(Reuters) – Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton rolled up a series of wins on Tuesday, as the two presidential front-runners took a step towards capturing their parties’ nominations on the 2016 campaign’s biggest day of state-by-state primary contests.

Trump and Clinton turned their sights on each other after their Super Tuesday wins, with Trump promising to “go after” Clinton and the former secretary of state decrying what she called Trump’s divisive rhetoric.

U.S. networks projected Trump won six and Clinton seven states on Super Tuesday, when 12 states were voting. Trump won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Virginia, while Clinton won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Trump’s rival Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, won his home state and neighbouring Oklahoma, bolstering his argument he had the best chance to stop the controversial Trump. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, favourite of the Republican establishment, was projected the winner in Minnesota, his first victory.

Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont, also won his home state along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma and vowed to pursue the battle for the nomination in the 35 states that had yet to vote.

Super Tuesday was the biggest single day of state-by-state contests to select party nominees for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

Opinion polls heading into the voting had shown Trump leading in most of the 11 Republican contests up for grabs, raising the possibility of a big night that would intensify worries among Republican leaders who fear the billionaire could inflict long-term damage on the party.

“I am a unifier,” Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida, dismissing concerns that his nomination would rip apart the party. “Once we get all this finished, I’m going after one person – Hillary Clinton.”

The networks had yet to project a winner for Republicans in Vermont or Alaska.

Clinton had Trump on her mind in her victory speech, although she never mentioned him by name.

“The stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we’re hearing on the other side has never been lower,” Clinton, 68, told supporters in Miami. “Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we’re not going to let it work.”

Sanders won his home state of Vermont and Oklahoma, two of five states he was targeting for victory on Tuesday. He lost to Clinton in Massachusetts, another state he was hoping to win.

Sanders thanked cheering supporters in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and assailed the Republican front-runner.

‘DONALD TRUMPS OF THE WORLD’

“We are not going to let the Donald Trumps of the world divide us,” said Sanders, 74, adding that he expected to pile up “hundreds” of convention delegates in voting on Tuesday.

Trump, 69, has worried many in the Republican establishment with proposals such as building a wall along the U.S. southern border with Mexico, deporting 11 million illegal immigrants and slapping a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

Even as Trump advances, many Republican Party leaders do not support him and worry that he would be easily defeated in November if Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee.

Cruz told supporters at his victory party in Texas that Trump was a “Washington dealmaker, profane and vulgar, who has a lifelong pattern of using government power for personal gain.”

The crossfire between Trump and establishment Republicans threatened to tear the party apart at a time when it will need to generate momentum behind a prospective nominee.

“If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, it will split the Republican Party and it will basically, I think, split the conservative movement,” Rubio told CBS News.

But while Trump’s campaign has confounded many Republican leaders, the New York real estate developer cites his high poll numbers and big primary wins as proof he is not dividing the party but grown its ranks.

“We have expanded the Republican Party,” he said in Florida.

With his string of victories on Tuesday, Trump extended his lead in convention delegates over Cruz, Rubio, Ohio Governor John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

On the Democratic side, Clinton took advantage of her strong performance with black voters to cruise to big wins in several Southern states, where blacks make up a big bloc of the Democratic electorate.

While some Democrats have begun to question whether Sanders should continue his challenge to Clinton, he said he had no intention of dropping out anytime soon.

“At the end of tonight, 15 states will have voted, 35 states remain,” Sanders said in Vermont. “And let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace to every one of those states.”

(Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Ginger Gibson, Alana Wise, Luciana Lopez, Jeff Mason, and Megan Cassella in Washington and Emily Stephenson in Houston; Writing by John Whitesides and Steve Holland; Editing by Howard Goller)

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley unveiled a budget for the poor on Monday, announcing new rural aid and health programmes in a strategy shift that could boost his ruling party in coming state elections.

Here are the highlights of Jaitley’s budget for the fiscal year that begins on April 1:

RURAL ECONOMY

* Rural jobs programme allocated 385 billion rupees ($5.61 billion) in 2016/17

* Farmer welfare budget in 2016/17 to total 359.84 billion rupees

* Rural road development to get 190 billion rupees in 2016/17

* Target of agriculture credit at 9 trillion rupees in 2016/17

* Interest subvention towards farm loans in 2016/17 at 150 billion rupees

($1 = 68.6700 Indian rupees)

(Compiled by Tommy Wilkes and Krishna N. Das)

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By Luciana Lopez and Steve Holland

LAS VEGAS/COLUMBIA, S.C. (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump rolled to victory on Saturday in South Carolina in a contest that saw former Florida Governor Jeb Bush drop out, while Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton beat back a strong challenge from Bernie Sanders in Nevada.

