The Bharatiya Janata Party swept Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh on Sunday inflicting a resounding defeat on the Congress to tighten its stranglehold in the Hindi heartland, in a big boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and setting the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
A red alert indicates heavy to extremely heavy rains of over 20 cm in 24 hours, while an orange alert means very heavy rains of 6 cm to 20 cm of rain.
The Opposition Congress on Saturday seemed to be on course to breach rival Bharatiya Janata Party's lone southern citadel Karnataka, inching towards the magic figure of 113 needed to form a government on its own.
The chief minister still has time to repair the damage but he will have to act all-round, both at the government and party levels, suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
Indications are that the DMK combine will win more seats than the AIADMK and BJP, but is facing a tough fight in about half a dozen from the rest, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy of the electoral contest in Tamil Nadu.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Nagaland counterpart Neiphiu Rio held closed door interaction with NSCN (IM) chief negotiator Thuingaleng Muivah at Dimapur on Tuesday, a government official said.
Protests against 'Agnipath' left Bihar in flames on Friday when rampaging mobs set fire to dozens of railway coaches, engines and stations and torched Bharatiya Janata Party offices, vehicles and other property, prompting the police to suspend internet services in nearly a third of the state.
There may be those who could want to go slow, citing the large pendency of follow-up action and court cases that they would have to process and/or proceed with, before raiding more politicians, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The meeting between the two leaders, which was also attended by Bihar's deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav, was described as 'positive'.
Thackeray said the probe will ascertain if the fire was an accident or was the fallout of ignoring an earlier safety report.
Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde could not have been sworn in as the chief minister of Maharashtra if the assembly speaker was not restrained from deciding the disqualification petitions pending against 39 MLAs, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday.
Earlier P K Sawant held the record of being the Maharashtra CM with the shortest term -- from November 25 to December 4, 1963. He was made the caretaker chief minister after the death of his predecessor Marotrao Kannamwar.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed 14 rallies in Madhya Pradesh during campaigning for polls and reached out to young voters by reminding them of the failures of previous Congress governments on various fronts as he doubled down on development of all sections.
According to BJP sources, the party propped up Chouhan in its election campaign when the Congress plank of promising to conduct a caste census started finding resonance with the OBCs.
'Our brave Indian soldiers don't reply to raining of bricks with mere sticks, they do so with iron rods'
Ernakulam district authorities on Tuesday said 350 cumecs of the water from Idamalayar, which reached Periyar river but there was no considerable rise in the water-level.
For the Mizo people, tribal and family identity are important. But so are jobs, farmers' access to markets, roads, and health facilities for a young population where drugs are a big affliction.
'They were as late as June 2023 and they did not follow it up with concrete measures immediately in terms of a secretariat or common minimum programme, working group or seat sharing etc.' 'They continued to have periodic meetings after a gap of weeks where they had tasty dinner and coffee, but beside that they did nothing else.'
'We were discussing government formation with Sharad Pawar. We had even finalised portfolio distribution and guardian ministers' responsibilities'
Barely days after imposing a 40 per cent export tax on onions to cool down soaring prices, which, in turn, triggered widespread protests across the main growing belts, the Centre on Tuesday sought to mitigate both political and economic tensions gripping parts of Maharashtra. It decided to procure an additional 200,000 tonnes of onions at Rs 2,410 per quintal for its buffer stock from farmers, a rate that is strikingly close to the price at which they were being exported before the 40 per cent duty was levied on August 19. The export price before the imposition of the duty stood at around $320 per tonne free on board (approximately Rs 2,650 per quintal).
As the controversy over Bishop Joseph Kallarangatt's remarks refused to die down, the chief minister said the Kerala society as a whole has not agreed with the Bishop's statement and expressed hope that he would "respond", sensing the stand of the public on the issue.
As Karnataka gears up for D-Day, with most exit poll projections predicting a hung assembly while putting the Congress in the lead, the outcome will boil down to how the battle for some key constituencies play out.
The party also promised reservation to minorities on basis of their population after the caste census.
There are critics who say the Bommai's government was not able to counter the Congress narrative to paint his administration as corrupt, a factor that helped the Congress surge in the May 10 assembly elections.
Conceding defeat of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance in Mumbai civic body polls, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Friday said the result was "surprising."
Meanwhile, Opposition bloc Maha Vikas Aghadi said the verdict will determine if democracy "exists" in the country and judiciary "functions" independently.
'The others have been looting the people all these years. If you don't do that, you can do a lot for the people,' says Tamil star politician Vijayakanth.
Thackeray's tour comes a week after Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar and eight other NCP MLAs joined the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government.
Thackeray would be taking over as chief minister more than a month after results of the Maharashtra Assembly elections were declared on October 24.
From the morning itself, Congress MLAs made a beeline to Cecil Hotel in Shimla where the party's central observers -- Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda -- were staying.
In 1999, Sharad Pawar, along with P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar were expelled from Congress. The same year, Pawar founded the NCP.
Never before has the BJP faced such a crisis over the nomination of the Chief Minister as it is facing now, discovers Prakash Bhandari, veteran observer of Rajasthan politics.
'The party is breaking stereotypes by not inviting senior leaders to become chief ministers.' 'No other party has had the guts to do this.'
A day after an advertisement with photos of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the talking point in the state, an ad on the state's ruling alliance appeared in Marathi dailies on Wednesday featuring leaders like Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis.
A political activist in Bihar on Thursday put up a poster announcing his resignation from 'all posts in the Bharatiya Janata Party' in protest against the ethnic strife in Manipur.
Aam Aadmi Party candidate Sushil Rinku on Saturday won the Jalandhar Lok Sabha by-election, defeating his nearest rival and Congress nominee Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary by a margin of 58,691 votes.
The court converted Naidu's four-week interim medical bail in this case into absolute bail and ordered the former chief minister's release on regular bail, considering his age, old age-related ailments, non-flight risk and other reasons.
The cyclone will make a landfall at around 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm on Thursday
24x7 power supply to farmers emerges as a political lightning rod in the state.
Fadnavis was speaking here as the chief guest at the launch of a booklet inspired by the thoughts of senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shah.
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