The SP chief alleged that BJP workers, in the presence of police, blocked roads and threw eggs and stones at vehicles of an SP delegation that went to Gorakhpur on June 25. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like The anime RPG everyone's talking about is finally free! Nikke: Goddess Of Victory Play Now Undo Calling the bulldozer a symbol of injustice, he asked SP workers not to be afraid of "bulldozer, eggs or black flags". Instead of the "fake heritage corridor", a corridor of development will be built when the SP govt will comes to office, he said. Targeting CM Yogi Adityanath, he said, "Think, he's building the heritage corridor now, when he's down to his last budget...." "If he truly wanted to do something for Gorakhpur, he should remember his first announcement... that he will build a metro (metro rail service) in Gorakhpur along with Jhansi," he said.
Time of India
28 minutes ago
- Time of India
With Supreme Court ruling, another check on Trump's power fades
WASHINGTON : The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Donald Trump pushes to amass more power. The decision on Friday, by a vote of 6-3, could allow Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country -- even though every court that has looked at the directive has ruled it unconstitutional. That means some infants born to immigrants without legal status or foreign visitors without green cards could be denied citizenship-affirming documentation like Social Security numbers. But the diminishing of judicial authority as a potential counterweight to exercises of presidential power carries implications far beyond the issue of citizenship. The Supreme Court is effectively tying the hands of lower-court judges at a time when they are trying to respond to a steady geyser of aggressive executive branch orders and policies. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Jesus' Tomb Is Opened And Scientists Find Something Unbelievable Novelodge Undo The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind. Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. Live Events But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch, and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the "imperial presidency." Presidential power waned in the 1970s, in the period encompassing the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War. Courts proved willing to rule against the presidency, as when the Supreme Court forced President Richard Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes. Members of both parties worked together to enact laws imposing new or restored limits on the exercise of executive power. But the present era is very different. Presidential power began to grow again in the Reagan era and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And now Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall. The decision by the Supreme Court's conservative majority comes as other constraints on Trump's power have also eroded. The administration has steamrolled internal executive branch checks, including firing inspectors general and sidelining the Justice Department 's Office of Legal Counsel, which traditionally set guardrails for proposed policies and executive orders. And Congress, under the control of Trump's fellow Republicans, has done little to defend its constitutional role against his encroachments. This includes unilaterally dismantling agencies Congress had said shall exist as a matter of law, firing civil servants in defiance of statutory limits, and refusing to spend funds that lawmakers had authorized and appropriated. Last week, when Trump unilaterally bombed Iranian nuclear sites without getting prior authorization from Congress or making any claim of an imminent threat, one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, stepped forward to call the move unconstitutional since Congress has the power to declare war. Trump reacted ferociously, declaring that he would back a primary challenger to end Massie's political career, a clear warning shot to any other Republican considering objecting to his actions. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, recently told her constituents that "we are all afraid" of Trump. While the immediate beneficiary of the Supreme Court's ruling is Trump, the decision also promises to free his successors from what has been a growing trend of district court intervention into presidential policymaking. In the citizenship case, the justices stripped district court judges of the authority to issue so-called universal injunctions, a tool that lower courts have used to block government actions they deem most likely illegal from taking effect nationwide as legal challenges to them play out. The frequency of such orders has sharply increased in recent years, bedeviling presidents of both parties. Going forward, the justices said, lower courts may only grant injunctive relief to the specific plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits. That means the Trump administration may start enforcing the president's birthright citizenship order in the 28 states that have not challenged it, unless individual parents have the wherewithal and gumption to bring their own lawsuits. The full scope of the ruling remains to be seen given that it will not take effect for 30 days. It is possible that plaintiffs and lower-court judges will expand the use of class-action lawsuits as a different path to orders with a nationwide effect. Such an option, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion, would be proper so long as they obey procedural limits for class-action cases. Still, in concurring opinions, two other key members of the conservative bloc, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, warned lower-court judges not to lower standards for using alternative means to issue sweeping orders in an effort to circumvent the ruling. Alito wrote that "district courts should not view today's decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors" of legal rules. Thomas added