Uttarakhand elections result 2012

Uttarakhand elections: 70 per cent polling recorded

Nearly 70 per cent polling was recorded in the Uttarakhand Assembly elections, which sealed the fate of 788 candidates including Chief Minister B C Khanduri and state Congress president Yashpal Arya.

The polling to elect 70 legislators to the state Assembly largely remained "incident-free".

About 70 per cent of the 63 lakh voters exercised their franchise till the end of polling at 5PM, state Chief Electoral Officer Radha Raturi told PTI.

The polling, which began on a dull note in the morning, picked up momentum as the day progressed.

Only 10 per cent polling was recorded during the first two hours till 10 AM. However, as the day progressed, the number of voters reaching the polling stations increased.

Tight security arrangements were made for the election, which largely remained incident-free, Raturi said. The counting of votes will take place on March 6.

There are over 63 lakh electorates in the state where the ruling BJP is locked in a close fight with Congress.

Chief Minister B C Khanduri, former Chief Ministers Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Nityanand Swami and N D Tiwari and Assembly Speaker Harbans Kapoor were among the early voters.

Khanduri, who is BJP's chief ministerial candidate, said, "There is a very good response (from the people for the party)... We feel we will form the government comfortably but again it is for the people to decide."

After casting his vote, senior Congress leader Tiwari told reporters that there are bright chances of a change (of power) in the state. "People have seen the government of other party (BJP) in the past five years. I hope that they would now give a chance to Congress," he said.

The elections will also decide the fate of top state leaders including Khanduri from Kotdwar, Nishank from Doiwala, the Leader of the Opposition Harak Singh Rawat from Rudraprayag and Arya from Baajpur seats.

Members in Bihar assembly 2010

34 women elected to Bihar assembly.

Bihar News Updates! Women this time have the best ever representation in the Bihar Assembly in 48 years, having bagged 34 (rpt) 34 seats in the polls.

This feat was achieved despite the fact that women constituted only 8.74 per cent of the total number of candidates in the fray for the elections in Bihar.

Though they account for nearly half of the total 5.50 crore electorate, women emerged only a pale shadow of their male counterparts in the political landscape.

If the four major political parties - the ruling JD(U), BJP, Congress, RJD and LJP, besides major left parties are taken into account, then the women candidates in fray were just around 90.

JD(U) and BJP fielded maximum 24 and 11 women candidates, despite the two major NDA allies setting a model by providing for 50 per cent reservation for women in the Panchayati Raj institutions and civic bodies.

RJD and LJP who opposed the passage of the Women's reservation Bill in the present form and favoured a quota within quota, put up six and seven candidates, respectively.

The Congress which contested all 243 assembly seats in Bihar fielded 23 women, while the major Left parties -- CPI, CPI-M and CPI-ML (Liberation) fielded three, two and 11, respectively.

"This only speaks of the roadblocks in the progress of women. For them, their secured domain still remains their home and not the battlefield of polity," social activist Nivedita said.

"Curiously, this remains a paradox. In one hand women have done fairly well and climbed the ladder of success, on the other hand they are mute sufferers of the violence afflicted on them by their own family members," she said.

Except for an Independent Jyoti Rashmi, who won from Dehri, rest 33 (rpt) 33 women candidates who came out with flying colours are from JD-U (23) rpt (23) and BJP (10).

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Crocodile predicts Australian election winner

Dirty Harry, a crocodile, has predicted that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be re-elected.

The saltwater croc made his choice on Thursday in his enclosure in the northern city of Darwin when he snatched a chicken carcass dangling beneath a caricature of Gillard. Opposition leader Tony Abbott's chicken was left hanging.

Analysts say Australia's elections on Saturday could be the closest contest since 1961 when a single seat decided who governed.

The crocodile used a similar technique to correctly predict that Spain would defeat the Netherlands in the World Cup last month. He joined an octopus named Paul in Germany, said to have correctly picked the winner for the final plus seven other games.

Australian Election Eve

Poll shows dead heat on eve of Australian election.

Australia's top candidates for prime minister campaigned furiously Friday -- election eve -- as incumbent Julia Gillard was tied with coalition challenger Tony Abbott in a national opinion poll based on the country's complicated preferential voting system.

