'My joining the BJP will definitely result in a landslide migration of votes to the BJP.'
It was a battle for broom-upmanship as both Bharatiya Janata Party and Aam Aadmi Party leaders took to cleaning the streets of Delhi on Saturday while blaming each other for the garbage crisis in the city.
Political leaders from across states in the country have turned up for the event. Here's a glimpse at some of the leaders who have shown up for the big-ticket event.
As the Aam Aadmi Party heads for a resounding win in Delhi, Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf lists the reasons behind Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's triumph.
He also dismissed the charge that the attacker was an AAP supporter as claimed by the police.
The NDA government is seeking removal of all political appointments.
Party sources said Gandhi will be accompanied by Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, Leader of the party in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and several other party leaders and MPs.
And it's that time of the year again. The time for accolades, the time for awards. But these are the awards you would rather not be the recipient. We are of course giving these awards to celebrate the most awesome or awful achievements a person could attain, and of course, these are being given out in absentia.
'It was a moment when I felt what power can get. Such a reception was beyond my expectation.'
Slogans of 'Rahul ji, we are with you' and 'Please do not resign' rang through the air.
Congress sources have said that the party is seriously considering withdrawing support to the AAP. Senior party leader Janardan Dwivedi said there was an opinion in the party that the decision to support AAP was perhaps not correct and it should have instead raised people's issues as an opposition. Renu Mittal reports.
Modi, who addressed a poll rally in the Malwa heartland, asked the electorate to vote for the SAD-BJP combine for the third time, warning that Punjab as well as the entire nation could face a "crisis" if government led by any party other than the alliance comes to power.
What the Congress will have to understand is that it is not enough to have a 40-something vice-president in New Delhi, but young faces with fresh ideas in the states,' says Amulya Ganguli.
Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal, who appeared on the Rediff Chat to take questions from our readers on Tuesday, told Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt that he will not be fighting the Lok Sabha elections.
'Modi and the BJP don't want Delhi to function.' 'The LG is like a puppet of the BJP.'
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has called a meeting of chief ministers of 12 Congress-ruled states to figure out how to fill out the vacancies in the Rajya Sabha. Highly-placed sources have said that he wants to cajole Amethis's former feudal lord Sanjay Singh; by giving him an RS ticket, in view of his own weak position in Amethi. Renu Mittal reports.
Senior Congress leaders have dismissed the exit polls conducted by various news channels that indicate that the BJP is likely to sweep the assembly elections in all four states. They remain confident of winning in at least four states. Renu Mittal reports
Modi will need to understand that the formula for success will have to be Local Leaders + Modi and not Modi alone...Shivraj Singh Chouhan is in the running for prime minister... The AAP will have to ally with other parties if it hopes to make any dent in the Lok Sabha election. Dr B Venkatesh Kumar, Professor at the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, lists some learnings from the 2013 assembly election results.
'Indian politics is still very much a closed shop, with leaders in their 80s and 70s still refusing to go into vanaprastha, or retirement.'
Despite their promised and announced reduction in power prices, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government may want keep the issue on the burner for sometime longer, since none of the concerned players are ready to give an inch, and seem raring for a fight, says Upasna Pandey
Former editor of Femina magazine, Sathya Saran looks back at the Miss India pageant that changed the lives of two young women.
'When the world was refining itself, India was going backwards culturally with so many rape cases and other atrocities against women, children and the elderly. The growth of evil forces was very bad in the last 10 years,' says Malayalam movie star Suresh Gopi, who met Narendra Modi recently tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier in this exclusive interview.
Rajeev Srinivasan on whom the Congress might put forth as its leader in 2014.
'The BJP used to be a party of decent, Hindu, middle-class people. Today, it is a party of goons. At the ground level, goons beat you up and at the senior level, the intellectuals justify the beating up.' 'On May 13, one boy sent me an SMS at 2.35 am: "Mayank sir, only five seats, what will happen?" There will be a lot of these idealist kids who want that quick transformation that may not happen. We will have to mentor them. We will have to explain to them that nations cannot be changed like that.' Aam Aadmi Party leader Mayank Gandhi, on the lessons the party has learnt from Election 2014.
'I like to see myself as a troll-slayer and I have realised the best way to do that is to ignore them. Nothing bothers them more,' Barkha Dutt tells Rashme Sehgal.
'I get angry when people throw ink or slap him - but Arvind takes all this in his stride. People nowadays make fun of him and point out his mistakes but they haven't seen his sacrifice. If you understand his commitment towards this country, you will not dare say anything against him," says Dr Bipin Mittal, a longtime friend and family doctor of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal.
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