Delhi Election Results Live Blog

Why is the election happening now just over a year since the previous state poll? You might not have noticed, but India’s capital city has not had an elected government since February last year when Arvind Kejriwal quit after just 49 days as chief minister. The national capital has since been under president’s rule, awaiting either a different government to take charge or another round of elections. Advertisement The first option proved difficult because no party had won a majority. The Bharatiya Janata Party came first followed by the Aam Aadmi Party leaving Congress a distant third. AAP formed a government with support from the Congress. After Mr. Kejriwal stepped down, no other coalition emerged. Months of consultations later, the state’s lieutenant governor recommended fresh elections in Delhi, which were held on Feb. 7. Results are announced today. The opinion polls and exit polls have had their say and given the lead to AAP. But they’ve been wrong before. Who do you think will win Delhi elections today? Picture AFP/Getty Images Advertisement Most exit polls released on Saturday suggested a comfortable majority for the Aam Aadmi Party. Some predicted a sweeping one. A poll by ABP News gave AAP a 17-seat lead over the BJP saying it would win 43 of 70 seats in Delhi’s legislative assembly. The poll said the BJP would trail with just 26 seats. Another poll, by the India Today media group, gave between 38 and 46 seats to AAP and only 19 to 27 to the BJP. If they hold true, this would be the first electoral bloody nose for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party since they stormed to power in federal elections in May. Advertisement Delhi has just outvoted itself. In 2013, a record 65.13% of voters cast a ballot. On Saturday, 67.11% of the 10 million registered voters turned out, breaking the previous year’s record. While close to 9 million people voted in the Delhi elections. The union territory and its nearby suburbs make one of the biggest clusters of humanity in the world. A World Bank Report last year put the region’s population at around 25 million people, ranking it the second-most populous city in the world after Tokyo. Delhi is likely to add another 10 million inhabitants in the next 16 years, the report said. The Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal was up early asking for people’s prayers on Twitter as Delhi awaits election results. BJP chief minister candidate Kiran Bedi spared a thought on Twitter for the poor hacks up at the break of dawn to cover the election results. “I don’t think anyone can envy the media profession,” she tweeted. According to most exit polls from Saturday’s vote, the Aam Aadmi Party is headed for victory in the state election when results are announced today. Exit polling can be unreliable in India but it’s worth looking at which ones got it right last time round during state elections in 2013. News 24 -Today’s Chanakya poll came the closest. It predicted the Aam Aadmi Party would win 31 seats. In fact, AAP won 28 of 70 seats and formed a government with support from the Congress party. Advertisement In the exit poll released Saturday, Chanakya predicted AAP would win a clear majority with 48 seats. An exit poll released by ABP News, a news station, and a survey conducted by Nielsen in 2013 predicted a slim majority for the Bharatiya Janata Party and only 15 seats for the upstart Aam Aadmi Party. The minimum number of seats required to govern the 70-member Delhi assembly is 36. For the 2015 election, the poll predicts AAP will do much better with 39 seats and the BJP will win between 37 to 28 seats. Advertisement When polls closed at 6 p.m. on Saturday, the more than 12,000 electronic voting machines were put under lock, key, CCTV, and police guard. Then, this morning, they were taken to 14 different counting centers that each have several counting halls where counting supervisors and their assistants press the “result button” on each machine. The layout inside a counting hall looks something like this. Advertisement Counting can run into several rounds and is sometimes repeated before the returning officer announces the winner and final tally for each candidate. Many observers said the campaign to capture control of Delhi was uglier than most political campaigns. There were a lot of personal attacks and some mud-slinging, often through pamphlets stuck in newspapers. As part of its campaign, the BJP built more than 1,000 selfie-with-Modi booths–many of them on the back of little trucks–which set up in shopping malls, parking lots and street corners across the state. They let people take selfies using an app that made it look like they were standing with the prime minister. The BJP says that over half a million selfies were taken at the booths. Unlike previous state elections, where Mr. Modi focused largely on his development agenda, the Indian Prime Minister ran a direct attack campaign against Mr. Kejriwal. In rallies, Mr. Modi accused the AAP leader of dishonestly accumulating money for his campaign. The allegations against AAP – that some of its funds come from shell companies involved in money laundering — have not been investigated. Yogendra Yadav, a senior AAP leader has said that the party would “investigate shady companies” giving it money. In the end, in this David and Goliath-style struggle, Mr. Modi came off as trying too hard to bring Mr. Kejriwal down. Advertisement Power and property shares fell Monday after exit polls over the weekend suggested the AAP could capture majority control of Delhi’s assembly. Some analysts and investors are worried that the party of the protesting politician Arvind Kejriwal could cause trouble for companies in the capital region. Power companies and property companies in particular could be hurt, analysts say, if Mr. Kejriwal comes to power and tries to implement policies to lower voters’ electricity bills and rents. Constituency: New Delhi Why it Matters: Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s former chief minister, is again running for office from the elite New Delhi constituency. In 2013, Mr. Kejriwal triumphed here, defeating the Congress party’s Sheila Dikshit, at the time the incumbent chief minister. This year, Mr. Kejriwal was challenged by the BJP’s Nupur Sharma, a former president of the Delhi University Student Union and a law graduate from the London School of Economics. Constituency: Krishna Nagar Advertisement Why it Matters: Kiran Bedi, the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, is contesting elections from east Delhi’s Krishna Nagar constituency. The constituency has been dominated by the BJP for more than two decades. A post-poll analysis by The Hindu, an Indian English-language daily newspaper, suggested that Saturday’s turnout in Krishan Nagar was about 72%, up from 68% in 2013. Constituency: Sadar Bazaar Why it Matters: The beleaguered Congress party’s star campaigner, Ajay Maken, a former member of parliament, is running from central Delhi’s Sadar Bazaar. In 2013, the Aam Aadmi Party won the seat — defeating a Congress party candidate who had won the seat since 1993. That didn’t take long. Vijender Gupta of the BJP is leading in Rohini, in outer Delhi, according to NDTV. The first lead in counting that began at 8a.m. with postal votes. While the Bharatiya Janata Party has been quick to say the Delhi elections are not a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first eight months in office, the ruling party was not shy about putting Mr. Modi’s photo on most campaign advertisements. But is this election a referendum on Modi? This question will be hotly debated in television studios and outside if the BJP loses the election. The party has credited a wave of support for Mr. Modi and his development agenda for its recent electoral victories. So, is a defeat in the center of power indicative of his waning popularity, or a comment on his government’s economic program? The BJP’s spokespeople have preempted this line of questioning. Shaina NC of the BJP said “results in Delhi can’t be linked to the Prime Minister’s work.” And the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate in Delhi, Kiran Bedi, said in televised statements last week that she would take responsibility for the party’s performance, an apparent effort to shield Mr. Modi from criticism. Advertisement To be sure, political analysts also say Mr. Modi remains overwhelmingly popular in other parts of the country and that Delhi’s elections reflect local issues rather than national preferences. Still, if the BJP loses, questions about whether the Modi wave is beginning to plateau will surface. Rakhi Bidlan of AAP is leading in Mangol Puri, outer Delhi according to NDTV and Somnath Bharti leads in Malviya Nagar. The BJP gets another lead in Janakpuri, central Delhi So, according to leads on T.V., it’s two all. Advertisement As counting began, hundreds of AAP supporters—from rickshaw-pullers to young students—gathered outside the party’s office in the western reaches of the capital. The song “Long Live Revolution” blasted from loudspeakers. Photo credit: Junho Kim for The Wall Street Journal Advertisement AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal seems unperturbed by early results showing a close race with the BJP. While waiting for election results he’s watching, and sharing, parody videos of himself. In its debut election, the Aam Aadmi Party had quite a showing. It won 28 of the 70 seats it contested. Most of the support, at the time, came from the southern and central parts of the national capital, home to the city’s upper and middle classes. But Mr. Kejriwal managed to leave these groups that backed him slightly miffed when he decided to quit office not even two months into the job. This time, analysts say, he is set to gain from the city’s poor and lower-income communities, or the “urban underdogs,” who seemed pleased with Mr. Kejriwal’s short stint as chief minister when he cut electricity and water prices. Advertisement The former police officer known for her fight against corruption might be a right fit for Indian politics. But she appears to have become a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Parachuted into the BJP just three weeks before the election, Ms. Bedi was quickly declared the party’s chief ministerial candidate. That decision set off discontent among the BJP’s longtime leaders who felt upstaged by the newcomer. If the polls are correct and the BJP don’t win today, Ms. Bedi could be made the scapegoat. Arvind Kejriwal’s campaign against corruption has not only been aimed at politicians and bureaucrats. The AAP has said it plans to cut power prices in Delhi in half by looking into the books of the big power companies for proof that they are pocketing too much profit. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief minister candidate, Kiran Bedi, made her name as a high-profile police woman. She worked in the narcotics bureau, the northeastern state of Mizoram and as inspector general of Tihar jail. Ms. Bedi is widely credited with turning around the jail and introducing significant reforms to the treatment of prisoners, including introducing yoga and meditation programs for inmates. Mr. Kejriwal too spent time in Tihar. He was arrested in 2014 and sent to the Delhi jail briefly after a senior BJP politician accused him of defamation. Mr. Kejriwal denies the allegations. There are nine more things you shouldn’t forget about Mr. Kejriwal here. Advertisement Mr. Kejriwal denies his party is left-leaning with a welfare-oriented bent. But his policies, including cheap electricity and free water, and his promise to take on Delhi’s large power distribution companies, have given AAP a pro-poor image. That used to be the Congress party’s territory. But exit polls suggested Congress has lost considerable ground among India’s poor communities and its sway with disadvantaged caste groups has declined. A poll by the India Today group suggested that support for the Congress in groups the organization classifies as “working class” and “lower middle class” has shrunk to roughly 16% while nearly 45% of such voters preferred AAP. Advertisement According to an exit poll by Today’s Chanakya, an Indian survey company, 55% of votes of Delhi’s lower castes went to AAP, with Congress getting less than 10%. Donations to AAP are rather like its political fortunes — up and down. After the party fared poorly in national elections, funding almost dried up. On one day in October last year just 713 rupees was donated to the party. But in recent weeks, as AAP has regained popularity among voters, donors have begun to open their wallets again and funding for the party has soared. At around 8:30 a.m. the common man’s Party was ahead in the earliest vote tallies, leading in the contests for 10 seats in the Delhi elections compared to BJP’s 9 seats Congress’s 2 seats. A key demographic that political pundits will be watching is the middle class vote. According to a study of the 2013 state elections in Delhi by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, a New Delhi-based think tank, a third of voters it classified as middle class – who earn between $250 and $380 a month – picked AAP. Some political analysts believed these voters had turned against Mr. Kejriwal after he quit just 49 days into his term as chief minister last year. Many of them had begun to see him as an anarchist and a rabble rouser. But, if AAP wins the kind of broad victory exit polls are projecting for it, it appears many among Delhi’s middle class may have wanted to give Mr. Kejriwal another chance. Advertisement While Arvind Kejriwal seemed to have become a bit more calm and confident in this campaign, in the run up to the previous election and even during his brief stint as chief minister of Delhi, he did not shy away from creating chaos. He led protests, staged a roadside sit-in and even called himself an anarchist. Vansh Saluja, a 19-year-old law-school student, is among those chanting slogans outside the Aam Aadmi Party’s office. “Modi should watch out,” he says of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose BJP is the main rival in the Delhi state elections. “The new India, the young India, doesn’t vote on caste or religion. AAP is the only party that didn’t campaign on those lines,” says Mr. Saluja. “That’s why I’m here.” Photo credit: Junho Kim for The Wall Street Journal Advertisement Some of the first shots fired in the battle between Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi—former anti-corruption movement buddies—were through Twitter. Not long after it was announced that the former police woman was running with the BJP for chief minister, Mr. Kejriwal took to Twitter to challenge her to a debate and then ask why she had blocked him. — Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 20, 2015 Advertisement To which Ms. Bedi responded… The television news station CNN-IBN Live says political pundits are claiming they will be able to call the election as early as 9 a.m. The station shows the Aam Aadmi Party leading in two constituencies with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress Party following with one each. Aam Aadmi party leader Somnath Bharti is currently leading from south Delhi’s Malviya Nagar constituency, according to NDTV. He became a controversial figure for actions he took as the state’s law minister during AAP’s brief period in power last year. He ordered police to search a house in Delhi’s Khirki Extension that he suspected was a brothel. Mr. Bharti and his aides detained four Ugandan women at the scene after police said they lacked a judicial warrant for a search. The episode stiffened ties between India and Uganda, and prompted some African immigrants to move out of the Indian capital. Sambit Patra, BJP spokesman, says “What I’m seeing definitely scares me.” This is what he’s seeing. AAP is leading in 20 seats. The party needs 35 to win a simple majority. The BJP has 10 early leads in the city and Congress five. Advertisement The December 2013 elections left the state with a hung assembly. Of the 70 seats, Aam Aadmi Party got 28 back then, Bharatiya Janata Party got 31, Congress got 08 and Janata Dal (United) and Shiromani Akali Dal got one each. There was also one independent candidate that won a seat. As the results come in it’s becoming clear that it will be hard for the BJP to catch up to AAP’s lead. WSJ columnist Sadanand Dhume tweets that the only question left is when the BJP will admit defeat. India’s many television news channels are all working hard. Even before results have come in, their screens are stuffed with statistics. Headline Today’s screen barely had space for the news anchor. If Congress proved to be an underperformer in the previous Delhi elections, it has been something of a non-entity in this one. The party, which governed Delhi for 15 years before the 2013 polls in the national capital, ran a lackluster campaign. It won a fourth of Delhi’s votes in the previous election – at the time that was considered a dismal performance for the party. This time around, its vote share could fall below 15%, exit polls say. Its tally of seats in the legislative assembly could drop from 8 to below 5. The reason? Polls show Congress may have lost support among its most-loyal constituencies: the city’s poor and Muslim residents. Advertisement Delhi has been waiting for an election for nearly