49-year old has been under fire for several of her controversial comments against several people, including former chief of the Mumbai anti-terrorist squad Hemant Karkare.

11:00 am IST

Rahul Gandhi trails in Amethi

After making a comeback, Congress president Rahul Gandhi is again in a tight race with BJP candidate Smriti Irani in Amethi, as per data available on Election Commission’s website.

10:52 am IST

Farooq Abdullah, Jitendra Singh lead in early trends in Jammu and Kashmir

National Conference President Farooq Abdullah, BJP leader Jitendra Singh and Congress state president G A Mir were leading in their respective constituencies in the early trends of counting of votes for Lok Sabha elections in Jammu and Kashmir Thursday.

According to election officials, Abdullah was leading over PDP candidate Aga Syed Mohsin by a slender margin of 80votes while Singh had opened a substantial lead of over 4000 votes over his Congress rival Vikramaditya Singh.

10:45 am IST

Sensex hits 40,000 mark for first-time

BJP-Shiv Sena alliance leads in Maharashtra

The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in Maharashtra was leading in more than 40 seats with the Congress-NCP combine ahead in six constituencies, according to initial trends as votes were being counted for the Lok Sabha election on Thursday.

Counting for the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state began at 8am. Maharashtra went to polls in four phases on April 11, 18, 23 and 29 and 867 candidates were in the fray in this election. The voter turnout this year was 60.80%, up from 60.32% in 2014.

Maharashtra, which has the second highest number of 48 Lok Sabha seats in the country