08:27 Voting begins for final phase of Chhattisgarh poll:
Voting for the second and final phase of Chhattisgarh assembly elections began on Tuesday amid high security.
A total of 1079 candidates are contesting in the 72 constituencies of 19 districts in the state with an electorate of 1,54,00,596.
This is the last of the two-phase polls to the 90-member assembly where the Bharatiya Janata Party has been in power for the last 15 years.
“Voting begun at 7 am in two polling booths of Bindranavagarh constituency (Gariaband district), while in the remaining 72 booths, polling started at 8 am,” an election official said.
The time of polling in 72 constituencies is from 8 am to 5 pm except in two polling booths — Amamora (booth no. 72) and Modh (no.76) in Bindranavgarh where polling is being held from 7 am to 3 pm due to the threat posed by Naxals, he said.
Around 1.50 lakh security personnel have been deployed across the state to ensure peaceful polling, he said.
In the second phase, districts like Gariaband, Dhamtari, Mahasamund, Kabirdham, Jashpur and Balrampur are Naxal-affected areas and extra vigil was being maintained there, the official said.
The polling will take place in central and north Chhattisgarh, where 72 each from the BJP and Congress, are in the fray.
There are 119 women contestants while the maximum number of candidates are in Raipur city south constituency where 46 nominees are in the fray.
The least number of candidates are in Bindranavagarh seat 6.
The fate of the state assembly speaker Gaurishankar Agrawal (Kasdol constituency) and 9 ministers- Brijmohan Agrawal (Raipur city south seat), Rajesh Munat (Raipur city west), Amar Agrawal (Bilaspur), Bhaiyyalal Rajwade (Baikunthpur), Ramsevak Paikra (Pratappur), Punnulal Mohile (Mungeli), Prem Prakash Pandey (Bhilai Nagar), Dayaldas Baghel (Nawagarh) and Ajay Chandrakar (Kurud) besides party state president Dharamlal Kaushik (Bilha) will be decided in this phase.
Besides, Congress state chief Bhupesh Baghel (Patan constituency), leader of opposition TS Singhdeo (Ambikapur), Congress MP from Durg Lok Sabha seat Tamradhwaj Sahu (Durg rural), former union minister Charandas Mahant (Shakti) are among the key Congress candidates who are contesting in the final phase. — PTI
00:05 US paid Pak billions, they never said Osama was living there: Trump:
Continuing his tirade against Pakistan, US President Donald Trump on Monday said the US has paid Islamabad billions of dollars but it never told the Americans that the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was living in that country.
Trump had defended his administration’s decision to stop hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan for not doing enough to curb terrorism and criticised Islamabad for offering a hideout to Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the garrison city of Abbottabad.
“We paid Pakistan billions of dollars and they never told us he was living there. Fools!..,” Trump said in a tweet, a day after he told Fox News in an interview that Laden should have been captured long before.
“We no longer pay Pakistan the $Billions because they would take our money and do nothing for us, Bin Laden being a prime example, Afghanistan being another,” Trump said.
“They were just one of many countries that take from the United States without giving anything in return. That’s ENDING!” he said.
Beginning with a tweet on January 1, the US President has announced stop giving military and security assistance to Pakistan.
Trump believes that the Pakistan has been a reluctant partner of the US in the war against terrorism and that it has misused the US money.
Trump insisted that Bin laden should have been captured long time back before he was killed in a daring raid in Abbottabad.
“Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Centre. President Clinton famously missed his shot,” Trump said.
— PTI
Source: Rediff