a year since Mr. Kejriwal stepped down as chief minister in February 2014. The BJP could have called for one at any time after it swept the national vote in May last year. Mr. Modi and his team may have waited too long and missed the Modi wave. Political analysts say the BJP would have been better-placed if it had gone to the polls in Delhi shortly after the nationwide vote in which the party won a historic victory. AAP, on the other hand, won only four of 543 seats in that election and lost all seven seats in Delhi. The fledgling party looked weak and out of depth then. But in the months that followed, it regrouped to prepare for the Delhi vote. Advertisement Mr. Kejriwal lasted 49 days as chief minister of Delhi before he resigned after not being able to pass anticorruption legislation. His party has since tried to use that short stint as a selling point. AAP has tried to remind voters of what he did during those 49 days and promised that if elected again, he’ll stay in office for five years. They’ve even written a song about it titled “Paanch Saal Kejriwal” or “Five Years Kejriwal.” First, it would put the brakes on the BJP’s winning spree. Since the party won a landslide victory in national elections in May, it has won state elections in Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra as it seeks to expand its base outside its traditional strongholds. Second, a loss would hamper Mr. Modi’s efforts to consolidate his party’s position in the upper house of India’s Parliament where his political opponents, who are in the majority there, are obstructing his policies. Third, it would come as a personal embarrassment for Mr. Modi, who campaigned extensively in this election and governs the country from Delhi, and dent his image as India’s most-popular leader in recent years. Advertisement Fourth, it could embolden opposition parties at the federal level and in states, where his political dominance has overshadowed other political players. Political analyst Navnita Chadha Behera, professor in the department of political science at Delhi University, said the outcome of the Delhi election “would have major implications far beyond the boundaries of the capital city.” “A victory for the BJP would reaffirm Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s countrywide popularity,” she said. On the other hand, a win for AAP, which has put up a spirited campaign under the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal, “would be the first major setback for Mr. Modi” in the nine months since he won the national election,” Ms. Behera said. “The AAP’s victory would stop the Modi juggernaut.” Advertisement For the first time, Delhi is witnessing a direct two-way contest between the Bharatiya Janata Party and Aam Aadmi Party. The Congress party, which ruled Delhi for 15 years until December 2013, has trailed badly this time in exit polls. We read AAP’s manifesto so you don’t have to. High on its agenda is to pass the Jan Lokpal bill, the anti-corruption legislation that Mr. Kejriwal couldn’t get through the assembly in 2014, leading to his resignation as chief minister. Read five other things to expect from an Aam Aadmi government. Advertisement Sandeep Shastri, a political analyst on CNN-IBN said that so far it looks like the Aam Aadmi Party did a better job of choosing new candidates this time. Early results suggest that AAP is winning in the constituencies where AAP picked different candidates than those that ran in 2013. The Bharatiya Janata Party has not done as well with its new candidates. The Election Commission’s official website just flashed the first preliminary results, showing that AAP’s Som Dutt is leading in the central Delhi constituency of Sadar Bazar. Ajay Maken, who led the campaign for the Congress party, is trailing there by more than 3,400 votes. Meanwhile, television news channels are projecting a big overall lead for AAP. NDTV says AAP is leading in 32 of 70 assembly constituencies. Advertisement He was rarely photographed without it during his first campaign for Delhi. He even held meetings with his ministers in the boxy, blue vehicle. But Arvind Kejriwal’s trusty WagonR—the car that connected him with the common man—has been out of the picture in recent weeks. Did it break down? Has he started using Uber instead? We want to know—what happened to the WagonR? Advertisement A smile, a wave and a brief appearance by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi. Ms. Bedi spoke briefly from the balcony of a residence where she said the state election results are not a referendum on her party’s performance in the national government. She says “the defeat is mine and not a reflection of the party.” Ms. Bedi is contesting from Krishna Nagar, where she is leading, according to CNN-IBN and NDTV news stations. Advertisement After national elections in May, Arvind Kejriwal—who used to make headlines daily—all but disappeared from the media. The tally of the total number of English news articles he was mentioned on in on Factiva shows he was largely ignored during the second half of 2014. He started making a comeback however in early January. Early results being broadcast on NDTV suggest that AAP is ahead on the votes for 36 seats giving it a majority at around 9:00 a.m. while BJP is only ahead on 12 seats. Meanwhile the Congress party is ahead in the races for 4 of the 70 Delhi assembly seats. Rajiv Jain, 40, and his wife, Samta, who run a jewelry shop, are among scores of people who have skipped a day of work to volunteer at the Aam Aadmi Party office. They say they are frustrated by how long it took to obtain licenses and permits to set up their small business. “At every step, we had someone asking for money to get the job done,” Mr. Jain says. He voted for Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP because it has its roots in India’s 2012 anticorruption movement. “All we want is a corruption-free Delhi.” Photo credit: Junho Kim for The Wall Street Journal Advertisement India’s stock market braced for another weak day as the Aam Aadmi Party looked likely to get majority in Delhi state elections. The benchmark S&P Sensex index has already lost 5% in the last week after various exit polls showed the Bharatiya Janata Party trailing in the race to govern the national capital. It ended down 1.7% Monday. “Traders are disappointed and shocked as the market was not expecting this kind of verdict,” said Vinod Nair, head of fundamental research at Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services. An AAP win will likely hit power and real-estate companies operating in the Delhi region, analysts said. has promised to cut electricity tariffs. The Cricket World Cup is on, but all eyes are on India’s real national sport—elections, tweets Anand Mahindra, chairman and managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd: Trends on the Election Commission website look good for Aam Aadmi. AAP is now leading in 24 constituencies, according to the commission, including east Delhi’s Krishna Nagar, from where the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, Kiran Bedi, is running for office. Ms. Bedi is almost 300 votes behind AAP’s S.K. Bagga. Take a look at this pie chart from the Election Commission, which shows the vote-share for each party as vote-counting continues. Advertisement Author Chetan Bhagat said the pin-striped suit which Prime Minister Narendra Modi wore during President Barack Obama’s visit in January is partly to blame for the defeat that the Bharatiya Janata Party is facing in the Delhi election. “That suit has not gone down well,” said Mr. Bhagat on a local television broadcast. The gold stripes in Mr. Modi’s navy blue Indian jacket and pants were not simple stitching. They were Mr. Modi’s name. Over and over again, the lines repeated the name: Narendra Damodardas Modi. Mr. Modi’s middle name is his father’s first name. Advertisement From just a few dozen volunteers this morning to scores of supporters now, the scene outside the Aam Aadmi Party office has begun to resemble that of a crowded Indian festival. Loudspeakers blast revolutionary tunes in the background, while supporters light firecrackers to celebrate the party’s lead. Photo credit: Junho Kim for The Wall Street Journal Advertisement Rajdeep Sardesai, a journalist on the Headlines Today television news station, says the results coming in show that both high-income and low-income neighborhoods in Delhi have voted for the Aam Aadmi Party. Promising subsidies for the poor—such as reduced electrical bills, and increased water supplies in areas without running water—may have worked in favor of AAP, says Mr. Sardesai. “What we said, we can deliver over the next five years,” says Meera Sanyal, an AAP spokeswoman. In the 2013 assembly election, predominantly central and south Delhi voted for AAP—that is, mostly middle to upper-class neighborhoods. Advertisement The BJP is starting to spin the results that show AAP in the lead. “This is a localized election,” said BJP Spokesman G.V. L. Narsimha Rao. “We have not been in power in Delhi for nearly 16 or 17 years, Delhi is not an easy ground for the BJP. Were this a national poll we would have swept it. This is a referendum on Kejriwal, people wanted to give him a chance. They somehow have good memories of the 49 days [he was in power.]” Advertisement Celebrations are in full swing at the Aam Aadmi Party office. According to the Election Commission, the party is leading in 41 of the Delhi’s 70 assembly constituencies. Photo credit: Junho Kim for The Wall Street Journal Advertisement West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted congratulations to Arvind Kejriwal as election results seem to indicate a clean sweep for the Aam Aadmi Party. Ms. Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress Party and other regional parties have thrown their weight behind AAP in recent weeks. Trinamool will face its own challenge from the BJP in 2016 when the state goes to the polls. The Aam Aadmi Party is now leading in 49 seats of 70 in the Delhi assembly, according to data available on the website of NDTV. That’s a seat each for the 49 days of AAP’s last term in power. It suggests that Arvind Kejriwal’s apology for his previous 49-day-only government may have paid off. Photo credit: Junho Kim for The Wall Street Journal Advertisement Congress says there is no anger against the party. Congress is leading in just two of 70 seats, reducing the party to a complete non-entity. Randeep Singh Surjewala, a spokesman for the Congress, says the party’s “younger leadership needed a little time to find their feet.” But, Mr. Surjewala adds, “There is no anger against the Congress party per se.” Advertisement “The weather has changed in Delhi. The broom has swept the lotus away,” an Aam Aadmi Party supporter announces, a reference to the rival BJP’s party symbol. The crowd goes wild. Party volunteers begin handing out brooms, the electoral symbol of the AAP, to excited supporters. “Come, let’s clean up the mess in Delhi,” a young supporter screams. Advertisement The counting of votes for Delhi election should be over by 12 p.m. “We should know who will form the next Delhi government by early afternoon,” an official at India’s election commission said. At 9:25 a.m., Election Commission results showed the Aam Aadmi Party leading in races for 41 of Delhi’s 70 assembly seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party was leading in seven constituencies. The Congress party, which held power in Delhi for 15 years before losing elections in December 2013, was trailing everywhere. Advertisement Yogendra Yadav, a senior AAP leader and one of the party’s more professorial voices (perhaps because he is a professor), said Delhi has seen a wave in favor of his party. “The polls have turned out right, we underestimated,” he said, speaking on NDTV. “It’s a wave—it’s not just an underclass that voted for AAP, it’s the middle class as well. The [BJP] juggernaut seems to have halted at least for the moment.” He criticized Mr. Modi for making the vote a “referendum on himself.” But Mr. Yadav cautioned that hype could be damaging for the party going forward. “The hype around AAP actually damaged us last time,” he said. Advertisement Questions are being asked on the television station CNN-IBN about the status of Congress as a national party as the party trails Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Delhi election. The news station shows zero seats for Congress with the BJP leading in around 10 seats and AAP leading with more than 50 seats. “There is something called incumbency and that has affected us,” says Brijesh Kalappa, Congress party spokesman. Advertisement Manmohan Singh’s former spokesman, Pankaj Pachauri, congratulated the Aam Aadmi Party for its looming victory in the Delhi elections. The former Congress-led government’s spokesman had nothing to say about dismal showing by the Congress in the election. The Aam Aadmi Party had a poor showing in 2013 in south Delhi’s Badapur constituency, where it lost to the BJP by more than 20,000 votes. This year, Badarpur seems to be the constituency where AAP has managed to climb the ladder to the top in the most spectacular manner. Its candidate, Narayan Dutt Sharma, is leading by more than 21,000 votes. As counting continues, this seems to be the maximum margin the AAP has managed among the 55 constituencies where it is leading. Advertisement The Times Now television broadcast is reporting protests outside the Congress party’s office, including chants of “Bring Priyanka back.” Priyanka Gandhi is the daughter of Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi and the late Rajiv Gandhi, prime minister from 1984 to 1989. Her great-grandfather was independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. Her grandmother, Indira Gandhi, served as prime minister for 15 years in two stints. But it is her brother, Rahul, who is the vice-president of the Congress party. “The only hope for the Congress party is Priyanka Gandhi,” says Arnab Goswami, a journalist on Times Now. The latest numbers suggest that AAP could win more than 80% of the seats of the Delhi Assembly. The NDTV tally at around 10:00 a.m. shows AAP leading on a whopping 59 out of the 70 seats. The BJP is a distant second, leading in 10 seats while Congress was ahead on no seats. When Arvind Kejriwal first ran for office from the elite New Delhi constituency, he zoomed past Delhi’s three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit by more than 25,800 votes. While counting is still in progress, Mr. Kejriwal’s lead doesn’t seem as impressive as last time, he’s heading the charts with about 3,500 votes more than his immediate competitor from the Bharatiya Janata Party. Nonetheless, his party is on a great run leading in 58 of the 70 assembly seats, according to the Election Commission. The official vote-share of individual parties, as it stands now. Advertisement Arvind Kejriwal has given his first interview since results showed his party was leading in state polls. According to NDTV, Mr. Kejriwal said he was “the people’s chief minister.” “This is not my election it was the people’s election, I will show that the people are with me,” Mr. Kejriwal was quoted by the TV channel as saying. Advertisement Asked about his priorities, Mr. Kejriwal was quoted as saying: “I will end bribery. I will end the culture of bribery. I will be everybody’s chief minister.” Nalin Kohli, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party, said the party “certainly did not do as expected.” “We will concede defeat, just a matter of time,” Mr. Kohli said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The final results are expected to be announced by noon. A defeat would be a major blow for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP, which is in power at the national level and had campaigned energetically to win in the national capital. Advertisement The Aam Aadmi Party has begun celebrating its lead in a quintessentially Indian way: by rolling out a dholak, or a traditional Indian drum. Housewives clad in saris and domestic workers holding brooms, AAP’s symbol, are among those dancing to the beats. Photo credit: Junho Kim for The Wall Street Journal Advertisement Politician Shazia Ilmi, who moved officially to the Bharatiya Janata Party from the Aam Aadmi Party just weeks before the Delhi election, congratulated the AAP on the party’s lead as vote-counting continued. “We should accept the result with humility,” she said moments ago on the Times Now television station, where she was bombarded with questions from journalist Arnab Goswami. “We want to know whether you took the right decision to switch,” he asked her. Ms. Ilmi said that AAP party chief Arvind Kejriwal “asked me to leave the party.” BJP chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi tweeted her congratulations to former colleague and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal. “Now take Delhi to the heights it belongs to,” she tweeted. At 10:36 a.m. Ms. Bedi was trailing in her constituency Krishna Nagar. Ajit Jain, a cardiosurgeon, is helping manage the swelling crowd outside the Aam Aadmi Party office. He says he was motivated to lend a helping hand after AAP leader, Arvind Kejriwal, dived into politics. “He was a tax officer, leading a comfortable life. There was no need to get his hands dirty. He still did,” Dr. Jain says, his stethoscope flung around his