Pune Election Result – Congress Kalmadi Leads

2:46 pm Update – Kalmadi leds over Shirole by 24158

2:15 pm Update – Kalmadi leds over Shirole by 21525

1:29 pm Update – Suresh Kalmadi from the Indian National Congress leads by 19410 from BJP’s Anil Shirole as on 1.29 pm on 16th May 09.  Counting is still in progress. Read more

India Election Results – Election Commission Website Links

The results of Indian General Elections will be available on the Election Commission Of India site http://eciresults.nic.in/ from 8 am on 16th May 2009. Certain pages of the site are already throwing server runtime errors, so it looks unlikely that the site will survive the hammering it will get through counting day tomorrow.

I am expecting the server running the site homepage to crumble under the load, so am listing internal site URLs below. Hopefully some of the links below will work tomorrow. Read more

India Loksabha Election Results 2009 : Exit Polls Summary

16 May 09 Update:

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Below is a summary of exit poll predictions for India Election Results 2009. However looking at the dismal record of opinion and exit polls in India, we need to look at these numbers more as entertainment than information. Can’t really blame the pollsters as conducting representative sample polls in a country of the size and diversity of India seems almost like an impossible task. Read more

Maharashtra Premier League (MPL) T20 Cricket League Risks Mega Failure

I would love to be proven wrong and see the Maharashtra Premier League (MPL) 20-20 cricket league be successful. The MPL concept sure had the potential, but unfortunately the format and packaging makes it seem like the MPL will not deliver. Read more

Election Results – Pune Loksabha Elections 2009

Update: 2012 Pune Corporation Elections Results

The election results for the India General Elections 2009 will be announced on the 16th of May. Pune city voted long back, on the 23rd of April 09. So it’s going to be  a long wait before we know if the candidate we voted for will actually make it to the LokSabha, the House Of the People and the lower house of the Parliament Of India. Read more

Voter Apathy Or Election Commission Incompetence?

At just 40%, Pune saw it’s worst ever voter turnout for the Loksabha elections. Mumbai was slightly better at 44%. The dismal voter turnout numbers have shocked most of educated India. Political leaders are smirking on TV saying things like “You blame us politicians for not caring about the country, but even the ordinary citizen does not care.” I have no insider info on the matter, but am just trying to apply some common sense to figure out what could have gone wrong. Read more

Finalizing My Vote For India Loksabha Election 2009

Doing some final checks before I finalize the candidate I would be voting for in tomorrows election. Just visited the websites of all the top candidates to check if they have something new to say. Nothing new there. A couple of sites seem to have actually gone down. Next looking at http://myneta.info/pune for a quick and easy to read synopsis of the affidavits filed by the Pune Loksabha candidates. The details of 3 candidates including BJP’s Anil Shirole are missing from the sheet. Read more

Pune Loksabha Elections – Top 6 Candidates Overview

Below are my short takeaways about who I think are the top 6 candidates. There are 10s of candidates contesting for the Pune seat, so there could be other worthy candidates, unfortunately I haven’t heard of them. Read more

India Loksabha Election Issues – Candidate Attributes

Watching politicians debating about what seemed like non-issues to me, got me wondering about what are the real election issues and what are the qualities that the electorate look for in a MP.  Thought why not create a simple ranking based survey to get the info from friends and readers of HarshadOak.com.  Please fill out the survey – India Loksabha Election Issues – Candidate Attributes Survey . It will take not more than 3-4 min to complete the survey and you will help us all better understand what matters to Indians. I will make the statistics collected through this survey freely and publicly available at http://www.HarshadOak.com on 1st May 2009. Thank you.

Compare Candidates Contesting In India Elections 2009

In a previous post “Wealth & Assets Of Candidates“, I mentioned how you can access the affidavits filed by the election candidates.  However there’s an easier way than having to go through the affidavits of all candidates. Check out http://myneta.info/. The site provides an easy and tabular comparison of the various candidates contesting in a constituency. Read more

Wealth & Assets Of Candidates In India General Elections 2009

Below are the affidavits of the candidates contesting for the Pune Loksabha Seat in India’s General Elections 2009. Click on the names to open the scanned PDF documents. You can check the details of the wealth, holdings, assets of the candidates and their criminal record, if any. Use these links to have a look at candidate affidavits across – Pune, Maharashtra and  India . Read more

Pune Election Candidate, D S Kulkarni (DSK) explains BSP ‘social engineering’

D S KulkarniI would soon be carrying a proper interview with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate for Pune Loksabha elections, Shri. D S Kulkarni (DSK). However while the DSK office processes the full interview, they were kind enough to put me on the phone with Shri. Kulkarni. Below is my record of our brief interaction. Will have the full interview up soon. Read more

Does the government have the right to refuse security to an Indian citizen or business?

The Indian Premier League security fiasco had me wondering if it is within the Indian constitution for a government to refuse security to a legal Indian citizen or enterprise. I am no constitution expert, but I would expect providing security of life and property to it’s citizens to be one of the founding principles of the constitution. It is the primary job of the government and there’s no way it can shirk the responsibility. If a government says that it lacks the ability to provide security to its citizens and enterprise, is it legal for the government to continue in power?

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Dekho Dekho Kaun Aya… Hindustan Ka Sher Aya!

India’s general elections are just a month away and pre-poll campaigning is now heating up. I certainly would be voting but along with that I also intend to attend all political rallies that might be held anywhere near my place. I want to hear what the leaders really stand for and sound like. Indian media today is in a mess as most TV channels either blatantly provide incorrect reports or distort statements to suit the story they wish to push. So just based on TV reports you can’t really form an opinion about a politician. So yesterday I attended a BJP’s Narendra Modi rally held at the river bed grounds near the Baba Bhide bridge in Pune. Read more

Facebook : “Push To Open”

A couple of days back, I wrote about Facebook vs Orkut, where I talked about the rapidly growing popularity of Facebook in India. However despite the success and popularity of Facebook, I haven’t been able to get comfortable with Facebook and get truly on-board. A few reasons why I somehow feel rather wary of Facebook. Read more

Fading Orkut – Rising Facebook

Orkut has easily been the most popular social network in India for the past few years. However things are changing and Facebook seems to now have replaced Orkut as the happening network. Orkut users are seemingly migrating in herds to Facebook. Orkut seems to have become the network for kids and newbies while Facebook has become the place where the supposedly smart, rich, famous and influential are active. From movie stars to politicians, they all refer to Facebook as their social network of choice.

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What’s The Impact Of The Economic Slowdown On The Software Business?

Rightrix Research & IndicThreads.com have undertaken a research to gauge sentiment of the insiders to the software business (the developers, architects and managers) and know what they think about the slowdown and its impact. Participating in the survey also gets you 15% off on registrations for the 3rd IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology

>> Click to enter the survey