The BJP won 13 of 28 legislative council seats in polls held on October 23. Meanwhile, US vice president JD Vance reached out to Iran to discuss potential tensions. In Delhi, police beefed up security for the November 1 rally, deploying 3,000 personnel to manage crowds at the Ramlila Maidan.
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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday won 13 of the 28 legislative council seats that went to the polls across four states and the Congress won one as the Samajwadi Party made gains in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh and the Jan Suraaj Party opened its account in Bihar's upper House. The polls were held on October 23 through ballot papers but the counting process stretched over almost two days, marked by chaos, allegations and protest. Read more here.
When the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the special intensive revision in Bihar last year, it mentioned the "inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants" as one of the motivations for the exercise. Yet, in at least six states where SIR was completed or is ongoing, the number of suspected foreign nationals - roughly around 1,600 at least - detected till now is minuscule compared to the electorate and the scale of deletions, HT has found. In these states, the size of the electorate is 98.6 million. Know more here.
US vice president JD Vance has reportedly reached out to Mohsen Rezaei, a senior figure in Iran's Supreme National Security Council and a former longtime commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Vance sent a letter, at Trump's direction, to Rezaei, to explore whether Washington and Tehran could find enough common ground to persuade Trump not to give a final order for a short, intense attack on Iran in the coming weeks. Read more here.
All roads to Delhi's Ramlila Maidan will be heavily barricaded and manned to ensure people gathering at the venue for the Congress-led bloc's November 1 rally do not march towards Jantar Mantar and other restricted zones. The Ramlila contingency plan involves top leaders including Congress leader and the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi. A gate of the Ramlila Ground has been earmarked for safe evacuation, the officers said. Nearly 3,000 Delhi Police personnel will be deployed in and around the venue. Read more here.
A "radiological release" triggered a "site area emergency" response at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina, Wednesday evening, October 28. News 12 was told that it is not a danger to the public outside the vast SRS border. SRS reportedly explained that it was a fire in a single room at Savannah River National Laboratory. It was reported at 5:39 p.m., and there was "an unfiltered ground-level radiological release." The fire was subsequently extinguished. Read more here.