#exit

8 stories

Politics

7updates

assam2026live

Exit polls 2026 LIVE: DMK alliance projected to win in Tamil Nadu, BJP in Assam

Governor Lakshman Prasad Acharya congratulates BJP’s Chandramohan Patowary after administering the oath for the post of pro-tem Speaker of the newly constituted 16th Assam Legislature Assembly, on May 15, 2026. Photo: X/@Laxmanacharya54 Seniormost MLA of the 16th Assam Assembly, Chandra Mohan Patowary, was on Friday (May 15, 2026) sworn in as the pro-tem Speaker by Governor Lakshman Prasad Acharya.Mr. Acharya administered the oath to the BJP leader and former cabinet minister at a ceremony held at Lok Bhavan here."Today, at Lok Bhavan, Assam, I administered the oath of office as the Pro-tem Speaker of the newly constituted 16th Assam Legislative Assembly to Shri Chandra Mohan Patowary," the Governor said in a post on X."I am confident that drawing upon his vast experience and commitment to democratic values, the initial proceedings of the Assembly will be conducted with complete constitutional dignity," Mr. Acharya added."Honoured to have taken oath as Pro-tem Speaker of 16th @AssamAssembly, administered by Hon’ble Governor of Assam Shri @Laxmanacharya54 Ji at Lok Bhavan today," the seventh-time MLA said in a post on the social media site.Mr. Patowary was first elected to the Assembly from Dharmapur constituency in 1985 as an Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) candidate. He represented the constituency six times, including twice as a BJP legislator since 2016.He has been elected to the new Assembly from Tihu constituency, created during the 2023 delimitation exercise, which includes parts of the erstwhile Dharmapur seat.As pro-tem Speaker, Mr. Patowary will administer the oath to newly elected MLAs during the first session of the Assembly beginning on May 21.The four-day session will continue till May 26, with the legislators to be sworn-in on the first day, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had said earlier.The former Cabinet Minister will be responsible for the conduct of business till the election of the new Speaker.The NDA had announced senior BJP legislator and ex-minister Ranjeet Kumar Dass as its candidate for the Speaker’s post, a position held by him initially when the first saffron party-led government had come to power in the State in 2016.The NDA retained power for a third consecutive term with a two-thirds majority in the recently concluded Assembly polls. The BJP won 82 seats, while its allies AGP and Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) secured 10 seats each in the 126-member House. Published - May 15, 2026 03:13 pm IST

The HinduMay 15

Read

general

13updates

2026livebengal

Assembly Elections Exit Poll 2026 Date and Time: How to check details for Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Kerala?

