The meeting of the Central Election Committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party was held on 18 March 2026. This meeting was presided over by Nitin Nabin. Other big leaders of the party including PM Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah were also present in the meeting. In this meeting, names of 9 candidates have been decided for Puducherry Assembly elections.

A from Mannadipet seat of Puducherry. Namasivayam has been made the candidate. E. Theppanathan has been given ticket from Ossudu (SC) seat. PML from Kalapet seat. Kalyanasundaram has been made the candidate. VP from Raj Bhawan seat. Ramalingam has got a chance. Similarly, A. from Mudaliarpet seat. John Kumar has been declared the candidate. Emblem R from Manaveli seat. Selvam has been given the ticket. GNS from Thirunallar seat. Rajasekaran has been made the candidate.

BJP’s preparation for Puducherry assembly elections
Neeravi-TR TKSM Meenakshisundaram has been made the candidate from Pattinam seat, while A. Dinesh has got the ticket. In this way BJP has further strengthened its preparations for the Puducherry Assembly elections. After the names of the candidates are revealed, the activities related to the elections are likely to intensify further. The election campaign here is going to intensify in the coming days. Voting for the assembly elections in Puducherry will be held on April 9 and the votes will be counted on May 4. Apart from this, assembly elections are also going to be held in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the date of which has been fixed. In this regard, different parties have released the names of candidates.

Puducherry Elections BJP released the list of 9 candidates for the upcoming elections in UT.

Puducherry Home Minister A. Namassivayam will contest from Mannadipet. pic.twitter.com/amOaUEXCaS

— ANI_HindiNews (@AHindinews) March 21, 2026

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The opposition has suffered a major setback in the Rajya Sabha elections. Voting for 11 Rajya Sabha seats took place on Monday (16 March 2026). During this period, voting took place on 5 seats in Bihar, 4 in Odisha and two in Haryana. In Bihar and Odisha, opposition parties were not successful in keeping their MLAs united, which benefited NDA. There were 6 candidates in the fray for 5 seats in Bihar. Of these, 5 candidates were from NDA and one candidate was from the opposition alliance Grand Alliance.

NDA won all 5 seats. The winning candidates include Nitish Kumar, Nitin Nabin, Ramnath Thakur, Upendra Kushwaha and Shivesh Ram. 41 votes were required to win the Rajya Sabha elections. NDA has 202 MLAs in the 243-member assembly, due to which it was falling short of 3 votes for the 5th seat. The Grand Alliance had 35 MLAs and needed 6 additional votes to win.

Opposition candidate AD Singh got a shock

Opposition candidate AD Singh was expected to win after the support of 5 AIMIM MLAs and one Bahujan Samaj Party MLA, but at the last moment, 4 opposition MLAs, including 3 Congress and 1 RJD MLA, did not turn up to cast their votes. After there was no decision in the first preference votes, the second preference was counted, in which BJP’s Shivesh Ram won. After this, the Grand Alliance accused BJP of intimidation and horse-trading of MLAs.

Election changed due to cross voting in Odisha

In Odisha, 5 candidates were in the fray for 4 seats and 30 votes were required for victory. Here BJP’s Manmohan Samal and Sujit Kumar won. Santrup Mishra of Biju Janata Dal was also successful in winning. The biggest upset happened when BJP-backed independent candidate Dilip Ray also won. In the 147-member assembly, BJD and Congress had enough votes to make their joint candidate Datteshwar Hota win, but 8 MLAs of BJD and 3 of Congress went against the party line and cross-voted in favor of Dilip Ray. After this, Naveen Patnaik accused BJP of horse-trading and talked about action against rebel MLAs.

BJP and Congress one seat each in Haryana

Voting was held for 2 seats in Haryana, but due to complaints of violation of voting secrecy, the counting of votes was halted for about 5 hours. In the end, Sanjay Bhatia of BJP and Karmaveer Boudh of Congress won one seat each. Independent candidate Satish Nandal had to face defeat. In the counting of votes, Sanjay Bhatia got 31 votes, Karmaveer Boudh got 28 votes and Satish Nandal got 27 votes. Congress candidate Karmaveer Boudh won by one vote.

Win unopposed on 26 seats

The Election Commission of India had last month announced elections for 37 Rajya Sabha seats from 10 states. Of these, voting was not held on 26 seats in 7 states because there was only one candidate and he was elected unopposed. These include leaders like Sharad Pawar, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Ramdas Athawale and Tiruchi Shiva.