Gujarat

On Wednesday, the high court came down heavily on the civic body over delay in filing an affidavit, giving details of how the collapse occurred, despite two notices.

The Chief Justice Kumar had instructed the MMC counsel to stop taking this matter so casually. The Court said that either the civic body should file its affidavit by today evening or pay costs of Rs 1 lakh.

The BJP, which has been in power in the state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for over two decades, is hopeful of maintaining its uninterrupted winning streak in the state Assembly polls since 1995.

Earlier on Monday, the Gujarat High Court took suo motu cognizance of the tragic Morbi bridge collapse incident and sought a report from the state government on the entire mishap within a week.

Before the Lok Sabha election, Rivaba Jadeja had sought a party ticket from the Jamnagar constituency after joining the BJP in 2019. Rivaba Jadeja and ex-Congress leader Hardik Patel were on the BJP's first list of 160 candidates, released last week.

The party also promised that the contract system in jobs will end and unemployment allowance of Rs 3000 will be given to youth. It also said that 3000 Government English medium schools will be started all over Gujarat and free education for girls from KG to PG will be provided.

On Thursday (November 10) the BJP released its first list of 160 candidates for the two-phase elections to the 182-member Gujarat Assembly, fielding Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel from his constituency Ghatlodia and dropping a number of sitting MLAs.

So far, the Congress has announced candidates for 68 seats of the first phase, while announcement is awaited for 21 seats, including Morbi, Talala, Bhavnagar-Rural, Dhari, Kodinar, Rapar, Bharuch, Rajkot East, Rajkot West, Jambusar, Navsari and Jamnagar Rural.

Gujarat witnessed seizures of Rs 71.88 crore in just a few days of announcement of elections, which surpasses even the seizures made in the entire duration of enforcement of Model Code of Conduct in 2017 assembly elections, which was Rs 27.21 crore.

The Gujarat Assembly elections will be held in two phases on December 1 and 5, and the results will be declared on December 8. Of the 182 seats in the legislative Assembly, 89 will go to polls in the first phase and 93 in the second.