"Jai Shri Ram, Jai Shri Ram" -- the chant rang out loud in the heart of Gwalior this evening, as a heated confrontation unfolded between a police officer and a lawyer amid prohibitory orders and tightened security across the city. What started as a dispute over enforcing prohibitory orders, quickly turned into a dramatic face-off between senior police officer Hina Khan and advocate Anil Mishra. Both sides chanted of "Jai Shri Ram" before a stunned crowd. The atmosphere in Gwalior has been tense over the installation of a statue of BR Ambedkar at the Madhya Pradesh High Court premises. Though the Dalits have called off their protest march planned for October 15, a security blanket has been firmly spread over the city in view of earlier instances of caste conflict. According to eyewitnesses, advocate Mishra, former president of the lawyers' association, arrived with his supporters to recite Ramayan's Sundar Kand near Phoolbagh on Monday evening. Hina Khan ...
Exit polls that predicted a primacy of Congress in Chhattisgarh and Telangana and that of the BJP in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, have been hotly contested by both camps in states they were predicted to lose. While exit polls are known to get it wrong many a time, their predictions proved a touchy topic in this round of elections, seen as the semi-finals before next year's Lok Sabha polls. While the BJP doubled down on claims that they will win Madhya Pradesh, where many exit polls predicted a close fight, the Congress scoffed at the suggestion that they might not have a re-run of the 2018 victory. The party's government had collapsed two years later as its senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia crossed over to the BJP with 20-plus MLAs. Former Chief Minister Kamal Nath, who is helming the state Congress in Madhya Pradesh, declared that the country is run by "vision, not television". "Exit poll results are very diverse. We cannot say anything about it. I can assu...