This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.

A day after The Washington Post named an Indian official for allegedly plotting to eliminate Sikh extremist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, India on Tuesday said the report made 'unwarranted and unsubstantiated' imputations on a serious matter.

India is taking the allegations regarding the assassination plot of Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in the United States seriously, the White House has said but refrained from commenting on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe into the matter and the criminal case filed by the Department of Justice.

Quoting officials, The Washington Post said, the foiled assassination was part of an escalating campaign of aggression by RAW against the Indian diaspora in Asia, Europe and North America.

Lone, who is contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Baramulla constituency, said one of the reasons he wants to go to Parliament is to strive and advocate for the same set of laws for the children of Kashmir and the rest of the country.

Avani Dias, the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, said she had to leave India on April 19, the day the Lok Sabha elections started after the government objected to her reporting on the assassination of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

To understand Modi, listen to what he does not say -- vide NRC, suggests Prem Panicker.

When asked if Modi and Singh's comments can be seen as "confessions" on the alleged "assassination of (Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh) Nijjar in Canada, (designated terrorist Gurpatwant Singh) Pannu's murder-for-hire plot in New York, and killings in Pakistan", Miller said the US will not get involved in the matter.

'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.

Gupta, along with some other leaders, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in the presence of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri and the party's national general secretary Vinod Tawde.

'One needs to understand what kind of means the BJP use to bring other party leaders in their party.' 'They are unscrupulous politicians and money plays an important role.'

Kishore said the Congress and its supporters are bigger than any individual and Gandhi should not be stubborn that it must be him who will deliver for the party despite repeated failures.

A statement by the foreign office in Islamabad said that Pakistan has always demonstrated its commitment to peace in the region but its desire for peace should not be misconstrued.

Singh said India has the strength to take stern action against cross-border terrorism and Pakistan has started realising it.

'Modigate is snowballing into a huge thing with the electorate. The BJP is in for huge punishment by the electorate.'

Barring 2004 and 2009 when Navjot Singh Sidhu won the Amritsar seat as a BJP MP and 1998 when Daya Singh Sodhi from BJP was elected as the MP, it has essentially a Congress bastion.

Jaishankar said the US ambassador will say what he feels is the thinking or position of his government.

The Aam Aadmi Party's MP and lone Lok Sabha member Sushil Kumar Rinku joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday along with party MLA Sheetal Angural, dealing a blow to the party already facing a crisis following the arrest of its leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

'But he was very quick and did a very stylish adab.' 'Of course, I didn't expect him to hug.'

'We are at the moment working with India to encourage India to hold accountable, those responsible for this terrible crime'

Seen by political watchers as the favourite to retain power for a third straight term, the Bharatiya Janata Party has set itself an ambitious target of winning 370 Lok Sabha seats, a goal aimed as much at projecting its strength as at diminishing the opposition in popular imagination.

Immediately following its ban being lifted on July 11, 1949, the RSS began debating entering politics in the pages of its house organ, The Organiser. Thus was born the Jana Sangh/BJP, points out Aakar Patel.Thus Was Born Jana Sangh/BJP, asserts Aakar Patel.

In a historic decision, Pakistan President Asif Zardari has decided to formally recognise his 31-year-old daughter Aseefa Bhutto as the First Lady of the country, according to a media report.

'If he has not achieved 'Congress mukt Bharat' even now, the question of his creating a 'DMK mukt Tamil Nadu' does not arise,' points out N Sathiya Moorthy.

Santhan alias T Suthendiraraja (55) is a Sri Lankan national and was one of the seven persons set free by the Supreme Court in 2022 after they served over 20 years of jail term in connection with the killing of the former prime minister near here in 1991.

Clearly, her father hopes that a successful tenure in Lahore will give Maryam the ballast to be prime minister after the next general election.

The Bilawal Bhutto-led Pakistan Peoples Party which won the third largest number of seats in the National Assembly in the elections appears to be split on whether to join a coalition government or sit on Opposition benches.

His five-year rule saw the Babri Masjid demolition, the rise of the saffron forces and also the country being placed firmly on a new economic path, away from the Nehru years of public sector socialism.

The prime minister's insistence that his voice cannot be suppressed left me both puzzled and amused. He has at his call, the government's official news dissemination/publicity channels, the pliant newspapers and television channels that were eager to prostrate themselves before a powerful government and yet, the dominant voice thinks it is in competition with other voices! exclaims Shyam G Menon.

Most politicians and even non-politicians have been honoured because of what they were purported to be electorally worth for the ruling party of their time, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.

Pilot, who was the deputy chief minister in Rajasthan and was removed from the post after a fallout with Gehlot, said he and the former chief minister have discussed the issues that were there, and they did not affect the election.

IPC Section 153 (wantonly giving provocation with the intent to cause riot) was invoked against the professor.

In switching over, Nitish has sent out a message that if he could not now become the NDA's PM, then he would need to stay on as CM at the very least, which a third term for Modi would not let him have, N Sathiya Moorthy points out.

Will BJP campaigners start using the term 'Ram Rajya' to refer to the nation under Modi's rule, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.

The presidents were escorted by the President's Bodyguard -- "Rashtrapati Ke Angrakshak".

Gupta, arrested in the Czech Republic on June 30 last year, is currently held in Prague's Pankrak prison.

At a time when the BJP's stars are at the top on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls, the Puri-Joshimath Sankaracharyas may have kick-started a row whose efforts might be to divide Hindus, not in the name of castes, but on what passes for greater belief, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.

In the last 9 years, the BJP govt has marked some anniversaries and events with more zeal than Congress-led governments.

In an email sent to some journalists and two videos accessed by PTI, Pannun compared Mann with former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, who was assassinated in a bomb blast on August 31, 1995.

A revealing excerpt from Mani Shankar Aiyar's fascinating new book, The Rajiv I Knew.