neck. “He is one of us. If we professionals don’t come out and support him, it’s a real shame.” “This is not a victory for the Aam Aadmi Party,” Yogendra Yadav, a senior AAP leader, says outside the party office. “It is a victory for the aam aadmi,” or common man. The crowd roars. “Hail India,” they chant in unison. Best-selling author Chetan Bhagat apologized on Twitter for mocking the Aam Aadmi Party in the past. Mr. Bhagat is particularly popular among India’s young people, who voted for AAP in droves. Mr. Bhagat instead turned his sharp tongue toward the BJP, noting that the party’s contingent in the Delhi state legislature looks to be so small, it could travel together in a single minivan. Of the 70 seats in Delhi’s state assembly, the BJP is now leading in only three, according to latest numbers from the Election Commission — and the Aam Aadmi party is looking to win in 66. The Congress party appears nowhere in the tally. In this picture, AAP supporters celebrate the stellar lead in 66 seats. Photo credit: Junho Kim for The Wall Street Journal Advertisement Yogendra Yadav, spokesman for the Aam Aadmi Party who specializes in psephology, the study and analysis of elections, said his party had was set to halt the Bharatiya Janata Party’s “juggernaut.” Juggernaut is a word with origins in Indian history. The mid 19th-century term describes a large or heavy vehicle, or something with overwhelming force. It comes from the giant wheels of chariots carrying the Hindu deity Krishna that are annually rolled during a procession from the Jagannath temple in the state of Orissa. Advertisement The BJP is leading in three seats, meaning that the MLAs could share an auto-rickshaw to work. The Bharatiya Janata Party looks set to lose so badly in the election, it might not qualify for the right to name the official opposition leader in Delhi’s state assembly. The BJP’s drubbing in the election appears to be leaving it with fewer than 10% of the 70 seats in the state legislative assembly. So, even though it would be the second-largest party in Delhi’s state assembly, behind the Aam Aadmi Party, its share of seats would be too small to qualify as official opposition leader. “The general rule is to get 10% of the seats in the state assembly, or a minimum of 10 seats,” constitutional expert Subhash C. Kashyap said. At 10:55 a.m., the BJP was leading in three seats in Delhi’s 70-seat state assembly. The AAP was leading in 66 seats, according to Election Commission of India website. Advertisement Rajeev Talwar, managing director of India’s largest property company, DLF Ltd., welcomed Arvind Kejriwal’s victory in Delhi. “It’s a change in the nation, a new generation is coming in,” he said. Mr. Talwar said that any result in a democratic election is worth applauding, “as long as we also develop the economy.” Advertisement Property and power shares have been sliding this week on concerns about AAP’s win. Investors and analysts are worried that Delhi’s new ruling party’s suspicion of big, profitable companies could lead to restrictions on how property and power companies do business in the capital. The shares of DLF had fallen as much as 2% Tuesday morning. Manish Sisodia, a member of the Aam Aadmi Party who is contesting the Delhi state election says “it is a victory for honesty” as latest numbers suggest that AAP could win more than 90% of the seats. Mr. Sisodia, who is contesting from the Patparganj constituency, is leading by 10,000 votes, according to the Election Commission of India. AAP party chief Arvind Kejriwal in his first interview since results showed his party was leading vowed to “end the culture of bribery,” according to the Indian channel NDTV. Advertisement With just three candidates leading in the Delhi assembly race, the BJP is “now a ‘Nano’ party with enough room for a chauffeur,” one joker quips–a reference to that most un-BJP of rides, the diminutive Tata Nano. The stretch leading up to the Aam Aadmi Party’s headquarters is now flooded with a sea of supporters. Doctors, teachers, day-laborers and domestic workers are among those shouting slogans praising party leader, Arvind Kejriwal. “Paanch saal Kejriwal. Paanch saal Kejriwal,” the crowd chants, which, in English, loosely translates to “Kejriwal for five years.” Five years is the tenure of a chief minister in Delhi. Advertisement The daughter of India’s President Pranab Mukherjee, Sharmishtha Mukherjee, ran her debut election this year from south Delhi’s Greater Kailash constituency. She represented the Indian National Congress, which might help you guess how she has fared. According to the most recent numbers from the Election Commission, Ms. Mukherjee is way behind both the AAP and BJP candidates. Last year, the seat went to AAP’s Saurabh Bharadwaj, who is currently leading with more than 42,000 votes. Indian activist Anna Hazare described the Delhi election results as “a defeat for Narendra Modi.” He congratulated Arvind Kejriwal on his party’s victory in the assembly election and said Mr. Kejriwal “must not forget the anti-corruption campaign and should work for public benefit.” He said the BJP made promises to tackle corruption but “didn’t fulfill them.” “People believe Arvind will fight for them,” he said on CNN-IBN television news channel Tuesday. Mr. Hazare shot to public attention and became an icon for India’s middle classes when he went on a hunger strike in 2011 to demand tough anti-corruption laws and in particular a law to create an ombudsman to deal with allegations of corruption. He advised Mr. Kejriwal to remain simple. “The more you remain simple, the more people will have faith in you,” Mr. Hazare said. Advertisement John P. Brennan whose Twitter handle is @BJP said he was getting “blown up” with mentions on the micro blogging site on Tuesday. “It’s that time of the year again: Elections in India. I am getting blown UP with mentions. #BJP” The official Twitter handle for the Bharatiya Janata Party is @BJP4India Advertisement One assumes he was bombarded by tweets when the BJP led by Indian Prime Minister swept the national election in May. The party is set to take a drubbing in the Delhi election, with a lead in only three seats. AAP Chief Arvind Kejriwal has just made an appearance outside the party headquarters. “When you walk on the path of truth, the whole universe gets together to make good things happen,” Mr. Kejriwal says. The crowd cheers. Advertisement An Aam Aadmi Party-composed song, playing in loop outside the party headquarters, sings about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s relationship with India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. “Do you want a leader that sells the country to the Ambanis?” the song asks in Hindi, “or do you want an honest Kejriwal?” Aam Aadmi Party Chief Arvind Kejriwal has criticized Mr. Ambani in the past as well. Mr. Ambani’s company, Reliance Industries, has previously denied any wrongdoing on its part or its chairman’s. Advertisement Amid a shower of flower petals and loud booms, presumably from celebratory crackers or dodgy sound system, Arvind Kejriwal speaks to supporters cheering him on as counting continues for the Delhi state election and shows the party leading in 90% of the seats. “Delhi has given us such an overwhelming majority,” he says in Hindi using the word ‘bahumat’ which is used interchangeably to describe mandate and majority. “I alone cannot do anything. I am a very small man,” he says adding that he is “hopeful” that the people of Delhi will help him make the state “a place where the rich and poor peacefully co-exist.” Advertisement Mr. Kejriwal thanks his father and introduces his wife who folds her hands as a gesture of thanks to the crowd. Mr. Kejriwal says: “I could not have done it without her.” He takes a dig at the competing BJP and the Congress party. Both parties are trailing AAP by massive margins. “Today, the BJP and Congress lost out because of their ego,” Mr. Kejriwal adds. Even if the BJP can’t win the minimum seven seats needed to qualify as the official opposition leader in the Delhi state assembly, the Aam Aadmi Party will let the BJP hold the post, tweeted Kumar Vishwas, a senior AAP figure. It’s not the first time this kind of issue has arisen in Indian politics in the past year or so. Last year, when the BJP trounced the Congress party in national elections, the BJP resisted Congress’s claim to be the official opposition leader in Parliament. In that race, Congress failed to win the minimum number of seats needed to qualify. Advertisement The Election Commission just flashed the Aam Aadmi Party’s first two official wins: in Adarsh Nagar, in Delhi’s north west and Ambedkar Nagar in the city’s south. AAP’s Pawan Kumar Sharma and Ajay Dutt have won the two seats. Both Mr. Sharma and Mr. Dutt were party volunteers before they were nominated to contest elections this year. A landslide victory by the Aam Aadmi Party is a very serious reminder to the major political parties, policy makers and even India Inc. that a new aspirational class lies at the bottom of pyramid and not the conventional middle class, says Rana Kapoor, founder of Yes Bank Ltd. (532648.BY) and the president of industry lobby group ASSOCHAM. “This aspirational class are the backbone of the Indian economy but somehow has felt left out of the mainstream,” says Mr. Kapoor. They are now asserting themselves and they have no patience, he says. As Congress heads for another electoral drubbing, the party issued a statement on Rahul Gandhi’s behalf. “The people of Delhi have chosen the Aam Aadmi Party and we respect that,” said Mr. Gandhi, according to the statement. Mr. Gandhi has faced criticism for his failure to be a more public face for the party. Reliance Industries Ltd. is trading down 0.5% at 893.05 rupees. The stock started falling from 899.75 rupees at 12.09 India time, exchange data showed, just after it was clear that the anti-corruption-agenda driven Aam Aadmi Party was winning in Delhi state assembly elections. The stock has been roughly volatile in pre-noon trade. The party’s leader Arvind Kejriwal has targeted Mukesh Ambani, founder of Reliance Industries. The company has previously denied wrongdoing on its part or its chairman’s and on Tuesday declined to comment on AAP’s victory. Advertisement Most of the exit polls that came out after voting ended on Saturday, correctly caught the swing of voters towards the Aam Aadmi Party but none predicted the magnitude of the popularity of the party’s candidates. Exit polls that came out over the weekend predicted that AAP would win, with a comfortable majority with somewhere around 40 of the 70 seats of the Delhi assembly. Instead it looks like the common man’s party could win 65 seats. As the Bombay Stock Exchange rebounds, Anand Mahindra said AAP’s message isn’t anti-business. Mr. Mahindra is chairman of the Mahindra Group conglomerate. A government “promising clean governance bodes well for ease of doing business in the territory. Hence market rebounding makes sense,” he tweeted. The Bharatiya Janata Party accepted defeat as the vote-count trends showed the Aam Aadmi Party headed toward a landslide victory. “The results indicate that we failed to convey our message of development to the people of Delhi,” BJP national spokesman Praveen Shankar Kapoor told The Wall Street Journal. “We accept defeat and will introspect the reasons behind it,” he said. A market next to the Aam Aadmi Party headquarters is abuzz with news of the party’s electoral win. Shatrugan Rai, a 49-year-old driver who migrated from the state of Bihar decades ago, says Kejriwal is one of the few leaders who delivered on his party promises. “All other parties coerce us poor people into voting for them. They make false promises to us desperate people.” In the 49 days that Mr. Kejriwal was chief minister in 2013, his party halved electricity charges and significantly bought down water prices. “He actually did what he said,” Mr. Rai says. “If he keeps at it, he can become prime minister one day.” Advertisement Arti Verma, a 19-year-old student standing nearby, agrees. “He certainly has prime minister potential,” she says. Delhi’s auto rickshaw and taxi drivers are a sizeable voting bloc. This time, they backed Congress. “We had asked our members to vote for the Congress party this time because AAP didn’t fulfill the promises they made in the last election when we had wholeheartedly supported them and they won,” said Kishan Verma, president of Federation of All Delhi Auto Taxi Transporters Congress, which has about 45,000 members. Mr. Verma said the union has already congratulated Mr. Kejriwal and is hoping that the new chief minister will implement measures such as installing CCTV cameras in various parts of the city, proper parking stands for auto rickshaws and taxis and better education of children from lower-income homes. Advertisement “I’m a defeated candidate today,” says Kiran Bedi, who was the BJP’s choice for chief minister in the city. Ms. Bedi conceded defeat in the Krishna Nagar constituency where she was parachuted in just three weeks ago. Advertisement Now they’ve won, what can we expect the Aam Aadmi Party to do when they take power? We read the AAP manifesto so you don’t have to. The party says it wants to cut electricity prices in half, provide clean water at an affordable price, introduce self-rule at the hyper-local level and improve safety for women. Advertisement It will also create a 10,000-strong women’s security force made up of people currently working as cooks, cleaners and drivers for government officials, according to its manifesto. More on what to expect from the AAP government here. Arvind Kejriwal thanked his wife, Sunita after his victory was announced and retweeted a picture of the couple embracing after the Aam Aadmi Party’s landslide in Delhi. You could say Arvind Kejriwal broke up with Delhi on Valentine’s Day in 2014 when he stepped down as chief minister 49 days into his five-year term. But voters have given him another chance and this year, also on Valentine’s day that falls on Saturday, Mr. Kejriwal will reaffirm his allegiance to the city when he is sworn in as chief minister once again. Mr. Kejriwal will take oath at Ramlila Maidan, an open air meeting ground, according to the Press Trust of India. The venue is the same as his last swearing-in ceremony. Advertisement The song that defined the Aam Aadmi Party’s 2015 Delhi state election campaign can be heard blaring from speakers at the party’s headquarters where hundreds have gathered to celebrate on Tuesday. Supporters can be seen waving the Indian flag, posters, banners and brooms – the party’s symbol. They are also holding up giant cut-outs of the face of AAP party leader Arvind Kejriwal. The song called “Five Years Kejriwal” or “Paanch Saal Kejriwal” was composed by Bollywood music producer Vishal Dadlani. From the ring tone for AAP’s phone lines to blaring from loudspeakers in the congested lanes of Delhi’s old quarters, the song seemed to be everywhere during the election campaign. Advertisement Listen to the song here. Mr. Dadlani, the song’s composer said in a tweet he was boarding a flight from Mumbai to Delhi to join celebrations after it become clear that AAP was set to win the state polls by a landslide. Indian shares recovered from early losses as investors have already factored in the win of Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi state elections. The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex is now trading up 0.6% at 28,395.75 after falling as much as 0.6% in early morning trade. “The AAP impact is gradually fading out and investors are shifting their focus back to reforms process and the Budget session,” said Neeraj Dewan, director at Quantum Securities. Advertisement The Sensex index had lost 5% in the past one week after exit polls showed Bharatiya Janata party will likely lose the Delhi election. However, some of the stocks related to billionaire Ambani brothers were still trading lower as AAP’s leader Arvind Kejriwal had targeted them previously. Reliance Industries Ltd. was down 1.5%, while Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. fell 0.2%. Delhi has witnessed the birth of planet AAP today. The party, at 4.55 p.m. had won 66 seats and was leading in the one remaining seat. BJP won in three seats. Delhi’s assembly has 70 seats. There has been a tectonic shift in Delhi’s voting patterns over the last three elections. Congress–which was the dominant player for decades, eclipsing all others with more than 43 seats seven years ago—saw its supporter base deflate and then disappear in the last two elections. Advertisement The Bharatiya Janata Party had a solid foothold in 2008. It built on that in 2013 only to be beaten back by AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal’s popularity. In the Delhi assembly this time, the BJP’s trio of assembly members is barely a moon circling around planet AAP. The AAP did not even exist seven years ago. To see just how it has expanded click here. That’s it folks. A momentous day for Delhi and Indian politics that saw the Aam Aadmi Party overtake the capital’s assembly with a resounding result that has left political pundits all out of adjectives to describe its significance. Thanks for following our live blog as we’ve brought you results, analysis and images from the day. Follow @WSJIndia and like us on Facebook to keep up to date with Indian news, politics and culture.