The victories by Trump and Clinton solidified their positions as the front-runners to win their parties’ respective presidential nominations ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

Bush suffered a distant fourth place finish in the Republican contest and announced he had suspended his campaign, ending his dream of becoming a third Bush president after his father and brother.

“The people of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken, and I really respect their decision,” an emotional Bush said in Columbia. He finished far out of the running in each of the first three states.

By winning both South Carolina and New Hampshire and holding leads in the 11 states that vote on March 1, Trump was arguably on track to win the nomination, an outcome that seemed astounding to contemplate when he got into the race last summer.

“It’s going to be very difficult for him to be derailed at this point,” said Hogan Gidley, who was a senior adviser to former Republican candidate Mike Huckabee.

Trump, 69, was declared the victor about an hour after polls closed in South Carolina.

“Let’s put this thing away,” Trump said in his victory speech in Spartanburg.

Trump was as feisty and anti-establishment as ever, denouncing TV pundits for saying that if his remaining opponents consolidated around one Trump alternative, there would be enough anti-Trump votes to beat him.

“These geniuses,” he said. “They don’t understand that as people drop out, I’m going to get a lot of those votes also. You don’t just add them together.”

He easily defeated Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who were in a close fight for second place and the right to declare themselves the anti-Trump alternative.

With 73 percent of South Carolina precincts reporting, Trump had 33.1 percent, followed by Rubio with 22.3 percent and Cruz with 21.7 percent.

It was Trump’s second victory in a row, an outcome that frightens establishment Republicans but thrills the “throw-the-bums-out” conservative base of the party that has long been fed up with Washington.

The bellicose New York billionaire had created some last-minute drama in South Carolina after Pope Francis said on Thursday his views on U.S. immigration were “not Christian.” Trump initially called Francis “disgraceful,” but later called him “a wonderful guy.”

Trump, who has also advocated a ban on Muslim immigrants to counter domestic terror threats, stirred fresh controversy on Friday when he told a crowd about a U.S. general who was said to have dipped bullets in pigs’ blood to kill Muslim prisoners a century ago.

After South Carolina, the Republican presidential campaign is about to rapidly pick up steam in March when dozens of states hold nominating contests. Another candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich, is concentrating on midwestern and northern states in the state-by-state contest to pick nominees for the Nov. 8 election.

Clinton’s victory in the Nevada Democratic caucuses, meanwhile, could help calm Democratic Party worries about the strength of her campaign.

Her win denied Sanders the breakthrough win he had sought in a state with a heavy minority population, but his ability to close a one-time double-digit polling lead for Clinton suggests the Democratic nominating race will be long and hard fought.

With 87 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton was leading with 52.5 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 47.4 percent. Vote counting was delayed in Nevada by heavy turnout.

Clinton’s victory buoyed worried supporters and gave her fresh momentum as she heads into the next contest in South Carolina on Feb. 27, where polls show her with a double-digit lead largely as a result of heavy support from black voters.

“Some may have doubted us, but we never doubted each other,” she told cheering supporters at a victory rally in Las Vegas. “This is your campaign.”

Sanders vowed to fight on and set his sights on the 11 states that vote on “Super Tuesday,” March 1. He predicted that when Democrats gather for their nominating convention in Philadelphia in July, “We are going to see the results of one of the great political upsets in the history of the United States.”

“The wind is at our banks,” he said. “We have the momentum.”

After routing Clinton in New Hampshire and finishing a strong second in Iowa, states with nearly all-white populations, Sanders had hoped to prove in Nevada that he could win over black and Hispanic voters and compete nationally as the race moves to states with more diverse populations.

But entrance polling in Nevada showed he badly lost among black voters, by 76 percent to 22 percent, a bad omen for South Carolina and other southern states with big black populations. He did win among Hispanics by 53 percent to 45 percent.

Clinton’s campaign has argued she would assert control of the Democratic race once it moved to more diverse states with black and Hispanic populations who have traditionally backed Clinton and have been slow to warm to Sanders.

(Reporting by Luciana Lopez and Steve Holland; Writing by John Whitesides, Steve Holland and Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Hay)

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