Gujarat

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, Aam Aadmi Party chief ministerial candidate Isudan Gadhvi, and state Assembly Leader Sukhram Rathva were among those who voted.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will vote on Monday in the second phase of the Gujarat Assembly elections. PM Modi arrived in Ahmedabad today to seek his mother's blessings, who celebrated her 99th birthday this year.

The first phase of Gujarat elections that was held on December 1 witnessed 5 per cent less polling than in 2017, raising all kinds of theories on who this will benefit or hurt come December 8.

Actor Paresh Rawal said the people of Gujarat would tolerate inflation but not 'Bangladeshis and Rohingya' next door and invoked a 'cooked fish' cliche that infuriated Bengalis. Paresh Rawal made the remarks on Tuesday in Valsad, which voted in the first round of the Gujarat election on Thursday.

Earlier on Tuesday, addressing a rally in Gujarat, Mallikarjun Kharge asked whether PM Modi has 100 heads as he is the face of all elections -- be it the civic election or the assembly election.

"There is no problem. People with different ideas can coexist in the same household, " said Rivaba Jadeja. Rivaba Jadeja, a relative of Congress leader Hari Singh Solanki, joined the BJP in 2019, three years after marrying into a family of largely Congress loyalists.

Voting is underway in as many as 89 assembly constituencies out of Gujarat's 182 seats in this first phase. The remaining seats will go to polls in the second phase on December 5.

In his video message, CEC Rajiv Kumar said, "Today, Gujarat is celebrating the festival of democracy. My earnest appeal to all 4.9 crore Gujarat voters to vote today and on December 5 during the second phase of elections on behalf of the EC. There are about 4 lakh PwD voters in Gujarat and 9.8 lakh senior citizen voters

According to Tewari, "The fact that the CMs were required to be shown the door is proof of a government's inefficiency. The public must decide what will happen to (the current CM). There cannot be more living evidence of governance failure than having to reshuffle your chief ministers three times."

Reacting to this, senior Congress leader Manish Tewari said the Assam Chief Minister was sounding like a "petty troll". Rahul Gandhi has been seen sporting a beard during the ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra, a mass contact initiative of the Congress.