The BJP's energetic rise is also directly the cause of the Opposition's waning, but that may not tell the full story. THE results of the Assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, Assam and Kerala, were undoubtedly shaped by factors that were state-specific. But if there is a binding theme, it is this: The BJP’s growth and spread beyond its traditional bastions into new arenas and areas coincides with the declining fortunes of its political opponents. The BJP’s energetic rise is also directly the cause of the Opposition’s waning, but that may not tell the full story. Be it the rout of Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and MK Stalin in Tamil Nadu now, or Nitish Kumar bowing out with Lalu Prasad’s RJD failing to hold up its end in Bihar, or the eclipse of Naveen Patnaik in Odisha, or BJP’s longtime ally-turned-rival Uddhav Thackeray presiding over the Sena’s splintering in Maharashtra, or the signs of implosion in Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, or be it Congress’s seemingly unchecked slide despite its Kerala victory — the downward trajectory of the party on the other side of the BJP is not just because of the BJP, its undimmed aggression and its vast resources. It is also due to the inertia and do-nothingness of the Opposition party, its sameness and staleness in a time when a young and aspirational electorate is on the move, both literally and as part of shifting imagined communities. Quite simply, the BJP’s success lies, fundamentally, in constantly finding new ways of speaking to this people, by adding to its layered appeal. And the Opposition’s failure comes from its increasing political solipsism, its turning away from the challenges of change, its glib recourse to apocalypse-mongering.Essentially, the verdicts in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu and Kerala frame the people’s push for change. The BJP seized the impulse and built on it in West Bengal, while a new player came in to reap the disillusion with the five-decade-old alternation of parties in Tamil Nadu. Congress benefited from the desire for change in Kerala, while in Assam, the only exception to this story, it failed to even become a receptacle for it. THE outcome in West Bengal, which has been, by far, the most dramatic in this round of elections, with Tamil Nadu coming in second, was made possible, above all, because Mamata Banerjee ignored the warnings. Her party, the TMC, which she led into power by uprooting a 34-year-old Left regime, did not heed the sound of the BJP’s footfall, first with only three seats in 2016, which later shot up to 77 in the 2021 assembly. It refused to brace for the competition by reflecting on its own shortcomings — be it the failure of its government to pull Bengal out of its economic slump, or its inability to check the corruption and unaccountability growing within the party. Inheriting the “party-society” model from Left rule, the TMC nurtured a network of political entrepreneurs that smudged the lines between party, institution and government like the Left’s Syndicate, but unlike it, without any constraints of ideology. The TMC’s standstill laid the ground for the BJP, whose unrelenting determination to capture the state of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, to stitch the east to its conquests in the country’s north and west, has finally met with success. It rides on a Hindu consolidation around the spectre of the “ghuspaithiya”, projection of Banerjee’s politics as “minority appeasement”, and a combination of its criticism of Banerjee’s governance with an identity politics that was subterranean during Left rule and had risen to the surface under the rule of Didi, who had opened the floodgates. How the SIR, which in West Bengal, more than in any other state, became an exclusionary exercise, contributed to the outcome, will be known in days to come. The 27 lakh excluded in the controversial second round of deletions, whose appeals are still pending (less than 2000 were reinstated by the tribunals), are a challenge for the new government to address u

Indian ExpressMay 5

Read

general

6updates

2026livebengal

Exit Poll results 2026 LIVE updates: Axis My India skips Bengal exit poll, Chanakya’s predictions from 5:30pm

The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah BJP’s victory in West Bengal — this is the first time since 1972 that a “national” party that rules in Delhi will have won an election in the state — is unprecedented. The Congress governments in Kolkata for the first 30 years after Independence had a first-mover advantage, when power was a corollary of the single-party dominant system in a nascent democracy. The BJP in 2026 faced a formidable political force in Mamata Banerjee and the TMC: A leader with a history of slaying behemoths, not least the CPI(M), and a party system — a “syndicate” — that is enmeshed in almost every aspect of social, political, and economic life in the state.With victory in Bengal, and the return of Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam, the NDA is now in power across east, west, and much of north India. There will, understandably, be pageantry and celebrations by the ruling party and its leaders over the next few days. Beyond the usual and beyond the electoral politics of the moment, the 2026 West Bengal election also marks a deeper inflection point for the ruling party and the Opposition. A ‘Bengali’ BJP? For the BJP, ruling Bengal will be a challenge of the kind it hasn’t faced across at least two registers. In large part, its phenomenal success across the country since 2014 has been based on tailoring its campaigns to the regional and cultural specificities of very diverse polities — from a base in Gujarat to the Hindi belt, to the Northeast, it has found a vocabulary and less recognised historical-cultural figures. A cynical extension of this has been its open-door policy for high-profile defectors, from Suvendu Adhikari to Sarma. This malleability, though, does not mean that the BJP is an “umbrella party”. Ideologically, it has been a flattening force in national politics. In Bengal, as in so many other states, its politics has relied on creating and consolidating the so-called “Hindu” vote, while demonising Muslims — whether as “Bangladeshi infiltrators” or through “love jihad”. West Bengal was the home of the militant stream of the freedom struggle, of Subhas Chandra Bose and his opposition to Gandhi and Nehru in the Congress. Since the early 20th century, it has been both part of the political mainstream and an outlier. Banerjee’s attempt at pitting Bengali identity against the BJP’s religious nationalism failed against anti-incumbency this election. Does that mean the sense of grievance and being left behind over the last half-century — and the wounded pride of once being the country’s intellectual, cultural and political centre — has evaporated? Likely not. The most urgent and difficult task for the BJP, then, is two-fold. First, to rewrite the story of a state that has long been in economic decline. Government largesse in terms of cash transfers and other welfare schemes alone cannot do this. Industrialisation, services and education — the state was once, long ago, a leader in all three. It needs to become that again. To make that happen in a sustainable and meaningful manner is the BJP’s second task. It must not simply take over the political structures of the party society left behind by the TMC. It must build state capacity outside of a cadre-government nexus. The fears that remain Over 90 lakh erstwhile voters were excluded in Bengal. Of these, the exclusion of 27 lakh in the second round – less than 2,000 had their franchise restored by the appellate tribunal — were particularly controversial. Several others went through an arduous process to ensure that their names are on the rolls. The Election Commission and the Supreme Court did not, by all accounts, do enough to make the process either transparent or foolproof, and the questions about their conduct will linger on. The scale of the BJP’s victory indicates that the deletion was not a decisive factor, though it could have helped shore up the final numbers. But beyond the legal and institutional dimensions lie deeper fears. First, the deletions raised the fear th