Delhi polls LIVE: 63 percent voting till 5 pm, turnout inching towards record

6.10 pm: Sex workers exercise their voting rights in Delhi The polling booth at the historical Anglo Arabic Model School built in 1632, suddenly got abuzz at 2 pm, as hundreds of sex workers from Delhi’s red-light area GB Road (now Shraddhanand Marg) came in groups to exercise their voting rights, reported Firstpost's Debobrat Ghose. Besides, Matia Mahal assembly constituency has a sizeable Muslim population, who came with families. According to the presiding electoral officer of the booth, by 3.30 pm, the average voting touched 55%. “By the closing of the day, it’s expected to cross 60%. The voting gained momentum only after 2 pm, and now there is a steady flow of voters.”This Matia-Mahal booth in Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha constituency, which is close to GB Road, drew attention since 2008 onwards, as sex workers got voting rights and started exercising it. “I voted in 2013 Assembly election and 2014 General Election after my voters’ ID card was made. It’s an important move for sex workers,” said a sex worker on condition of anonymity. A brothel owner echoed a similar view. Due to social stigma, many sex-workers kept their faces partially covered, while in queue. “1500 sex workers have got voters ID card and they will cast vote. Around 2000 cards are in pipeline,” said Shahzad Ahmad. 5.27 pm: 63 percent voting takes place till 5 pm According to TV reports, 63 percent polling took place in the Delhi elections till 5 pm, as the voter turnout is now inching towards a record. According to Times Now, the voter turnout was 63.46 percent till 5 pm. 5.08 pm: Voting to be extended by an hour, say reports The polling for Delhi elections will be extneded by an hour due to the long lines of voters, according to reports. Meanwhile, a BJP core group is currently meeting at 7RCR, Delhi which includes PM Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, according to Times Now. 4.30 pm: 'Hope AAP will give BJP something to think about' Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah today voiced hope that the Aam Aadmi Party will give BJP "something to think about" in Delhi which is voting to elect its Assembly. Omar wished good luck to the voters in Delhi. "Good luck voting today Delhi. Aap achay say vote ka istemal karen (Cast your vote cleverly) ;-) ;-) #Delhi2015," he tweeted. He also said it clearly demonstrates the writing on the wall when the political parties accuse their opponents of playing dirty tricks on the poll day. 3.40 pm: Over 40% voting till 2 pm, EC confident of record polling The Election Commission today said that polling in the Delhi Assembly election could well cross the 65% mark as voters were still coming out and participating in the election process. "We expect at least 70% voting by 6 pm," Chief Election Commissioner HS Brahma told reporters. 3.20 pm: Congress will come through, it has faced difficulties before: Priyanka Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi today conceded her party was facing a tough election but maintained that it will come through as they have faced difficulties in the past. "I think it's definitely an important opponent in this election.. Congress has faced difficulties before and it has always come through, I'm sure it will come through," Priyanka Gandhi. 2.50 pm: Amit Shah calls for top leadership meeting at 7 pm BJP chief Amit Shah has called for a meeting at 7 pm this evening which is likely to be attended by key BJP leaders. With the BJP camp nervous about an AAP win, the meeting will discuss exit-poll results which will be released this evening, among other things. 2.45 pm: EC should make provisions for visually impaired Sharda Devi is blind by birth, but that does deter her from voting. At the St Columbus School booth of the New Delhi constituency her husband Ranjit Dutta makes her press the EVM button. "Since, I cannot see, my husband always ensures that I cast my vote as per my choice. He takes me to EVM machines and tell me the order of symbols of different political party on the voting machine. He helps me press the button of my choice," the 58-year-old woman told Firstpost complaining that the Election Commission does make any arrangement that can enable visually impaired vote on their own. - Tarique Anwar "The EC should design visually impaired-friendly EVMs so that we can vote without any help," she puts forth.Ranjit said, "We are poor people and we vote on issues like price rise. We want a stable government which can spare time to think about us." 2.25 pm: Kiran Bedi confident of BJP victory, says high voter turnout will help her Exuding confidence of a BJP victory, Bedi appealed to the people to come out in large numbers and vote. "Today is a historic day. Delhiites have to decide what kind of Delhi they want - a clean Delhi, a secure Delhi, a capable Delhi, a Delhi that respects women. Respecting women is respecting Delhi. I appeal people to come out and vote," she said. "The voters are getting the opportunity to elect two leaders in this election. My victory in Delhi would mean the Prime Minister's leadership as well," Bedi said after casting her vote in Malviya Nagar constituency. 2.10 pm: AAP alleges conspiracy, says voting being slowed down Arvind Kejriwal today tweeted out that polling in some areas has been slowed down and in some areas it was taking almost two hours for voters to cast their votes. He urged the EC to intervene. 2. 10 pm: 'Ninety-six, but not done yet' Ninety-six year old, or should we call it 96-year young? Nonagenarian Pratap Chand Jain has been involved in election activities, including voting, since 1938, and he is not finished yet. After coming out from the polling booth near Hanuman Mandir at Connaught Place station, he told Firstpost: "I have been taking part in the electoral process since 1938. If you do not vote, you have no right to raise questions on the functioning of the government." Incidentally, the voters' turnout at this booth was extremely low. Only around 400 votes have been polled out of to total 1800. "My health does not allow me to walk but I don't care. I have never missed any election so far," says Jain who has difficulty hearing despite using hearing aid. - Tarique Anwar 1.55 pm: Hope Delhi finally gets a stable govt, says Jung Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung today expressed hope that a stable government will be formed after the polls in the city which has been under President's Rule for last one year. "I hope so," Jung said when asked whether Delhi would get a stable government after the polls. Jung cast his vote at a booth in St Xavier's Senior Secondary School in Civil Lines in the Model Town constituency. 1. 50 pm: AAP complains to EC about Kiran Bedi's 'pad-yatra' The AAP has filed a complaint with the Election Commission against Kiran Bedi for violating the model code of conduct in Krishna Nagar by holding pad-yatra and asking for votes. 1.30 pm: We will cooperate with BJP, tell her to file complain, says AAP With BJP candidate Nupur Sharma alleging that she and her companions were manhandled by AAP volunteers, AAP spokesperson Atishi Marlena said they were willing to cooperate with the party, and those guilty should be punished. "If anyone has misbehaved, Nupur Sharma must file a complaint. We will also cooperate if she can give details of that person," she said. Sharma, meanwhile, has termed the AAP as an 'anti-women' party. 1.05 pm: BJP candidate Nupur Sharma says she was manhandled The BJP has alleged that its candidate from New Delhi constituency, Nupur Sharma, was manhandled along with her colleagues by AAP volunteers. Sharma has confirmed the incident, which took place near Princes Park at India Gate. "The AAP volunteers wearing their party caps and T-shirts were trying to influence voters. While passing through the area, I spotted them and raised objection, saying they cannot canvass on the polling day. Irritated AAP supporters indulged in violence and manhandled me and my colleagues. We were rescued by personnel of the Tilak Marg police station," she told Firstpost adding that she had not lodged any police complaint so far. Soldiers of the democracy: Those idling at home and refusing to come out vote should learn a few things from Sunil Sharma and Anand Kumar. In their early 40s, both are physically challenged and unable to stand on their feet. However, they won't let this come in the way of their exercising their right to vote. Sunil, a homeless man who stays in the open outside Hanuman Mandir near in New Delhi constituency, was recognized as a Delhi voter three years ago. This is the third time he is voting. "I hope the government will think about us and make some arrangements so that we can at least get a roof over our heads," he told Firstpost, while urging people to come out and vote. Anand Kumar, a second time voter, expects a clear majority this year and hopes the new government will do something concrete for people like him instead mere lip service. "I am happy that the government at least has recognised me as a citizen of this country. Despite hardship, I rendered my duty. Now, it's turn of the government to think about us," he said. - Tarique Anwar 12.45 pm: What makes Delhi, a small state where the government has no real powers so crucial? Well, it's a matter of prestige for the parties in the fray. Delhi is the power hub of the country. A win or loss here sends a powerful message across the country. The result here could decide how the politics in other states shapes up in the coming months. With some big ticket assembly elections around, the performance of all parties, particularly of the BJP, which has been on a winning streak for a long time, will be under watch. Besides this, Delhi is the media hub of the country. A government at the Centre would not like having an unfriendly government in the capital state. Frequent brushes between the two could be fodder for adverse publicity for the former in particular. - Akshaya Mishra, Delhi Bureau chief Meanwhile, sources have told Firstpost that in the illegal satta market bookies, punters and gamblers have placed bets over Rs 45,000 crore in the election. 12.30 pm: BJP demoralised, party workers have given up, says AAP AAP chief and former Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal today alleged that several BJP workers have already given up. "Similar to how Congress workers gave up last elections... They are completely demoralised," Kejriwal tweeted. 12.20 pm: Congress will do exceedingly well, says Ajay Maken Almost everyone may argue that the Congress is nowhere in the Delhi elections, but the party's eleciton campaign chief Ajay Maken is confident that they will do exceedingly well in the elections. "I am very hopeful that Congress is going to do exceedingly well and we are going to form government on our own. People are in for a big shock and surprise on Feb 10," he told reporters as he showed his inked finger at a Rajouri Garden polling booth. 12.00 pm: 95 and still voting, Delhi wants change A 54-year-old voter arrives carrying an old, fragile lady in a green printed cotton sari in his arms. She rests her head on his lap as they finish voting at the SGTB Khalsa Girls Senior Secondary School booth at BK Dutt Colony in Aliganj. "She is Reshma Devi, my mother who turned 95 this year. Since morning she had been eagerly waiting to cast her vote. She has been doing this for the last 40 years. I had to carry her in my arms as she can't walk on road anymore. There's tough competition here between AAP and BJP. Let's see what's in store," Shambhu Thakur, originally from Madhubani and a resident of E Block at BK Dutt colony, told Firstpost. When FP asked her about voting, Reshma Devi showed her finger bearing the ink mark and nodded in affirmation. Meanwhile, other voters started gathering around her to have a look of the grand old lady voter. She was joined by another 90-year-old, Sheila Devi, who was accompanied by her grand daughter, who's a minor. "I can't vote now, but have come with my daadi as she wanted to vote. we live in this colony only." - Debobrat Ghose. 11.50 am: Delhi records 19% voter turnout till 11 am Voting percentage is picking up as Delhiites are slowly walking out of their homes to cast their votes. Central Delhi has recorded a voting of 15.30 percent till 11 am and election experts are expecting the national capital to beat previous records and give the state a decisive mandate. BJP's CM candidate Kiran Bedi is not in cheerful best today. AFP BJP's CM candidate Kiran Bedi is not in cheerful best today. AFP BJP's CM candidate Kiran Bedi is not in cheerful best today. AFP 11.30 am: Confident of victory, says Shazia Ilmi Former AAP leader and now in the BJP camp, Shazia Ilmi has said, "people want a government that can convert their promises to reality. I'm confident that the BJP will come to power here as in the Centre." Ilmi, too, seems to be angry with the media saying: "You are giving AAP extra coverage because it appears that the BJP has angered you for some reason. But the people are smart, they know who to vote for." Interestingly, she appeared to accuse Kejriwal of being too full of himself, saying he's all about I, me and myself, something similar to what her leader Narendra Modi was accused of. 11.25 am: Does high voter-turnout mean beter winning chances? The enthusiasm among voters in certain pockets indicate a heavy turnout. The voting percentage in the previous assembly election was close to 67 percent; in the general election it was around 66 percent. This time Delhi may break all earlier records. But does that mean anything in terms of winning chances of parties? Not really. There's no coherent evidence to support the theory that a big turnout means votes against the party in power - meaning anti-incumbency voting. It's the same with low voter turnout. However, greater participation in election means greater awareness among voters. Which is a good sign. - Akshaya Mishra, Delhi Bureau chief. 11.20 am: Stop being biased, Bedi tells media Delhi BJP's CM candidate Kiran Bedi today alleged that the media was being biased in its coverage of the elections. "You are not showing the truth. You have to be responsible in your coverage," a visibly frustrated Bedi told reporters. 11.15 am: Fully confident, we will make it, says Kejriwal Arvind Kejriwal, the man who earned the sobriquet 'Giant Killer' after defeating Congress veteran and three-term CM Sheila Dikshit in Delhi election last time, spoke to Debobrat Ghose of Firstpost briefly after casting his vote at SGTB Khalsa Girls Senior Secondary School, at BK Dutt Colony in Aliganj. The police force virtually cordoned him, not allowing anyone to interact with him. "I'm fully confident. We'll make it. we've got immense support from Delhi voters," said Kejriwal showing the victory sign with a smile of a winner when asked how does he gauge the response from the public so far. Kejriwal's popularity can be judged by the fact that nearly 500 people were waiting outside the booth to have a glimpse of him. "He has already become a hero . we're waiting outside to see him and then we'll go nd cast our vote," said Sarla Manchanda. The rooftops and balconies of the flats adjoining the school are full of people waving at him and raising slogans. There was a situation of a virtual stampede near the booth. Security forces escorted him to his black grey Toyota Innova and he left while showing his fore finger telng that he has voted at 10.30 am. "The overwhelming welcome he has received tells that he's already a winner", said senior citizen Jagdish Gherna. 11.05 am: After voting, Bedi to now visit every polling booth Delhi BJP's CM candidate Kiran Bedi cast her vote early this morning and appeared confident that here party will win the Assembly elections. While Bedi, who is contesting from Krishna Nagar, a BJP bastion, is set to win, both the camps - AAP and the BJP - are expecting a tough, nail-biting finish. Meanwhile, Bedi will now go to each polling booth in her constituency to help party workers increase voter turnout. 10.58 am: Delhi records 5.64% voting till 9 am According to Joint CEO Rajesh Goyal, the polling percentage till 9 am is over five percent. Many booths in posh colonies in New Delhi are deserted. The turnout is expected to improve after 12 noon. He also said special arrangement has been made for physically challenged people. "We have deluged officials with wheel chairs to facilitate elderly and physically impaired people to vote. In addition to our officials, they have been allowed one attendent to help them," he said. - Tarique Anwar 10. 50 am: 'Ajay Maken is possibly Delhi best CM candidate' Our Delhi bureau chief Akshaya Mishra writes: The party with possibly the best chief minister candidate is nowhere in the picture in this election. Ajay Maken, the Congress' face for the top job in the state, has been completely overshadowed by Arvind Kejriwal. He would be ruing the fact that his party is an also-ran in this election despite being in power in Delhi for 15 years. The party had a vote share of 24 percent in the assembly election of 2013. However, it did not convert into seats. It has been a sharp slide after that for the party. With most opinion polls predicting less than five seats for the Congress, Maken has a tough job at hand. There's also indication that the traditional supporters of the party are shifting to the AAP. The big question: will the Congress survive in Delhi after the election? 10.45 am: Don't vote for those who don't keep their promises: Kejriwal Speaking to reporters after casting his vote, AAP chief and arguably man of the moment Arvind Kejriwal appealed to voters not to cast their votes for parties that don't respect them. "A lot of money and alcohol was distributed last night. You know which party is doing it. Don't vote for them. Also, I urge you not to vote for those who turn their election manifesto into an election tactics." 10.14 am: Rahul Gandhi arrives at Aurangzeb lane polling booth Rahul Gandhi arrived at Aurangzeb lane polling booth to cast his vote but did not speak with the media. Meanwhile, Tarique Anwar reported big turnout was witnessed at every polling booth, especially those on the outskirts of Delhi. Women have started arriving in large number at their respective booths to cast their votes. The first-time voters have started pouring in too. They look quite enthusiastic. 9.40 am: Sonia Gandhi casts her vote Congress president Sonia Gandhi cast her vote. Speaking to the media, the Congress chief said, "Whatever people want will happen." AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal too went to vote early on Saturday. "People want freedom from corruption, bribery and am hopeful they will vote accordingly. I appeal people to vote and I am confident that truth will win, public will win in this election," the AAP chief said. A voter from the Patparganj constituency, right after casting his vote, told AAP candidate Manish Sisodia: "Sir, I have done my job to the best I can, but you and your party make sure that you do your job better than what you did last time," Shibaji Roychoudhary reports. BJP's young and vibrant Nupur Sharma speaking to the media said, "A govt with no drama is what Delhi wants. I urge youngsters to come out in full force and exercise their franchise." Sharma said she was confident that BJP will form the government in Delhi. The young candidate is touted to give a stiff competition to Arvind Kejriwal from the new Delhi constituency. Delhi election is a direct contest between Arvind Kejriwal and Narendra Modi - Mufflerman and Modimania, if you please. As Akshaya Mishra says, Kiran Bedi, the BJP's chief minister candidate, is a fringe player in the big show for all practical purposes. If Kejriwal wins, his profile as a politician becomes a whole lot brighter; if Modi loses the aura of invincibility around him stands deeply dented. If the former loses, it would still have established him as a legitimate big political player, not an ambitious upstart that he was considered to be a few months ago. If Modi wins it would another feather in his cap. 9.19 am: With one vote get both PM and me, says Kiran Bedi "Get two leaders with one vote -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi and me," Kiran Bedi says after casting her vote. Meanwhile, the Delhi Election commission has arranged for 300 additional wheelchairs, over and above their usual number of disability assistance machines for the elderly and people with special abilities, Firstpost's Shibaji Roychoudhary reports. According to the Chief Electoral Officer, Chandra Bhushan Kumar, the total number of wheelchairs was increased from 400 to 700. He also revealed that there will be hydraulic lifts in four polling stations in southwest district. File photo of Ajay Maken. File photo of Ajay Maken. File photo of Ajay Maken. However, that may not be enough as in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, there were a total of 2,600 wheel chairs available for people with disabilities and the elderly, but this time astoundingly, even the ministry of social justice and empowerment has failed to supply the capital with adequate wheelchairs. Meanwhile, speaking to the media Congress' face in Delhi polls Ajay Maken said he is too veteran to be nervous. "We will deliver on our promise." Congress wil have an important role to play in these crucial elections. Former Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit also cast her vote and said, "These elections are definitely personality dominated. Noone spoke of any issues. It is a time for change and Congress is very much in the battle." 9.00 am: Voter turnout dismal as of early morning, media reports say According to TV reports, voter turnout is not too exciting as of early morning. Jamia was one of the few booths which saw long lines of voters but there is no rush in other polling booths, accordin to reports. 9.04 am: Khaas aadmi to Aam aadmi vote President of India Pranab Mukherjee's daughter, Sharmistha Mukherjee, reaches Don Bosco school, just 1 km from Chittaranjan Park — the largest Bengali concentratd locality in Delhi — at 8.05 am. From an exponent of kathak she has metamorphosed into a potential representative of the strong probashi Bangali (non-resident Bengali ) community in Delhi. Mukherjee is contesting on a Congress ticket from Greater Kailash assembly seat. Speaking to Firstpost's Debobrat Ghose, Sharmistha Mukherjee, who makes her political debut in this assembly election, said: " I'm very confident. I'll win. Have been working for four months in my constituency. Very warm response from citizens especially women and senior citizens. Due to my father (President Mukherjee) I'm getting a lot of media attention. Got overwhelming response in CR Park. A local elected representative should monitor administration of the constituency. " BK Suri, 88, has cast his vote and he says, he has been an witness to political changes in India since 1945. He says he has voted in all elections in Delhi. " A new change began two years back. And this will bring a new dawn to Indian politics". Sharmistha is inside the booth waiting for her turn to come. Meanwhile, from khaas aadmi to aam aadmi, polling in Delhi is underway. 8.33 am: Kiran Bedi casts her vote from NITI Ayog BJP's CM candidate Kiran Bedi cast her vote a few minutes ago and speaking to mediapersons outside the NITI Ayog polling booth urged Delhiites to come out in record numbers and cast their vote. Kiran Bedi. PTI Kiran Bedi. PTI Kiran Bedi. PTI "Today is a historic day. Delhi has to decide what kind of a city they want. Do they want a safe Delhi? Or do they want a educated, clean and green Delhi. Does the youth want employment? That's why I appeal to everyone in Delhi to come out and vote for the kind of city and government you want. It is your day. It is the day of democracy," a charged up Kiran Bedi said. The big test for parties has begun. As senior editor at Firstpost Akshaya Mishra noted, voting in Delhi today will settle a few serious questions: is it a battle between the underclass and the other classes? Is it a choice between anarchy and governance as BJP's Arun Jaitely would say? Is the public fascination for Narendra Modi wearing thin? The class division was never as sharp in other election as that in Delhi. Perhaps, a section of the middle class, particularly the lower middle class, would vote for the AAP still, but the battle is predominantly about the underclass, the jhuggi-jhopdi population. They comprise about 55 percent of the electorate, big enough to tilt the results in favour of any particular party. Who are they going to support? 8.19 am: President Pranab Mukherjee casts his vote President Pranab Mukherjee cast his vote for Delhi Assembly Election. According to media reports, voters had lined up at their respective polling booths from as early as 6.30 am to avoid rush. President Pranab Mukherjee. AP President Pranab Mukherjee. AP President Pranab Mukherjee. AP Apart from the President, BJP leader Ram Madhav and Satish Upadhyay also cast their vote. Speaking to CNN IBN, Upadhyay said, "I am confident that BJP will win." 7.23 am: Voting begins in 70 constituencies for Delhi Assembly Elections Voting for Delhi Assembly Election, one of the most exciting elections since the General Elections, started and is expected to go on till 6 pm. Delhi will exercise their franchise right to decide among 673 candidates will be contesting for 70 seats. Security has been tightened around all the polling booths. Delhi police is working in tandem with neighbouring states. Almost 180 polling booths in Delhi have been recognised as hyper-sensitive, CNN-IBN reported. According to media reports, polling booths were cordoned off six hours before polling. Meanwhile, a BJP MLA Sahib Singh Chauhan alleged that his car was attacked early on Saturday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Delhi to go and vote in record numbers. The PM tweeted: AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal asked the voters to exercise their franchise. Twitter declared its own winner with #Vote4MufflerMan and #PressJhaaduButton being the top two trends early on Saturday. Here are a few reactions: 7.00 am: Voter turnout holds key as BJP, AAP gear up for big day The wait is over! Delhi will decide today who will end up governing the national capital region. Will it be the broom-weilding Arvind Kejriwal from AAP who has been dubbed as the Bhagora by BJP and Congress but of late has garnered support from the Left parties and Mamata Banerjee? Or will it be BJP's wild card entry, former IAS officer Kiran Bedi? Or will it be Congress' Ajay Maken, the former Union Minister who is the chairman of the party’s 101-member campaign committee for Delhi Assembly polls. Maken's entry into the Delhi poll fray also marks dawn of a new leadership in Delhi after the legacy of three-time Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. Voter turnout in the national capital will be crucial in tomorrow's poll. In the last Assembly election in Delhi, the city broke records when 66% of the 1.2 crore voters got inked and sealed Delhi's future. That situation worked really well for Arvind Kejriwal. Representational image. Reuters Representational image. Reuters Representational image. Reuters Last Delhi elections stood out from the rest for many reasons. A new political party with no national presence led the war against price rise and corruption and in a major political bender uprooted the gigantic Congress. Kejriwal had swept Delhi and the three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit lost by 22,000 votes. For the first time, nation saw the middle class and the upper middle class come out with this force and vote. Frustrated with Congress' corrupted government, Delhiites exercised their right and threw the party right out. AAP's strength lies in the middle, lower middle and the rural population and the more came out to vote the better it was for the then rookie politician Arvind Kejriwal. His one-year-old Aam Aadmi Party made a spectacular electoral debut winning 28 of Delhi's 70 seats, just four behind the BJP, which was on top. What followed were tumultuous 49 days which ended with Arvind Kejriwal disappointing scores of middle and lower middle class voters. While BJP has traditionally been supported by the middle class and the business community, AAP's support base rests on the economically backward section. BJP, on the other hand, will benefit the most from a lower voter turnout. With almost no clout among the lower middle class of Delhi, the lesser come to vote the better it will be for BJP. Whether the voters decide to give "maafi" to AAP and vote with the same zeal only remains to be seen. Analysts are seeing the Delhi elections as a direct face-off between AAP and BJP, with Congress nowhere in the picture. The analysts, speaking to Livemint, agreed that voter turnout is the key in this election. "Higher turnout would indicate more middle class coming out to vote. In the previous assembly election, it helped the AAP but this time it is this section which is the most disillusioned with the party’s street politics, and most voters from this section have shifted to the BJP. So, if the turnout out of the middle class is high, it will help the BJP," Jai Mrug, a Mumbai-based political analyst, was quoted as saying by the Livemint. Another analyst, speaking to the publication, said that AAP should concentrate on mobilizing the votes of the economically weaker sections who almost never vote if there is no holiday on polling day or because of lack of permissible identity cards. Meanwhile, a survey done by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) suggested that there will be a significant rise in the number of voters in Delhi, an ANI report said. "Voter turnout in Delhi may rise by about five percent this time round up from 66 percent in 2013 as majority of Delhiites wish for a stable government," the survey said. The survey interviewed 700 eligible voters, which included equal number of both men and women. Most of the respondents said they want to see formation of a stable government in Delhi and are spreading message about casting their vote. Although, analysts also noted that this year's poll will be the the third election for Delhi in a span of less than 15 months. Voter fatigue may affect the turnout. While which party scores with the Delhi voters remains to be seen but there was no dearth of excitement in the run-up to the 7 February. High-decibel campaigning, which concluded on Thursday evening, saw almost everything. A crying Kiran Bedi, an apologetic Arvind Kejriwal who said, "Galti ho gayi, maaf kardo" to the public for resigning just after 49 days as the Chief Minister of Delhi and Rahul Gandhi targeting Narendra Modi.

