April 16 campaign roundup: Narendra Modi in firing line of Gandhis; EC censures Amit Shah and Azam Khan

8.45 pm: Election Commssion censures BJP leader Amit Shah and SP leader Azam Khan for controversial remarks.

5.25 pm: Stepped-up her attack against BJP’s prime ministerial nominee. TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee has said that the projection by certain quarters that Narendra Modi will become the prime minister is like a gas balloon which will burst when the gas leaks.

Banerjee claimed at a rally that crores were being spent by interested quarters on predicting who would become the prime minister.

“Have you seen a gas balloon? A gas balloon is made by pumping gas into a balloon. It remains inflated for sometime. As soon as the gas goes down inside the balloon, it collapses,” Banerjee said without naming Modi.

5.10 pm: Aspiring to be a ‘giant killer’, Congress leader Ajay Rai says his record is better than BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in the electoral arena as he has won five straight assembly polls as against just three won so far by the Gujarat Chief Minister.

Modi, in his third term as Gujarat chief minister, is contesting his first Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi and Vadodara in Gujarat.

5:01 pm: Kerala government has decided to demand a relaxation in the Model Code of Conduct issued by the Election Commission, for the smooth conduct of administrative affairs of the state, where the Lok Sabha polls were held on April 10

4:52 pm: Training his guns on the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat said the Narendra Modi-ruled Gujarat is one of the worst performing states on the human development index in the country.

4:50 pm: With election temperatures rising in Telangana, the TRS and Congress seem to be at each other’s throats as the war of words between the two main contenders in the region, set to become a new state on June 2, is showing no signs of abating.

4:46 pm: Stepping up her attack against BJP and Narendra Modi, Sonia Gandhi said they represented a dangerous combination of religious fanaticism, power and money and asked the country to reject the “ambition of that individual”.

4:37 pm: On the eve of polling for Hazaribagh Lok Sabha seat, five improvised bombs were today recovered by security forces from a jungle area of the constituency in Jharkhand.

4:28 pm: The candidates in this constituency, known as home of Shirdi Sai Baba, are wooing the voters in the name of the popular guru, assuring better infrastructure and top class facilities for devotees ahead of his death centenary in 2018.

4:27 pm: Stop “fooling” the people, Rahul Gandhi asserted today in a fresh broadside against Narendra Modi, dubbing his “toffee or balloon” model of development in Gujarat as nothing but “loot of public money”.

4.00 pm: AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal began campaign trail in Varanasi as he held “chaupals” or small public meetings in villages.

3.31 pm: Former BJP president Nitin Gadkari has trashed media reports, which quoted a purported tweet by him to claim that Kiran Bedi will be party’s chief ministerial candidate in the Delhi assembly polls. The tweet had said, “BJP ready for Delhi polls, Kiran Bedi will be CM candidate against Kejriwal”.

3.15 pm: Smriti Irani files her nominations from Amethi.

READ FULL STORY: SMRITI FILES HER NOMINATIONS

11.48 am: An FIR has been registered against 10 persons for burning an effigy of the Election Commission to protest against the poll body’s ban on rallies of Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan in Uttar Pradesh.

11.34 am: “I am here to fight the Congress, not its B-Team,” says Smriti Irani in Amethi.

ELECTION TRACKER: The Aam Aadmi Party is leading on Twitter against Congress and BJP with over 6.2 lakh followers. WATCH: EXPRESS ELECTION TRACKER

11.23 am:

On my way to file my nomination for Amethi, with the blessings of Durga Ma and enthusisatic support from the constituency residents.

— Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) April 16, 2014

11.15 am: Union Minister Kapil Sibal has decided to complain to the Election Commission against BJP leader Subramanian Swamy over his comments on Priyanka Gandhi.

10.22 am: BJP candidate from Amethi, Smriti Irani, is expected to file her nomination papers today.

10.13 am: Congress leader Salman Anees Soz has taken a dig at senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, tweeting that she has come a long way “from PM ambitions to a rally without workers”.

9.58 am: Congress president Sonia Gandhi will address her first election rally in Telangana today.

9.56 am: BJP president Rajnath Singh is slated to address multiple rallies in West Bengal today.

9.50 am:

Rajnath Ji visited Muslim religious leaders for support but,why BJP criticised Imam Bukhari’s meeting with Sonia Ji.Just to fool people?

— Shakeel Ahmad (@Ahmad_Shakeel) April 16, 2014

9.23 am:

Found this, liked this, shared this. :-) Nice to start the day with a chuckle. pic.twitter.com/EO7z8VxPCv

— Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) April 16, 2014

9.10 am:

All hopelessly wrong. Modi is like Hitler !

— digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) April 16, 2014