In Saturday's election, Gillard is the candidate of the left-of-center Labor Party; Abbott represents a conservative coalition.

The Newspoll published Friday morning puts the two political blocs at 50-50.

"People would have seen the polls today and what the polls are telling them is there is a very, very real risk that they will wake up on Sunday and Mr. Abbott will be prime minister," Gillard told the Nine Network's "Today " show Friday morning about the choice facing Australian voters.

"They've got a choice between my positive economic plan to keep investing in jobs, to keep improving schools -- people know I'm passionate about improving education -- to keep improving hospitals and to build the National Broadband Network. Or they can take a very big risk. A very big risk with Mr. Abbott for their futures. It's about work choices for Mr. Abbott. It's about a grocery tax and, of course, it's about going back to the days of cutting schools and hospitals. That's what he stands for."

Noting that Gillard's standing in the polls has eroded in recent days, Abbott said, "I think Labor has found it a bit desperate ... I think they've found it a bit shrill and I just think that they don't have a record to defend and under those circumstances I think they become very negative and very personal and I don't know that that's a good look from a prime minister."

Abbott, a 52-year-old fitness fanatic, said he stayed up all Thursday night and was planning to do the same Friday night in a final push to gain the lead. He appeared at a flower market and a fish market Friday morning.

Gillard, 48 and the nation's first woman prime minister, spent Thursday night in the key southeast state of New South Wales, where she rubbed elbows with voters in a pub and entered a raffle in which she drew her own ticket -- twice.

Gillard served as deputy prime minister under Kevin Rudd when he led the Labor Party back to power in December 2007. But she rose to the top job last June, when the Labor Party unceremoniously dumped Rudd, whose popularity was plummeting -- in part over his stance on how to handle global warming and a proposed system of emissions trading.

Soon after, as she appeared strong in the polls, she called the snap election for Saturday. But Abbott -- who had little national campaign experience -- emerged with surprising effectiveness and broader public appeal than many pundits had anticipated.

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Europe and the UK election updates

Clegg vaults to lead in U.K. election: poll : News Updates

New public opinion polls show British politics has been transformed overnight by last week's historic televised leadership debate.

Just 2½ weeks before Britons go to the polls, a surge in support for the traditionally third-place Liberal Democrats has put the party out front in terms of the popular vote.

A Sunday Times poll claims Nick Clegg, the party's 43-year-old leader, who is still serving his first term in Parliament as an MP, has suddenly become the most popular leader in Britain since the glory days of Winston Churchill.

A YouGov poll for the Sun newspaper has the Liberal Democrats with 33%, ahead of the Conservatives with 32% and Labour at 26%.

Another poll, carried out by ICM Research for The Guardian newspaper, says Mr. Clegg's party has gained 10 points in the last five days and is just three points behind the Conservatives and two points ahead of Labour.

As a result of 90 minutes of rather boring and predictable debate, the Lib-Dem leader has vaulted from obscurity to the threshold of a major political breakthrough.

That says a lot about voters' disillusion and the fragility of traditional politics in Britain.

If current trends hold, Mr. Clegg could double the 62 seats his party holds in the House of Commons, condemning the country to a minority government in which the Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power.

That, in turn, could set the stage for dramatic political reform, with the Liberal Democrats pushing demands for a form of proportional representation and an elected House of Lords.

Gordon Brown, the Labour Prime Minister who could still cling to power, has already begun emphasizing the "common ground" he sees with Mr. Clegg on electoral reform.

"I think Labour and the Liberal Democrats have similar policies about the scale of political reform that is needed," Mr. Brown told The Sunday Telegraph.

"The Conservatives don't. The Conservatives want to keep hereditary peers, they don't want a serious reform of the House of Lords in the next parliament."

But Labour can be expected to attack the Liberal Democrats' economic policies, saying their calls for steep spending and tax cuts could jeopardize a fragile economic recovery.

The Conservatives are warning a vote for the Liberal Democrats will ensure five more years of Labour government.

"If you want to wake up on May 7 and be absolutely certain that you've got new leadership in this country and are not stuck with another five years of Gordon Brown, stuck with dithering and despair and depression, the only way to get that is a decisive Conservative vote," David Cameron, the Tory leader, told voters yesterday.