Delhi Polls Live: Delhi set for record voter turnout, 63.46% cast their franchise till 5pm

Voting on 70 seats of Delhi assembly polls began on Saturday morning to elect a new assembly in a high-voltage battle between BJP and a resurgent AAP, billed as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a description rejected by his party leaders. Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi called the day a 'historic' one, appealing to the people of the national capital to vote in large numbers in the ongoing polls. "It is a historic day. The people will decide what kind of Delhi they want. I appeal all to vote. The people of Delhi have to decide if they want a clean, secure Delhi," said Bedi. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal appealed to the residents to come out and vote. “Everyone should go to cast their vote, after taking a bath and remembering god. You will definitely win,” Kejriwal tweeted. Latest Update: 18:04 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 An estimated 63.46% voters exercised their franchise in the Delhi Assembly polls till 5 pm. While North East Delhi reported the highest voter turn out of 66.37%, the lowest was in South Delhi with 61.7%, according to the Delhi Election Commission. Central Delhi recorded 64.66% turn out, East Delhi 64.67%, New Delhi 59.29% and North Delhi registered a turn out of 65.56%. 17:39 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 AAP's and BJP's Delhi CM candidate come out and vote. Former IPS officer and BJP's CM candidate Kiran Bedi poses for the media after voting. 17:31 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 BJP Core meet at 7RCR BJP President Amit Shah, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to meet PM Narendra Modi on Saturday evening. 16:45 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 According to CEC Delhi Chndra Bhushan, more than 1,50,000 bottles of liquor seized during the elections. 15:31 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Robert Vadra cast their vote Speaking to reporters, Priyanka Vadra said, "I think it's (AAP) definitely an important opponent in this election. Congress has faced difficulties before and it has always come through, I am sure it will come through." 15:21 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 BJP President Amit Shah to hold a post poll meeting with Delhi BJP leaders today evening . 14:22 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 Lunch breaks being taken against rules, Election Commission should immediately intervene: Kejriwal In his latest tweet, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has said that lunch breaks are being taken which is against rules. Kejriwal has also said that Election Commission should immediately intervene. In a series of tweets, Kejriwal said, "Polling slowed down in many places and Its taking two hours in some places." He further added, "Voters are returning. As per rules, 3 voters are allowed inside booth at a time. They are allowing only 1 voter, which has slowed down voting. 14:10 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 13:52 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 35% voting till 1:00 pm 13:48 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 AAP rubbishes Nupur Sharma's assault charges. If anyone has misbehaved, Nupur Sharma must file a complaint. We will also cooperate if she can give details of that person, says AAP leader Atishi Marlena. 13:46 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 AAP is an anti-women party, says Nupur Sharma BJP's New Delhi candidate Nupur Sharma has accused AAP workers of roughing up her sister near Sangli polling booth. 13:37 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 Complaint filed with Election Commission against Kiran Bedi for allegedly violating Model Code of Conduct. 13:13 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 24% voter turnout till noon 12:42 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 BJP has 'given up', tweets Arvind Kejriwal 12:11 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 Sentiments in favour of AAP in Sangam Vihar constituency Sangam Vihar : Asia's largest unauthorised colony has major water problems. Voters have told our correspondent Aradhna Wal that parts of Sangam Vihar have had no supply for 15 to 20 days. Voters said, "We have to deal with tanker Mafia. Insects in the water supply." Majority of voters here support AAP as they believe AAP is the only party that has taken up these issues. However, even the most ardent AAP supporters say it's a neck and neck fight between AAP and BJP. 12:07 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 80 year-old casts her vote, wants new government to provide employment to youth. 12:07 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 19.59 % voting till 11 am. 11:00 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 People will vote against corruption and inflation, says Arvind Kejriwal AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal exuded confidence of getting a clear mandate. "I am confident that AAP will win the elections and form government in Delhi," he said after casting his vote at B K Dutt colony. He further said, "I am confident that truth will win, people will win. And the people will vote this time to get rid of corruption and inflation." 10:28 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 Last night liquor and money was distributed. Delhi people know which party did this, don't vote for them: Arvind Kejriwal 10:25 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 10:15 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 ​Slow start to voting in Delhi. 5.64% voting till 9 am. 10:05 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, LG Najeeb Jung cast their vote 10:00 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 BJP candidate caught red handed with liquor by public, tweets Ashutosh BJP candidate in Mangolpurie was caught red handed with liquor by public. Police has detained him. What BJP has to say on this ? 10:04 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 Congress Candidate Sharmishtha Mukherjee confident of victory Congress candidate from Delhi’s Greater Kailash constituency and President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter Sharmishtha on Saturday stated that she was confident that she would win from her electorate, even as the assembly elections in the national capital was underway. “I am confident that I will win. I had been working in my constituency for the last four months. I had been feeling the change and it has been a very good and warm response,” Sharmishta told mediapersons after casting her vote. 9:35 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 Whatever the people want will happen, says Sonia Gandhi Congress President Sonia Gandhi today exercised her franchise in the Delhi Assembly polls in which her party is facing a tough battle to regain lost ground.Gandhi cast her vote at a polling booth in Nirman Bhavan in Central Delhi at 9:35 am. When asked to comment on the polls, she said, "Whatever the people want will happen." 9:05 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 AAP candidate from Greater Kailash Saurabh Bharadwaj, Congress candidate Sharmishtha Mukherjee, Union Minister Dr. Harshvardhan and his mother cast their vote. 9:05 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 BJP's CM candidate Kiran Bedi, Vice President Hamid Ansari cast their vote. 8:35 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 We will certainly form government in Delhi: Satish Upadhyay Vote for safe, secure and better Delhi :Kiran Bedi BJP MLA Sahab Singh Chouhan's car attacked 8:00 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 People outside Mayur Vihar polling booth Prime Minister Narendra Modi urges voters to turn out in large numbers. Kejriwal appeals to all residents to vote “Everyone should go to cast their vote, after taking a bath and remembering god. You will definitely win,” Kejriwal tweeted. President Pranab Mukherjee visits polling booth at the President's Estate Security has been beefed up in the national capital to avoid any untoward incident, to check misuse of money and liquor to influence voters. As the number of critical polling booths has increased by 107 since the last Assembly elections, the number of security personnel has also gone up in the national capital. 6:45 IST Saturday, 7 February 2015 A total of 12083 electronic voting machines (EVMS) are being used to allow 1,33, 14, 215 persons to vote throughout Saturday. Of the 1, 33, 14, 215 persons eligible to vote, 2,27,316 are in the 18 to 19 years age group. The Burari Assembly constituency has the maximum number of candidates (18) who will be contesting in Saturday’s elections. The Ambedkar Nagar Assembly constituency has the lowest number of candidates (4). Electorate-wise, Vikas Puri has the highest number of eligible voters (3,25,246) and Chandni Chowk has the lowest (1,13,777). The BJP, which is out of power in Delhi for the last 16 years, made a gamble by bringing in former Team Anna member Kiran Bedi into the party and made her its Chief Ministerial candidate which is said to have triggered discontent among the party leaders and rank and file. As detractors gunned for BJP saying the results would be a referendum on the performance of the government under Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley rejected such a theory saying the contest between BJP and the AAP was a "choice between governance and anarchy". Meanwhile, Imam Bukhari of Delhi's historic Jama Masjid issued a statement asking Muslims to vote for AAP, but the party rejected it saying it does not subscribe to his "communal" politics. The Congress, which had ruled Delhi for 15 years till December, 2013 has been projected way behind AAP and BJP in pre-poll surveys. Some opinion polls have given AAP a clear majority while a few have predicted BJP's win.