Indian ExpressMay 4

Read

Economy

5updates

visitcourthigh

Oil churn: How the UAE's exit from Opec may benefit New Delhi

Arshdeep KaurArshdeep Kaur is a Senior Content Producer at Mint, where she reports and edits across national and international politics, business and culture‑adjacent trending stories for digital audience. With five years in the newsroom, she strives to balance the speed and rigor of fast‑moving news cycles and longer, context‑rich explainers. Before joining LiveMint, Arshdeep served as a Senior Sub‑Editor at Business Standard and earlier as a Sub‑Editor at Asian News International (ANI). Her experience spans live news flows, enterprise features, and multi‑platform packaging. At Mint, she regularly writes explainers, quick takes, and visuals‑led stories that are optimized for search and social, while maintaining the publication’s standards for accuracy and clarity. She collaborates closely with editors and the audience team to frame angles that resonate with readers in India and abroad, and to translate complex developments into accessible, high‑impact journalism. Arshdeep's academic training underpins her interest towards policy and markets. She earned an MA in Economics from Panjab University and holds a Post‑Graduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism from the India Today Media Institute (ITMI). This blend of economics and broadcast storytelling informs her coverage of public policy, elections, macro themes, and the consumer‑internet zeitgeist. Arshdeep is based in New Delhi, where she tracks breaking developments and longer‑horizon storylines that shape public discourse.

LiveMintMay 4

Read

general

22updates

statevisitsouth

Ram, Krishna & Shiv unite India, says Yogi

BMW M440i Convertible India Launch Price Rs 1.09 Crore CarLelo

CarLeloMay 4

Read

general

3updates

bengalassemblyfirst

Bengal polls: Calcutta HC cautions EC on preventive detentions

4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: May 1, 2026 10:28 AM IST Outside the EVM strong room at Khudiram Anushilan Kendra in Jorasanko Assembly constituency in West Bengal on Thursday. (Express photo by Partha Paul)Calcutta High Court news: The Calcutta High Court has dismissed a plea filed by the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) challenging the deployment of central government and PSU employees as counting supervisors and assistants in the West Bengal assembly elections, holding that the decision falls within the domain of the Election Commission and does not suffer from any illegality. Justice...

Indian ExpressMay 1

Read

general

2updates

exitopecuaes

UAE's Opec exit, decision to up crude output could help India

UAE's Opec exit, decision to up crude output could help India The Times of India

The Times of IndiaApr 29

Read

general

3updates

bengalwestresults

West Bengal Exit Poll Results LIVE: People's Pulse predicts TMC sweep; Matrize suggests BJP win | India News

West Bengal Exit Poll Results LIVE: People's Pulse predicts TMC sweep; Matrize suggests BJP win | India News Hindustan Times

Hindustan TimesApr 29

Read

You’ve read everything. Check back for new stories.