that if judges do not "carefully heed this court's guidance" and act within limits, "this court will continue to be 'duty bound' to intervene." In a rare move that signaled unusually intense opposition, Justice Sonia Sotomayor read aloud a summary of her dissenting opinion from the bench Friday. Calling the ruling a grave attack on the American system of law, she said it endangered constitutional rights for everyone who is not a party to lawsuits defending them. "Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship," she wrote. "Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief." Sotomayor also said the administration did not ask to entirely halt the multiple injunctions against its order because it knew the directive was patently illegal, and accused the majority of playing along with that open gamesmanship. She, like the other two justices who joined her dissent, is a Democratic appointee. All six of the justices who voted to end universal injunctions were Republican appointees, including three Trump installed on the bench in his first term. The same supermajority has ruled in ways that have enhanced his power in other avenues. Last year, the bloc granted Trump presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts as president. The ruling, by Chief Justice John Roberts, asserted that presidents have absolute immunity for anything they do with the Justice Department and their supervision of federal law enforcement power. Emboldened, Trump this year has built on his approach from his first term, when he informally pressured prosecutors to investigate his political foes. He has issued formal orders to scrutinize specific people he does not like, shattering the post-Watergate norm of a Justice Department case independent from White House political control. The supermajority also has blessed Trump's gambit in firing Democratic members of independent agency commissions before their terms were up. The conservative justices have made clear that they are prepared to overturn a long-standing precedent allowing Congress to establish specialized agencies to be run by panels whose members cannot be arbitrarily fired by presidents. In a separate concurrence, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a realpolitik take. The majority's exegesis of what powers Congress understood itself to be granting lower courts when it created them in 1789 was a smokescreen of mind-numbing "legalese," she wrote, obscuring the question of whether a court can order the executive branch to follow the law. "In a constitutional republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the executive to follow the law -- and it must," she wrote before striking a cautionary note. "Everyone, from the president on down, is bound by law," she added. "By duty and nature, federal courts say what the law is (if there is a genuine dispute), and require those who are subject to the law to conform their behavior to what the law requires. This is the essence of the rule of law." But Barrett accused her of forgetting that courts, too, must obey legal limits. "Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary," Barrett wrote. "No one disputes that the executive has a duty to follow the law. But the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation -- in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the judiciary from doing so." This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Hindustan Times
33 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Big Beautiful Bill: List of Republicans who will vote against Trump's spending measure
President Donald Trump's tax and spending measure, dubbed the 'Big Beautiful Bill', will go on the Senate floor on Saturday for debate and a vote. While a majority of Republicans, who hold majorities in Congress, are expected to back the president. However, some have come out publicly to declare that they will vote against the bill, which proposes to reduce spending on Medicaid, food stamps and other programs. President Donald Trump said he hopes his Big Beautiful Bill will clear the Senate(AFP) The 940-page bill was released shortly before midnight Friday. Senators were expected to take a procedural vote Saturday to begin considering the legislation. The timing is, however, uncertain. After the Senate, the bill would need to return to the House for a final round of votes before it reaches President Trump's desk. Read More: 'Saved him from ugly death': Trump tears into Khamenei day after his victory speech 'It's evolving,' Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Friday. Trump was optimistic. His Truth Social post read: 'We can get it done. It will be a wonderful Celebration for our Country.' Under Senate debate rules, it takes a three-fifths majority of lawmakers to pass a bill. If 51 of 100 Senators vote for it, the bill passes by a simple majority. Now, not all Republicans are voting along party lines. Sen Thom Tillis said he is concerned about the fundamentals of the package and will not support the procedural motion to begin debate. 'I'm voting no on the motion to proceed,' he said. Sen Ron Johnson said he needed to see the final legislative text. Read More: Donald Trump hints at 'very big' trade deal with India after China pact Here's a complete list of Republicans opposing Trump's spending bill Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) Sen Johnson said he opposes the bill due to its insufficient spending cuts and significant contribution to the federal deficit, estimated at $2.3-$4 trillion over a decade by the Congressional Budget Office. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) Sen Tillis objects to the bill's Medicaid cuts, which could affect vulnerable constituents, and the abrupt phaseout of clean energy tax credits, which he argues risks economic disruption. Rep David Valadao (R-CA) The California Republican refuses to support any bill that cuts Medicaid or threatens healthcare access in his Central Valley district, where nearly two-thirds of constituents rely on Medicaid.