Heartland Financial USA Downgraded to Neutral at Zacks (NASDAQ:HTLF)

Heartland Financial USA Inc logoZacks downgraded shares of Heartland Financial USA (NASDAQ:HTLF) from an outperform rating to a neutral rating in a research note released on Monday morning. They currently have $29.80 target price on the stock. Zacks has also taken action a number of other financials stocks recently. The firm reiterated its neutral rating on shares of Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc.. They have a $74.00 price target on that stock. Also, Zacks downgraded shares of Banco Latinoamericano Comerc Exterior SA from an outperform rating to a neutral rating. Their analysts now have a $37.10 price target on that stock. Finally, Zacks reiterated its neutral rating on shares of BancorpSouth, Inc.. They have a $23.00 price target on that stock. Separately, analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods reiterated a market perform rating on shares of Heartland Financial USA in a research note on Tuesday, October 28th. They now have a $28.50 price target on the stock, up previously from $28.00. Shares of Heartland Financial USA (NASDAQ:HTLF) traded up 0.95% during mid-day trading on Monday, hitting $27.74. 22,776 shares of the company’s stock traded hands. Heartland Financial USA has a 1-year low of $22.38 and a 1-year high of $29.20. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $26.11 and a 200-day moving average of $24.78. The company has a market cap of $512.6 million and a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.96. Heartland Financial USA (NASDAQ:HTLF) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Monday, October 27th. The company reported $0.63 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.54 by $0.09. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.38 earnings per share. On average, analysts predict that Heartland Financial USA will post $2.12 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Heartland Financial USA, Inc (NASDAQ:HTLF) is a multi-bank holding company. To get a free copy of the research report on Heartland Financial USA (HTLF), click here. For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com Receive News & Ratings for Heartland Financial USA Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Heartland Financial USA and related companies with Analyst Ratings Network's FREE daily email newsletter.

Personal finance Q&A: What will my Medicare Part B premium be?

Robert Powell, Special to USA TODAY 6:46 a.m. EST January 6, 2015 7/18/2014 11:38:08 AM -- Swampscott, MA, U.S.A -- USA TODAY personal finance advice columnist, Robert Powell -- Photo by Josh T. Reynolds for USA WEEKEND ORG XMIT: JR 131396 USAW - personal 7/18/2014 [Via MerlinFTP Drop](Photo: Josh T. Reynolds, for USA WEEKEND) Q: I am 66 years old and normally in the 10% federal income tax bracket. Since taking Social Security, I have never earned enough money to have to pay any taxes on my Social Security. In 2014, I sold my only rental income property for a long-term capital gain of about $110,000. I know that I will not have to pay federal taxes on this long-term capital gain since I am in the 10% bracket. But, will I have to pay higher Medicare premiums on my Part B (I currently pay $104 per month)? And will this sale cause me to pay taxes on my Social Security benefits? In 2014, I will report less than $2,000 in interest, receive about $7,500 in Social Security, have a net loss of about $500 from rental real estate, and have about $110,000 in a long-term capital gain. Joyce Aldawood, Hoffman Estates, Ill. A: If modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) is greater than $85,000 as an individual or $170,000 as a couple, Medicare B premiums will increase in 2016 for income made in 2014, says Carolyn McClanahan, M.D., a certified financial planner with Life Planning Partners in Jacksonville, Fla. How much more you'll pay for your Medicare Part B premium in 2016 will depend on your MAGI. For example, if you filed an individual tax return and your yearly income in 2013 was greater than $85,000 up to $107,000, your Medicare Part B premium would be $146.90 per month in 2015. That's what most people — about 95% of Medicare beneficiaries — pay. But, if your income in 2013 was greater than $107,000 the Medicare Part B premium for 2015 could be anywhere from $146.90 to $335.70 per month. MAGI, FYI, is the total of your adjusted gross income and tax-exempt interest income. Read Medicare Premiums: Rules For Higher-Income Beneficiaries. The good news for you is that the amount you pay can change each year depending on your income. Also worth noting: If you have to pay a higher amount for your Part B premium and you disagree with Uncle Sam you can use this form to contact Social Security. Learn more about Medicare Part B premiums here. In addition, since your income will be above $34,000 as an individual or $44,000 as a couple, 85% of Social Security will be taxed on the 2014 tax return, says McClanahan. One additional comment: If you have taken depreciation on the rental property, part of the gain will be taxed as ordinary income as recapture of depreciation, not as capital gains. This will result in a significantly higher tax bill than what you may be expecting. So, consult a good accountant to be prepared for the outcome, says McClanahan. Robert Powell is editor of Retirement Weekly, contributes regularly to USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch and teaches at Boston University. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1IkbyS9

Kevin Hart Has 1 Rule for Planning His Wedding

By Jacqueline Andriakos @jandriakos 01/08/2015 AT 06:30 AM EST Kevin Hart has learned the trick to keep calm and marry on. Speaking to reporters at the Los Angeles premiere of his movie The Wedding Ringer on Tuesday, the soon-to-be groom, 35, shared a little wedding wisdom he learned from playing a best man in the comedy. (It opens Jan. 16.) "What [the movie] helped me do is get out of the way," Hart said. So, who is he letting call the shots? His bride-to-be, Eniko Parrish. "You do what you want, here's a budget, let me know when you're done," he said about handing off the reins. "Just don't go past this number. That's it!" The funnyman, who snagged the PEOPLE Magazine Award for Comedy Star of the Year, popped the question in an Instagram-worthy fashion at his fiancée's 30th birthday party in August. "On this perfect day I chose to make the most perfect decision," Hart said before getting down on one knee in the clip posted on Parrish's Instagram account. And who will be best man? • Reporting by NICOLE SANDS

Six things that happened at People's Choice

At 93-years-old, Betty White is still the people's choice. She accepted the Television Icon Award at the 2015 People's Choice Awards on Wednesday. VPC Video Transcript Automatically Generated Transcript (may not be 100% accurate) 00:00 And these people's choice for favorite TV icon is. Betty 00:05 why. Hammer crimes have been saying thank you. Or can you 00:19 imagine. The people's choice. Yeah so he. It. It's my favorite 00:40 actress continued TV series in the same with me. But yeah. 00:52 Thank you sound Iran's Betsy Beers and Peter no law. Forward 00:56 thinking about leading lady who looks like my classic beauty. Both 01:13 sides are favored Nippon cargo. Did take your time yeah. A 01:20 like I said any yeah. This is perfect for me because 01:33 I love people. I'm crazy about movies. And and I prefer 01:39 people who love my movies are so I'm I'm actually very 01:41 grateful I guess I'll keep my day job. Please award for 01:46 favorite and humanitarian. To Ben Affleck. The one way to combat. 01:51 The the sad things we see the terrible things that we 01:54 see is to try to bring a little bit of kindness 01:57 and to the world. People's Choice Award winner Charles Kelley of Lady Antebellum and Melissa McCarthy share a moment backstage at the People's Choice Awards.(Photo: Frazer Harrison) Sure, Chris Evans may not get any Oscar love this year. As Captain America, though, he's now an award-winning fan favorite. "I don't win stuff, so this kind of cool," Evans said Wednesday night while accepting the honor for action-movie actor at the People's Choice Awards, the annual populist affair where fans get to vote for their favorites. The Captain America: The Winter Soldier star figured that "40 percent of the votes were my mom, and the other 60 percent means a lot to me." USA TODAY Who won People's Choice Awards? The People's Choice Awards also marked the first televised show of this awards season and, as co-host Allison Janney joked, "You get to see all the stars before they get down to Oscar weight." Chris Evans accepts the People's Choice Award for favorite Chris Evans accepts the People's Choice Award for favorite action-movie actor.(Photo: Kevin Winter, Getty Images) Here are six highlights from the night: Melissa McCarthy wows the crowd. TheTammy star walked the red carpet, where many noticed her slimmer figure, and then she won favorite comedic movie actress, the first award of the telecast. She thanked those who buy movie tickets: "Without you, I wouldn't have a job and I'll stay around as long as you'll have me." ENTERTAIN THIS! Hunter Hayes on singing for President Obama: 'It was nuts' One-man wardrobe malfunction. Before he even arrived, Lady Antebellum's Charles Kelley had an awards night snafu when he ripped a small hole in the inseam of his Dolce & Gabbana suit pants. Kelley didn't take out on the designer, though. "You have to just blame whoever altered it," he joked after showing the rip to E!'s Giuliana Rancic. His night did get better: The jeans he changed into later stayed intact through a rousing rendition of the band's single Freestyle and an acceptance speech for favorite country group, in which Kelley told presenter Lisa Edelstein she looks "hot" on her new show, Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce. ENTERTAIN THIS! Wow! Melissa McCarthy shows off slimmer figure on People's Choice red carpet Kevin Hart and Josh Gad steal the spotlight. Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting won her second consecutive award for network comedic TV actress and her sitcom The Big Bang Theory won its fourth network TV comedy honor, plus overall favorite TV show. But she was upstaged by her Wedding Ringer co-stars Hart and Gad when presenting McCarthy's award. Hart walked out filming himself with three selfie sticks, prompting Gad to call him "the Steven Spielberg of selfie sticks." Gad also joked that he was working on a reality show called American Gaddiator, "where I fight the cast of Frozen in a cage." Viola Davis with her People's Choice Award for 'How Viola Davis with her People's Choice Award for 'How to Get Away With Murder.'(Photo: Frazer Harrison) How to get away with the last laugh. Last fall, a New York Times TV critic called How to Get Away With Murder star Viola Davis "less classically beautiful," but the actress won a little bit of sweet yet classy revenge. After winning favorite actress in a new TV series, she thanked Murder executive producers Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers for "thinking of a leading lady who looks like my classy beauty." ENTERTAIN THIS! So, do the 'Black-ish' kids fight like brother and sister off-screen, too? Ben Affleck honors the "real humanitarians." Amy Adams presented her friend (and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice co-star) Ben Affleck with the People's Choice Award for favorite humanitarian, honoring his work to bring peace and prosperity to the Eastern Congo. "I've been called a lot of things in my life but I'm not sure until recently that humanitarian has been one of them," said a humble Affleck, who dedicated the award to "the real humanitarians" he works with on the ground in Africa. "Sometimes the world is a scary and terrible place and bad things happen. … One way to combat the sad things we see and terrible things we see is to bring a little bit of kindness to the world." ENTERTAIN THIS! Oh snap! Viola Davis fires back at 'New York Times' diss in classiest way possible Fans' choice for favorite movie actor: Robert Downey Fans' choice for favorite movie actor: Robert Downey Jr., of course.(Photo: Kevin Winter, Getty Images) Robert Downey's keeping his day job, folks. One of the biggest hits of the night was Robert Downey Jr., who ran his People's Choice lifetime total to five wins, picking up awards for favorite movie actor and dramatic actor. "This is perfect for me because I love people, I'm crazy about movies and I prefer people who love my movies," said the star of The Judge. "I guess I'll keep my day job." Contributing: Cindy Clark Autoplay Show Thumbnails Show Captions Last SlideNext Slide Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1ItGU8R

Phylicia Rashad Says Her Defense of Bill Cosby Was Misquoted

By Lanford Beard @lanfordbeard 01/07/2015 AT 09:30 PM EST Phylicia Rashad is setting the record straight about her recent comments defending her former costar Bill Cosby. In an exclusive interview on World News Tonight with David Muir Wednesday night, Rashad, 66, said remarks attributed to her in Roger Friedman's Showbiz 411 column Tuesday – in which she was quoted as saying, "Forget these women" – are not accurate. "That is not what I said. What I said is, 'this is not about the women. This is about something else. This is about the obliteration of legacy.'" "I am a woman," Rashad continued. "I would never say such a thing." In a clarification posted on his site Wednesday night, Freedman wrote: "Let me clear something. I did not misquote Phylicia Rashad. But she didn't mean for it to be taken the way it was, and I should have punctuated. There was NEVER the meaning in 'Forget those women' that she was saying to actually forget or dismiss then. She meant, 'those women aside' – as in, she's not talking about that, she's talking about Cosby’s legacy being destroyed." Speaking to ABC, Rashad declined to comment about the myriad of accusations facing her former costar. "I can't speak to those things and wouldn't want to." The interview comes in the wake of a press conference Wednesday called by attorney Gloria Allred in which three more women came forward to accuse Cosby of sexual assault. Before the women gave their statements, Allred had several pointed comments to make about Rashad. "Phylicia, you should be supporting these women," the attorney said. "Phylicia, if anyone did to you or to your daughter, your sister or or your mother, what Cosby is alleged to have done to these women, I have no doubt that you would not be saying forget these women." The full interview with Rashad airs Thursday at 12:35 a.m. ET on ABC's Nightline.

Are you paying too much for textbooks?

