'They sent a message that I will not be given the ticket and ordered me to issue a statement -- Gujarat style -- that with immediate effect I was retiring from politics.' 'They were treating me like a political novice who would be pushed around on the order of vested interests.' 'This rude behaviour hurt a lot. It was then I spontaneously decided that I will challenge this dictatorial order and expose all those who want to hurt Lingayat pride in Karnataka.'
Bihar is no stranger to being at the centre of a tectonic shift in national politics fuelled by turbulent regional forces.
The G-23 group seems to have expanded with several senior Congressmen attending Wednesday's meeting.
A special court in Ahmedabad on Friday awarded death sentence to 38 convicts in the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts case, which had claimed 56 lives and left over 200 injured.
Amid political turmoil in Maharashtra following a revolt by Shiv Sena minister Eknath Shinde, six members of legislative assembly (MLAs) and a member of legislative council (MLC) from the neighbouring state arrived in Gujarat's Surat city on Thursday and were later flown to Guwahati in Assam, where party rebels are camping, in two chartered flights, sources said.
The MLA from the Khadia-Jamalpur seat of Ahmedabad will be admitted to a designated COVID-19 hospital soon, he said.
While all the Aam Aadmi Party MLAs present in the House voted in favour of the motion as expected, there was no vote against it due to the absence of BJP legislators.
At least 155 people have lost their lives and over 80 lakh people affected in fresh floods due to excessive rains in worst-affected Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Odisha.
Patna senior superintendent of police Manavendra Singh Dhillon courted trouble for having said that Popular Front of India members arrested from Phulwari Sharif in Patna underwent "physical training similar to what happens in RSS shakhas (branches)".
A look at the top tweets from your favourite Bollywood celebrities:
An MP-MLA court in Prayagraj on Tuesday held gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed and two others guilty in the 2006 Umesh Pal kidnapping case.
Already, there is a feeling even within the BJP's AIADMK ally that the BJP is overdoing things on the ED/I-T front, as corruption is not an election issue in the state -- as long as the people are otherwise not excessively unhappy with the governing party, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The new chief minister, if from the Congress, will have little or no time for political administration, to ensure that he does not lose the voter's goodwill even before the Lok Sabha polls. He can count only on one thing. That the BJP may not want to upset him too early lest an early failure should become an added problem for the party in all the polls to follow, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The strategic move will also bolster the BJP's push to decimate Uddhav Thakceray-led party by depriving it of its pet Hindutva and ethnic sub-nationalism plank.
Indicating a shift in stand, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Thursday said his party is open to consider quitting Maharashtra's ruling alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) if the rebel MLAs camping in Assam return and discuss their grievances with CM Uddhav Thackeray, while coalition allies Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress vowed support to the beleaguered governing bloc and asserted its majority can only be determined in the assembly and not outside.
BJP CMs promote a lawless culture, one where groups backed by the State are encouraged to attack fellow citizens, where being trigger-happy is the official police policy, notes Jyoti Punwani.
Yogi Adityanath took the oath as Uttar Pradesh chief minister at the auspicious time of 1600, Friday, March 25, 2022, at the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana cricket stadium in Lucknow.
'The coronation of Yogi Adityanath as the surprise chief minister should set at rest all speculation over the nature of the UP mandate,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Keshav Prasad Maurya's election from Sirathu in Kaushambi will be among the keenly watched contests in UP. If he and the BJP win, will he be luckier this time?
On instructions from the central leadership, Maharashtra BJP leaders have retreated behind a veil of silence, the senior leader said.
Ashok Gehlot, the otherwise soft-spoken chief minister of Rajasthan, has lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party over its decision to nominate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the party's prime ministerial candidate.
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal who was under fire from Bharatiya Janata Party leaders after the Shiromani Akali Dal leadership, including Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal campaigned against the saffron party nominees during the assembly elections attended the oath-taking ceremony of Manohar Lal Khattar in Panchkula on Sunday.
The Aam Aadmi Party has launched a twitter war against Kiran Bedi and Shazia Ilmi, who have joined the Bharatiya Janata Party by pulling out old tweets of the two.
A delegation of the Maharashtra government led by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to discuss issues like Maratha and OBC reservation, and Cyclone Tauktae relief measures, informed State Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil.
Stepping up protest against the Centre's paddy procurement policy, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Monday led a dharna in the national capital organised by his party, and warned the Modi government to respond within 24 hours if it will buy the grain from the state.
The Congress may stand a better chance in the assembly polls if it followed the 'Himachal model', suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
Former Union minister Yashwant Sinha on Saturday announced a nationwide 'yatra' (tour) to protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the National Register of Citizens and the National Population Register. The yatra will start at Mumbai's Apollo Bunder on January 9, pass through Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Harayana and Delhi and cover a distance of over 3,000 km, Yashwant Sinha said. It will culminate at the Raj Ghat in Delhi on January 30, Mahatma Gandhi's death anniversary.
Modi said that during his recent visit to Japan, he had the opportunity to meet Abe again and discuss many issues, but 'little did I know that this would be our last meeting'.
'The Modi government is trying to suppress the matter only to save its political image'
Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday dared the Bharatiya Janata Party to defeat it in the ensuing Mumbai civic polls, saying his party's bond with the city was unbreakable, and also hit out at Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde over his rebellion and for laying claims to his late father's legacy.
Instead of the usual cavalcade of around 100 trucks, decked up elephants, akhadas and singing troupes, this year's procession consisted of only three chariots, pulled by nearly 100 youths from the Khalasi community, and four to five other vehicles.
Vellore is one of the two seats that the DMK alliance won by the narrowest of margins in 2019. For the DMK's vote-score to be so low in a constituency with a substantial Muslim population has not missed the BJP strategists' eyes, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
In an apparent jibe at the opposition BJP in Maharashtra, Pawar said some people were getting anxious after losing power.
'In politics, not everything is spoken and there are a lot of messaging done very discreetly.'
'Why should Khargeji work against the Gandhis for the sake of proving his independence?'
'Mr Badal wanted to talk to a member of the Gandhi family to bring about some sort of rapprochement between the Akalis and the Congress which were the two major parties at that time.'
Parliamentarians and legislators across the country voted on Monday to elect India's 15th president, choosing between opposition pick Yashwant Sinha and National Democratic Alliance nominee Droupadi Murmu who is favoured to win the battle to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
While Modi had a party and an organisation that supported him, all Mulayam, a self-made man with no inheritance in politics, had was a set of (fairly flexible) beliefs.
Amid signals of disgruntlement among a section of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka over the delay in expansion or reshuffle of the cabinet, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, who will be on an official visit to Delhi on April 30, said on Thursday he has not thought about meeting the party high command for now.
The Nitish Kumar government in Bihar came under fresh attack on Monday from state Bharatiya Janata Party president Sanjay Jaiswal whose party seems annoyed with junior ally Janata Dal-United's shrill demands for special assistance from the Centre.