Biden wins Arizona, consolidates lead over Trump
Washington: President-elect Joe Biden has narrowly won Arizona, major US media outlets projected on Friday, capturing the state's 11 electoral votes and consolidating his lead over his Republican rival and incumbent US President Donald Trump.
Biden, a Democract, has won Arizona, flipping a longtime Republican stronghold, CNN reported.
The state's 11 Electoral College votes bring 77-year-old Biden's lead to 290-217 and put further pressure on President Trump, who has yet to concede the election held on November 3.
Trump, 74, has been making baseless attacks on the vote counts favouring Biden.
Biden, who won the state by about 11,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage points, is the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since President Bill Clinton in 1996, The New York Times reported.
Arizona has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1996. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton there. The race was called on the ninth day of counting after Election Day, NBC News reported.
This leaves only North Carolina and Georgia as states that have not yet been called. They are both still rated as "too close to call," it reported.
To win the race to the White House, the winner has to garner at least 270 electoral votes out of the 538-member Electoral College votes.
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Court can reject anticipatory bail but cannot direct accused to surrender: SC
New Delhi (PTI): A court can reject anticipatory bail of an accused but it has no jurisdiction to direct him to surrender before the trial court, the Supreme Court has said.
A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Ujjal Bhuyan made the observation while hearing a plea filed by a man accused of cheating and forgery.
"If the court wants to reject the anticipatory bail, it may do so, but the court has no jurisdiction to say that the petitioner should now surrender," the bench said.
The Jharkhand High Court had rejected anticipatory bail plea of the accused and asked him to surrender and seek regular bail.
In this case, a complaint had been filed before a magistrate alleging offences under Sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using forged document) and 120B read with 34 of the IPC, in connection with a land dispute.
The high court had dismissed the second anticipatory bail application of the accused on the ground that no new circumstances were shown.
It had relied on its earlier order rejecting his first anticipatory bail plea, in which the court directed the petitioner to surrender before the trial court and seek regular bail in terms of the decision in Satender Kumar Antil v. CBI.
The top court said such a direction was wholly without jurisdiction and said that if a court chooses to reject anticipatory bail, it may do so, but it cannot compel the accused to surrender.