The price of textbooks, like the hidden charges on your credit card, can put a hole in your wallet, making it harder to afford simple pleasures. If you’re just picking up your textbooks at the campus bookstore, you’re doing it wrong. Here are some tips on how to save big on textbooks. Price hunting You can go just about anywhere and find those text books for Lit 101 or Biology cheaper than you’ll find them on campus, but there are a few great sites that have figured out how to search for the best price on books. Bigwords has set out to “protect the universe from high textbook” prices. Simply enter the name of each textbook and add it to your bookbag by clicking “buy or rent.” We’ll get to the “rent” part. Then you can start the price comparison. CampusBooks works much the same way, and in many ways is a preferable site, as it searches thousands of well-known sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Chegg (another great site). In many cases, used books are your best bet. Often, it cost just as much to rent a book as it does to buy one. Even if it’s a few dollars more expensive, at the end of the semester, you can sell you textbook back. Plenty of sites (and maybe even your campus bookstore) offer to buy back texts, including Amazon, Chegg, Barnes & Noble, BookByte, Alibris and many more. Rent Chegg is great for renting and sites like Bigwords and CampusBooks give you more options. Other standouts are CampusBookRentals, BookRenter and Textbooks.com. Going digital Going digital isn’t always cheaper (or easier) but there are a lot of benefits. Whether you’re using an iPad, Kindle, Nook, computer or other device, an internet connection and the ability to highlight passages and search through textbooks with keywords offers a lot to busy students. Beyond Apple, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, CourseSmart will let you read online or via a copy-protected PDF and they have a mobile app. CourseSmart brags that “users have access to over 90% of core higher education titles used today as eTextbooks, and the largest catalog of eResources and digital course materials available.” Kindle and Nook owners /app users can also rent text books. Scholarship What? Yeah. There are lots of scholarship opportunities out there. One is Textbooks for a Year Scholarship. It’s an essay contest, more or less, and it gives students the opportunity to win enough to buy their textbooks for a whole year. There are tons of options out there to save on textbooks. This just scratches the surface. But, make sure you buy your books early. Don’t wait to order on the first day of class. Get a hold of your syllabus or visit the campus bookstore to see what you’ll need for the semester and order before you’re given your first homework assignment.

China Property Developer Defaults on HSBC Loan

hed In Belgium, Battle Builds Between Brewers and ‘Beer Architects’ Expat Treasures From Home Help Bridge the Distance: A Taiwanese Expat in the U.S. Small Business Economy Boosts Small-Business Optimism NY Heard & Scene Cultural Evolution: What’s On in 2015 World News France’s Piketty Refuses State Honor Gear Learn to Embrace the Digital Detox Technology Making Change: Mobile Pay in Africa Economy PLAY Yield-Hungry European Investors Face Tough 2015 New property owner begins building a home on former 'swamp of doom' in Ann Arbor neighborhood For several years, a large cement pit in a southeast Ann Arbor neighborhood that residents labeled "the swamp of doom" was a constant source of irritation and frustration for residents upset with the owner and city over the property. The half-finished home foundation filled with water when it rained, and, as it continued deteriorating, wildlife took up residence and it became a danger for neighborhood kids. Now, the old foundation has been cleared, the pit filled, plans for a new home approved and work on the house is underway. "They got the new foundation in, the wall framed in and they're doing well. It's a new person in charge of it. The old owner's uncle," said Ralph Welton, the city's chief development official. "The neighbors are happy." Early in the year, Ann Arbor City Council Member Stephen Kunselman, who lives nearby, circulated photos of ducks floating on the swamp's waters and called for the city to press its former owner, Mahmoud Alkahla, to address the situation. Officials discovered the backfill around the pit was actually composed of old tires, car parts, lumber and other debris covered in soil. After months of pressure from the city in mid-2014, Alkahla hired a contractor to remove the foundation at 3300 Nordman Drive, but the pit remained for months. In September, Alkhala, at the city's behest, finally quit-claimed the property to his uncle, who is now managing the project and hiring contractors to complete work. "He's got paid contractors doing everything and it looks very good," Welton said."I've been by there and there have been inspections. It's moving along." Alkahla demolished a home on the property after purchasing it out of foreclosure in 2010, then planned a 2,000-square-foot house. But instead of hiring a construction company or contractors to execute those plans, Alkahla moved forward on the foundation project alone, despite having no prior homebuilding experience, Welton said. The foundation was poured with plywood forms instead of steel forms as is standard, and the plywood forms blew out during the first pour in 2012. The city ordered the property cleared and secured in June. Tom Perkins is a freelance writer for The Ann Arbor News.

Top 10 Finance stories of 2014

177039372 Another year is in the books. But before we jump head-first into 2015, we’re taking one last look at the most-popular CFO Daily News stories of the past year. Based on your clicks, these are the top 10 stories of 2014. 10. Warning: DOL found three-fourths of 401(k)s illegal Here’s a very compelling reason to take a closer look at your 401(k) plan: Seventy-five percent of the 401(k)s audited by the DOL last year resulted in plan sponsors being fined, penalized or forced to make reimbursements for plan errors. And those fines and penalties weren’t cheap. 9. The 20 most annoying buzzwords at work You know them when you hear them: those words and phrases thrown around in meetings and in memos that just make you groan. 8. 25 passwords no one in Finance should be using You’d think by now that everyone knows that “password” and “111111″ don’t make for a secure password. Well, if they do, it seems they don’t care. 7. Sneak peek: How IRS expects you to report health coverage next year For years now, employers knew they’d soon have to start reporting their employee health coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Then earlier this summer, some help: Draft forms were finally released of the information returns you and your finance staffers would have to use. 6. 21 best Excel shortcuts — all in one place Love ’em or loathe ’em, spreadsheets are the lifeblood of any Finance department. Why not make it as easy on yourself as possible? Here’s a collection of the best Excel shortcuts. 5. Obama to overhaul overtime rules: What it means for Finance Get ready! There are some big changes in store for your payroll department. 4. Workers gone wild: 7 outrageous cases of employee fraud For some rogue staffers, lifting office supplies or seeking reimbursement on a few minor “non-business related” charges is mere child’s play. 3. Do you and your staffers know these 10 ‘power’ Excel skills? You probably consider yourself pretty adept at using Excel. The same hopefully goes for your finance staffers. 2. New IRS rules impact A/P, leave Payroll out Put your Accounts Payable department on alert: It’s in for some changes when it comes to its key year-end task: 1099s. 1. IRS creates $36K per-worker Obamacare fine If you were planning on sending workers out onto the insurance exchanges with a lump-sum of cash for premium costs, you’ll want to read the feds’ latest warning. Campaign-Finance Bondage [unable to retrieve full-text content]Campaign-finance reformers claim to oppose “big money” in politics, but more often small citizen groups get caught in the webs that regulate political speech. That’s what has happened in Arizona, where a federal court recently formalized a decision ...

Finance ministry mulls roping in private professionals for top job at PSBs

PUNE: The finance ministry is considering a proposal to rope in professionals from the private sector for appointment of chairman and CEO-cum-managing director in state-owned financial institutions as it looks for talent from a wider pool of applicants. "Private sector candidates may be allowed for both the post of chairman and MD& CEO," a senior finance ministry official said. "If the search committee recommends a candidate all such issues like higher compensation package can be looked at," the official said. The changes can only be made by appointments committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by prime minister Narendra Modi, the official added. Earlier this week, the government kick-started the management reforms of public sector banks, splitting the post of chairman and managing director-cum-CEO. Recently, the RBI in a paper, 'Management and Governance issues in PSBs,' had recommended that the selection process should be left to an independent panel of experts through open-market, global advertisements for the chairman's post. It had further recommended that such executives be paid salaries that are comparable with those in other industries. However, given the structure it is unlikely that any one from private sector would apply for post as remuneration level is quite low. This is also evident from the fact that recent selection process for Coal India's CMD did not see any professional from private sector expressing interest for the top job at the world's largest coal miner. The government head-hunter Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) ended up selecting a bureaucrat out of 12 who had applied for the top job. Experts said government may seek applications from the private sector but it is quite unlikely that anyone would apply for the post because of huge difference in salary. Meeting criteria for the post of top executive of the public sector banks would also be difficult and it would be difficult to get their vigilance clearance and other regulatory clearances, official said. If approved, this would be for the first time that government would invite applications from private sector for the top posts of state-owned banks. So far, CMDs of PSU banks were selected from public sector banks only. In the last UPA government an attempt was made to bring in a private sector professional in India Infrastructure Finance Company (IIFCL), a wholly owned subsidiary of the government. The then prime minister Manmohan Singh rejected the name of Deepak Bagla, a partner with London-based private equity firm 3i, recommended by the Finance Ministry for the post of chairman and managing director of IIFCL.

What Moves the Stock Market?

With the stock market’s unexpected boom toward the end of 2014, what better way to ring in the new year than to reexamine that age-old question: What drives stock returns? Is it earnings’ growth fundamentals or short-term momentum swings in investor behavior? The answer matters because most forecasters expect the economy to grow faster this year than in 2014, which argues for another good year for the market. But many traders will tell you that investors’ emotions matter a lot more. One emotional strategy has long attracted interest among financial economists: “momentum trading,” or buying as long as the market is going up, or short-selling when the market is headed in the other direction. Various studies have suggested that, at least for professional money managers who can buy and sell stocks in volume and keep their transaction costs low, this strategy can generate superior returns, even adjusted for the risk of periodic crashes. A December study by three economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago confirms this result. The economists came to this conclusion by looking at stock returns during the “Victorian era,” in the second half of the 19th century, as well as from 1927 and 2012. Momentum trading paid off in both periods. This was true even when, according to the authors, the risk of a stock market crash seemed high: Investors poured money in and wanted it invested, so they kept pushing up prices until bubbles burst. Does that mean that individual investors should try to be momentum investors too? No. Even with low brokerage commissions, the trading costs would eat away any superior returns. In addition, many investors don’t have stomach to bear the costs of those crashes. So what’s the individual investor to do? Stick to the standard advice: Don’t try to time the market. If you have cash to invest, do it gradually and consistently (the “dollar cost” average way to invest), adjust your mix of stocks and bonds to your age (the older you are, the less of the former and more of the latter), and put your stock money in index funds. It’s hard to do, but it’s best to sit back and not let emotional reactions to daily news tempt you to move your money around too much. Let’s also hope the world will be a better place this year than the one before. Robert Litan is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Trillion Dollar Economists.” He is on Twitter: @BobLitan. ALSO IN THINK TANK: A ‘Moon Shot’ Goal for Computer Programming Protecting Entrepreneurs Amid a Push for Health-Care Reform The Certain Benefits of Long-Term Tax Policy ______________________________________________________ Capital Journal Daybreak Newsletter: Sign up to get the latest on politics, policy and defense delivered to your inbox every morning. For the latest Washington news, For outside analysis,

Comparing America's 3 Largest Internet Service Providers

Summary The Internet Service Providers industry is expected to outperform the S&P broader market substantially this quarter, underperform significantly next quarter, then outperform significantly in 2015 and beyond. Mean and high targets for the 3 largest U.S. Internet Service Providers companies – Trulia Inc, United Online, Spark Networks - range from 16% to 81% above current prices. Find out which among Trulia, United and Spark offers the best stock performance and investment value. * All data are as of the close of Wednesday, December 31, 2014. Emphasis is on company fundamentals and financial data rather than commentary. To understand what types of companies the Internet Service Providers industry contains, we need to make some distinctions, as the category is not as self-explanatory as one might think. Oddly enough, the Internet Service Providers industry does NOT include internet service providers. Mention "internet service providers" and we automatically think of companies that provide access to the internet through television cables, telephone lines, or wireless satellite systems. But those internet "access" providers are categories into various other industries, such as: • the Telecom Services industry - which includes Verizon (NYSE: VZ), AT&T (NYSE: T), CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and others, which industry is compared here, • the CATV Systems industry - which includes DirectTV (NASDAQ: DTV), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), and Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) and others, which industry is compared here, and • the Entertainment Diversified industry - which includes Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) and others, which industry is compared here. No, the Internet Service Providers industry being covered in this comparison is limited to companies that provide services over the internet, not service to the internet. If you ask me, they could easily avoid the confusion simply by adding one letter to the industry's title, calling it "Internet Services Providers" instead of "Internet Service Providers". But that would mean writers like me would have less to write about. So now that we have that whole mess straightened out, just what kinds of internet services do the largest three U.S. companies in the space provide? • Trulia, Inc. (NYSE: TRLA), headquartered in San Francisco, California, provides an online platform for locating homes for sale or rent, helping not just buyers and renters search for their next residence but also enabling real estate professionals to market their listings. The company's platform supplies such information as a home's nearby schools, crime rates, neighborhood amenities, home values, and local community services. It should be noted that Trulia's largest competitor - Zillow, Inc. (NASDAQ: Z), which provides similar home buying and renting information - is actually categorized into a different industry, the Property Management industry in the Financial sector. This is most likely because Zillow also allows borrowers to connect with mortgage lenders, even though the company does not offer any financial services per se. These classifications never cease to amaze. • United Online, Inc. (NASDAQ: UNTD), headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, provides social networking services and products under the Classmates, StayFriends, and Trombi brand names, which include social platforms that enable users to locate and interact with acquaintances from their past. It also offers dial-up Internet access services under the NetZero and Juno brand names, providing mobile broadband, DSL, email, Internet security, and Web hosting services. So there you go… this one does live up to its industry's name. • Spark Networks, Inc. (NYSE: LOV), headquartered in Los Angeles, California, provides online personals services and dating services for singles to meet, participate in community events, and form relationships through its principal sites ChristianMingle.com targeting Christian singles and JDate.com targets Jewish singles. It also offers travel and other recreational events, including weekend getaways, dinners, speed dating events, or other meeting events. Yet as popular as these online services may be, the companies' stocks have not provided very good service to investors on a relative basis, as per the graph below. Since the recovery began in March of 2009, where the broader market S&P 500 index [black] has gained 205% and the SPDR Technology sector ETF (NYSE: XLK) [blue] has gained 212%, only one of the three companies here compared has come close to the two benchmarks - namely Trulia [beige], which has risen 90% in its short 2.5 year publicly traded history, averaging a comparable rate of growth. For their part, United [purple] has gained 180%, while Spark [orange] has been rather unattractive with gains of just 55%. On an annualized basis, where the S&P has averaged 35.65% and XLK has averaged 36.87%, Spark has averaged 9.57%, United has averaged 31.30%, and Trulia has averaged 37.24% per year. These would still be great returns in any normal period. But the recovery since 2009 has not been a normal period, and much better returns have been found elsewhere. (click to enlarge) Source: BigCharts.com Looking at future earnings growth, the Internet "Services" Providers industry (we may as well call it by its clearer name) as a whole is expected to out-provide the broader market considerably, as tabled below where green indicates outperformance while yellow denotes underperformance. In the current quarter, the industry is seen outgrowing the market's growth rate at some 3.13 times its average, before slowing to a lesser but still robust rate of 2.68 times in 2015, and 2.21 times annually over the next five years. (click to enlarge) Zooming-in a little closer, the earnings growth rates of our three competitors look very promising, as tabled below. Although Trulia's and United's earnings are seen shrinking in the current quarter, both companies are seen growing in leaps and bounds going forward - with United beating the S&P's average growth at 13.97 times next quarter, and Trulia beating it at 21.63 times in 2015. But the earnings sparks fly for Spark as well, without a near term set back, as it is expected to beat the broader market's growth as far as the eye can see. (click to enlarge) Yet there is more than earnings growth to consider when sizing up a company as a potential investment. How do the three compare against one another in other metrics, and which makes the best investment? Let's answer that by comparing their company fundamentals using the following format: a) financial comparisons, b) estimates and analyst recommendations, and c) rankings with accompanying data table. As we compare each metric, the best performing company will be shaded green while the worst performing will be shaded yellow, which will later be tallied for the final ranking. A) Financial Comparisons • Market Capitalization: While company size does not necessarily imply an advantage and is thus not ranked, it is important as a denominator against which other financial data will be compared for ranking. (click to enlarge) • Growth: Since revenues and expenses can vary greatly from one season to another, growth is measured on a year-over-year quarterly basis, where Q1 of this year is compared to Q1 of the previous year, for example. In the most recently reported quarter, Trulia delivered the greatest revenue growth year-over-year at an exceptional degree, while Spark delivered the least, even shrinkage along with United. Since none of the companies' trailing earnings growth is available, the metric cannot factor into the comparison. (click to enlarge) • Profitability: A company's margins are important in determining how much profit the company generates from its sales. Operating margin indicates the percentage earned after operating costs, such as labor, materials, and overhead. Profit margin indicates the profit left over after operating costs plus all other costs, including debt, interest, taxes and depreciation. Of our three contestants, Spark operated with the widest profit margin while United operated with the widest operating margin. At the narrow end of the scale, United and Trulia contended with the narrowest margins. It is worth noting that all three companies reported negative margins, denoting loss by all. (click to enlarge) • Management Effectiveness: Shareholders are keenly interested in management's ability to do more with what has been given to it. Management's effectiveness is measured by the returns generated from the assets under its control, and from the equity invested into the company by shareholders. For their managerial performance, United's management team delivered the greatest returns on assets where Trulia's team delivered the greatest returns on equity. At the low end of the spectrum, Spark's team delivered the least. Here again it is worth noting that all three companies reported negative returns, denoting loss of assets and equity by all three. (click to enlarge) • Earnings Per Share: Of all the metrics measuring a company's income, earnings per share is probably the most meaningful to shareholders, as this represents the value that the company is adding to each share outstanding. Since the number of shares outstanding varies from company to company, I prefer to convert EPS into a percentage of the current stock price to better determine where an investment could gain the most value. Of the three companies here compared, Trulia provides common stock holders with the greatest diluted earnings per share gain as a percentage of its current share price, while United's DEPS over current stock price is lowest, even negative denoting loss. And of course, here again all three companies' figures are negative, denoting loss. (click to enlarge) • Share Price Value: Even if a company outperforms its peers on all the above metrics, however, investors may still shy away from its stock if its price is already trading too high. This is where the stock price relative to forward earnings and company book value come under scrutiny, as well as the stock price relative to earnings relative to earnings growth, known as the PEG ratio. Lower ratios indicate the stock price is currently trading at a cheaper price than its peers, and might thus be a bargain. Among our three combatants, United's stock is cheapest relative to company book value, while Trulia's is cheapest relative to 5-year PEG. At the overpriced end of the scale, Spark's stock is the most overvalued relative to company book, where United's is most overpriced relative to PEG. Since Spark's price to forward earnings is not available, the metric does not factor into the comparison, though it is worth noting that Trulia's price to forward earnings is tremendously overpriced compared to United's. (click to enlarge) B) Estimates and Analyst Recommendations Of course, no matter how skilled we perceive ourselves to be at gauging a stock's prospects as an investment, we'd be wise to at least consider what professional analysts and the companies themselves are projecting - including estimated future earnings per share and the growth rate of those earnings, stock price targets, and buy/sell recommendations. • Earnings Estimates: To properly compare estimated future earnings per share across multiple companies, we would need to convert them into a percentage of their stocks' current prices. Of our three specimens, United offers the highest percentage of earnings over current stock price for all time periods. At the low end of the scale, Trulia offers the lowest percentages for next quarter (shrinkage even), while Spark offers it for all remaining periods (with shrinkage for 2015). (click to enlarge) • Earnings Growth: For long-term investors this metric is one of the most important to consider, as it denotes the percentage by which earnings are expected to grow or shrink as compared to earnings from corresponding periods a year prior. For earnings growth, Spark offers the greatest growth in the current quarter, United offers it next quarter, where Trulia offers it in 2015 and beyond. At the low end of the spectrum, Trulia offers the slowest growth prospects over the near term (with some shrinkage), United offers it in 2015, while both United and Spark are tied for slowest growth annually over the next five years. (click to enlarge) • Price Targets: Like earnings estimates above, a company's stock price targets must also be converted into a percentage of its current price to properly compare multiple companies. For their high, mean and low price targets over the coming 12 months, analysts believe Spark's stock offers the greatest upside potential and least downside risk, while United's stock offers the least upside and Trulia's offers the greatest downside. It must be noted, however, that United's and Spark's stocks are already trading below their low targets. While this may mean increased potential for sharp moves upward, it may warrant reassessments of future expectations. It must also be noted that United and Spark each has only one broker making a prognostication, potentially limiting the targets' accuracy. (click to enlarge) • Buy/Sell Recommendations: After all is said and done, perhaps the one gauge that sums it all up are analyst recommendations. These have been converted into the percentage of analysts recommending each level. However, I factor only the strong buy and buy recommendations into the ranking. Hold, underperform and sell recommendations are not ranked since they are determined after determining the winners of the strong buy and buy categories, and would only be negating those winners of their duly earned titles. Of our three contenders, United is best recommended with 0 strong buy and 2 buys representing a combined 100% of its 2 analysts, followed by Spark with 1 strong buy and 0 buy ratings representing 50% of its 2 analysts, and lastly by Trulia with 0 strong buy and 1 buy recommendation representing 11.11% of its 9 analysts. (click to enlarge) C) Rankings Having crunched all the numbers and compared all the projections, the time has come to tally up the wins and losses and rank our three competitors against one another. In the table below you will find all of the data considered above plus a few others not reviewed. Here is where using a company's market cap as a denominator comes into play, as much of the data in the table has been converted into a percentage of market cap for a fair comparison. The first and last placed companies are shaded. We then add together each company's finishes to determine its overall ranking, with first place finishes counting as merits while last place finishes count as demerits. (click to enlarge) And the winner is… United in a class all by itself, outperforming in 14 metrics and underperforming in 7 for a net score of +7, followed far behind by both Trulia and Spark in a tie at -4 a piece. Where the Internet Services Providers industry is expected to outperform the S&P broader market substantially this quarter, underperform significantly next quarter, then outperform significantly in 2015 and beyond, the three largest U.S. companies in the space are expected to outgrow the broader market in earnings at pretty impressive rates - with Spark growing as much as 8.29 times next quarter, United growing as much as 13.97 times next quarter, and Trulia growing as much as 21.63 times the S&P's average growth rate in 2015. Yet after taking all company fundamentals into account, United Online, Inc. brings investors together given its lowest stock price to company book value, highest cash and revenue over market cap, lowest debt over market cap, widest operating margin, highest return on assets, highest EBITDA over market cap and revenue, highest future earnings over current stock price in all periods, highest future earnings growth next quarter, and most analyst buy recommendations - decisively winning the Internet Service Providers industry competition. Editor's Note: This article covers one or more stocks trading at less than $1 per share and/or with less than a $100 million market cap. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks. Disclosure: The author has no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. The author wrote this article themselves, and it expresses their own opinions. The author is not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). The author has no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. (More...)

This was the Internet’s worst, best year ever

This year was a hugely momentous one in the evolution of the global network of networks we call the Internet. Since its creation as a side project of a handful of academics and military researchers in the United States some 50 years ago, the Internet has grown to encompass the whole world. But 2014 was in many ways a mixed bag for the Internet. It showed the Internet at its strongest, reaching more people, more ways than at any point in the past. But at the same time, it has also never been more threatened by everything from hackers to censors to autocrats newly attuned to the power of the online world. 1) The Internet has never been less free. In its early days, the Internet was thought of as a place where people around the world could live according to the principles of free expression and self-determination. But every year it is falling shorter of that ideal. The pro-democracy group Freedom House tallies global metrics for all sorts of online freedom, from the ability to experience an uncensored Internet to the healthy treatment of women online. In 2014, that scored dropped for the fourth year in a row. That said... 2) A tremendous number of people came online for the first time this year. The number of regular Internet users grew by about 250 million people in just the last 12 months. That's like adding the entire population of the United States to the online world all at once -- or the number of people living in all of Russia, France, Kenya, and South Korea combined. More people connected means more of them benefiting from the wealth of what's available online. On the other hand... 3) Even democracies abused the Internet. A March report from the group Reporters Without Borders identified government bodies around the world that are actively engaged in spying on what happens online. Some aren't surprising: Pakistan's main telecomm agency, North Korea's science branch, or China's chief information office. But that others exist within the confines of the planet's most celebrated democracies -- from the Centre for Development of Telematics in India to the National Security Agency in the United States -- reveals, says the group, a worrisome global "schizophrenic attitude" towards surveillance. And yet... 4) The rights of the online citizen were enshrined. Five years ago, Brazil's ministry of justice and the country's legal community began work on a sort of Internet bill of rights for the people of that nation. This year, the product of that work, called the Marco Civil da Internet, was signed into law. It guarantees, among other things, the citizen's right to a robust Internet connection and strong online privacy protections. The first of its kind in the world, the landmark law stands up for the idea that online rights are to be cherished and protected like any other set of civil rights. But... 5) Other countries turned informal Internet crackdowns into official rules and laws. In Russia, where bloggers are often some of the few voices speaking out against the Kremlin, new rules were adopted requiring those with even modest online followings to submit to the same restrictions as the mainstream media. In post-coup d'état Thailand, the military ordered Internet service providers to submit to its dictates. And in Somalia, the al-Shabab militia went one step further: in the parts of the country it controls, it formally banned the Internet altogether. Still... 6) The World Wide Web passed the billion domain mark. In the early days of the World Wide Web -- the Internet's killer app -- there were so few Web sites that aficionados would hand-curate directories of everything that was neat, intriguing, or simply just available online. Just two decades later, it would take someone typing out a similar list of everything available online about 150 years. Barely into adulthood, the World Wide Web is remarkably robust and only getting more so. On the other hand... 7) Hackers exposed the Internet's fundamental insecurities. No matter if it was the work of North Korea, disgruntled ex-employees, or other hackers, the recent breaching of Sony's computer networks was eye-opening. The Internet was built on trust. But it became inescapably clear this year just how far some are willing go to turn it into a global battleground. And the initial decision not to screen the movie at the center of the hack revealed that, when it comes to responding to online threats that move offline, we are frighteningly unprepared. Even so... 8) Millions of people in the United States voiced their opinions on "net neutrality." Whatever side of the debate over the fair treatment of online content you are on, the unprecedented nearly 4 million comments received by regulators at the Federal Communications Commission were a remarkable display of how the once obscure policy issue has captured the attention of the American public. And while this was only the U.S. making laws, given the prime role the U.S. plays in the Internet, people all around the world paid close attention to its outcome. Nonetheless... 9) Governments moved to splinter off their own piece of the digital world. More and more, leaders decided that it's easier for them to shape what happens online if they make sure that a greater part of it takes place within their borders. Some in Germany and Europe, for example, began entertaining the idea of a so-called "Schengen Zone" where Europeans' digital data, from e-mails to social media traffic, would be housed on servers within the confines of that continent. The Internet is one of the few things the people of the world share without regard to political boundaries. But increasingly dividing lines that carve up the rest of our lives are being imposed upon it. Hang on... 10) Fighting for the Internet drove people into the streets. In Mexico in April, thousands formed a human chain to object to a telecommunications bill that would, among other things, allow the shutting down of the Internet during political protests. In Bolivia in May, activists crawled through roadways dressed as snails to protest slow Internet speeds. And in Hungary in October, people threw computers into the streets to protest a proposed tax on Internet use. The Hungarians won: the government backed down from the idea. In 2014, people around the world were willing to defend the Internet like any other political value they hold dear. That, in fact, people seemed to have never been more passionate about the fate of the Internet is perhaps, the one main lesson from this past year in the Internet's life. And that likely bodes well for its future. Nancy Scola is a reporter who covers the intersections of technology and public policy, politics, and governance.

Finance Ministry turns down Home Ministry's demand for Rs 1500 crore

NEW DELHI: The Home Ministry on Thursday went into fire-fighting mode after a letter written by it to all states was revealed which said the Finance Ministry has denied it an additional Rs 1500 crore allocation for police modernization funds at the Revised Expenditure (RE) stage. Home Minister Rajnath Singh had earlier last year pushed for the Modernisation of Police Forces (MPF) Scheme funds to be doubled from Rs 1500 crore to Rs 3000 crore. The same was announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his maiden budget speech. "The additional allocation of Rs 1500 crore as per Budget 2014-15 announcement has not been provided under the MPF Scheme at RE stage. Therefore, additional state action plans received from various states will not be considered during the current financial year," says the Home Ministry letter of December 29 written to Director General of Police (DGPs) and Principal Home Secretaries of all states and marked to the Union Home Secretary and all Joint Secretaries in Home Ministry. This letter was duly uploaded on the Home Ministry website on Thursday. When asked about the reasons for the denial of the additional funds, a Home Ministry spokesperson told ET that the RE decisions had "still not been communicated" to the Home Ministry. "There seems to be some mistake in the letter...the same is being withdrawn from the website. The assumption about the funds not being provided at RE stage may be based on discussions," the spokesperson said. The letter however clearly says that the additional action plans submitted by various states for the MPF fund "will not be considered during the current financial year and may be merged/absorbed in the action plans for 2015-16". A government source said non-submission of plans by some states or the non-utilisation of the existing grant by states may be a factor for the Finance Ministry to not clear the additional grant this year. The Home Ministry in a letter to all states on September 4 had informed them that the Finance Minister in his budget speech had proposed to enhance the allocation for the MPF Scheme from a sum of Rs 1500 crore to Rs 3000 crore during 2014-15. "However, the enhanced allocation may be made available at RE 2014-15, provided the states are able to provide Utilisation certificates for the previous releases and the allocation already made during 2014-15 is fully released to states," the September 4 letter said. In another letter to states on October 22, the Home Ministry had said that proposals from many states on how to spend the additional funds were still to be received. "It may be stated that any further delay in submission of the proposals for 2014-15 may adversely impact the approval process/timelines and affect the timely release of funds," the Home Ministry wrote on October 22 to all states.