'He should not have said that he will contest irrespective of his health four weeks ago.'
Another all-party meeting will attempt to resolve political concerns about the Land Reforms Bill.
It is not unlikely that ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP government comes up with more imaginative schemes aimed at constituency-building. The party under Modi's leadership has a more modern thinking in such matters unlike its rivals, which are still steeped only in ideology, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'They plan to purchase votes.' 'We will not purchase people, but win the elections.' 'In our manifesto there are no free gifts. It says what we will do for the people.'
For a party that has adopted the successful social re-engineering model from Gujarat, Rajasthan and across the rest of the 'Hindi belt' over the past decades, Tamil Nadu continues to remain a tricky customer, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Back of the envelope calculations put government expense on each of the new schemes promised by the DMK and the AIADMK at tens of thousands of crores. But then, neither party has said how they are going to also address the mounting debt burden either, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien said the situation in Bihar is one of the reasons behind the Parliament session being cut short by the government.
The going is not going to be easy for the DMK and its allies in Elections 2024. Despite the seats sweepstake in the 2021 assembly polls, the vote-share difference of 5.6% (DMK's 45.38% versus AIADMK-BJP's 39.72%) is not insurmountable on a bad day, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
ndependent of the political fallout, which Stalin has sought to arrest through the withdrawal of the measures as fast as they were introduced, there are concerns about the way those decisions came to be taken, without adequate application of mind, not in official terms but in political and electoral contexts, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
If not for Palaniswami, it is hard to guess if the AIADMK would have been able to garner 33.3 per cent vote share as against the DMK's 37.7 per cent. AIADMK won 66 seats, its allies Pattali Makkal Katchi and Bharatiya Janata Party five and four seats respectively and proved yet again that the western region was its fortress.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
The BJP continuing to look at the Dravidian polity through the religious prism has not worked in Tamil Nadu whereas it has yielded political and electoral results across much of the rest of the country, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
DMK candidate Kathir Anand defeated All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam nominee AC Shanmugham in the bypoll by a narrow margin of 8,141 votes.
A high voter turnout was recorded in West Bengal, Assam Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry assembly elections on Tuesday. The massive polling exercise following COVID-19 health protocol and involving lakhs of personnel began at 7 am and the last hour from 6 pm to 7 pm was set aside for COVID-19 patients and those under isolation. The counting of votes in the states will be held on May 2.
Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi on Thursday staged an unprecedented walkout from the state assembly following a face-off with Chief Minister M K Stalin over the former's customary address to members of the house in its first session of the year.
While Governor Ravi's speeches have put the local BJP supporters on the defensive in matters of religion and social justice, his add-on 'attack on the constitutional scheme' in the 'Senthil Balaji case', has been condemned squarely by many legal experts and editorial writers across the country, thus adding weight to CM Stalin's position -- at least until the courts come up with their binding views, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The opposition is likely to put up a joint candidate for the July 18 presidential election despite not having numbers on its side, and consultations in this regard have already begun.
So who will be the chief guest at this year's parade on Rajpath (no, it ain't Central Vista yet!)? Dominic Xavier ponders over the question
Former chief minister of Puducherry V Narayanasamy on Wednesday cautioned the voters against supporting the alliance comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party, AINRC and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in the coming assembly polls as these parties would have no qualms to merge the Union territory with Tamil Nadu.
Contest on their own and get washed out, as happened in the 2016 assembly elections? Or contest in league with one of the Dravidian majors and get submerged under its election symbol? With elections looming, minor political parties in Tamil Nadu are caught in this dilemma, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
''He had given tools to fight all forms of homogenisation.'
By getting the Tamil Nadu assembly to act on his very imaginative public declaration to keep petro-chemical industries out of the Cauvery delta, which has traditionally been a DMK stronghold, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has not only set the ball rolling for the assembly elections due a year later but also sent out a strong message to the BJP government at the Centre, which took a unilateral decision to exempt petro-complexes from environmental clearance, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The DMK has Stalin and Stalin alone as the key campaigner. The rest of them all, including half-sister Kanimozhi, are tied down to their own constituencies while those like party treasurer and former minister S Duraimurugan, to those of their children's constituencies.
How will DMDK's decision to join the People's Democratic Front affect the political scenario in TN.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Sunday turned emotional while reacting to Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader A Raja's alleged disparaging remarks against him, his mother and said a mother occupied a lofty position in society and anyone who denigrated women would be punished by God.
If Vijaykanth and his party stole the media thunder, which lingered in the viewers' mind even while watching Prime Minister Modi's thunderous campaign speech, the latter suffered also owing to visible 'disconnects', says N Sathiya Moorthy.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi to dig up the perceived past of the DMK rival, now under a new leader in M K Stalin, may not gel with the voters, both old and new. If they are still going to vote for the AIADMK-BJP combine, it will be for entirely different reasons, and despite Modi's poll speeches, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Congress-led government in Puducherry on Monday lost the confidence vote sought by Chief Minister V Narayanasamy, in the face of its depleted strength of 11 against the opposition's 14 following resignation of ruling dispensation MLAs, including a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam legislator.
After a high-level party meet in Chennai, Vaiko said his party has unanimously decided to support the DMK in the by-election.
Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh on Thursday sanctioned Rs 1,846 crore to Tamil Nadu under the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme and appreciated the efforts by the Tamil Nadu government in accelerating the programme.
Mamata Banerjee fended off a spirited challenge by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal with a landslide victory for her Trinamool Congress on Sunday for a third consecutive term and the saffron party and the Left Democratic Front were poised to form government again in Assam and Kerala respectively while the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam stormed back to power in Tamil Nadu after a gap of 10 years.
With the unanticipated floods across Tamil Nadu catching the unprepared administration unawares, Stalin finds that some of the early positives that had rubbed on his initiatives have been lost, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'They have been imposing Hindi on Tamil Nadu,' says DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai.
The exit poll results were released at the end of the polling in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, marking the closure of voting in four states and Puducherry.
If the AIADMK falls short of the 117-mark required to form a government in the 234-member assembly, will it strike a post-poll deal to form Tamil Nadu's first coalition government? N Sathiyamorthy analyses.
In New Delhi The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam during winter session of Parliament would maintain neutrality, but will oppose the United Progressive Alliance-II's stance on price rise and the Kudankulam issues.
Weeks ahead of the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, V K Sasikala, expelled All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader and close aide of late chief minister J Jayalalithaa, on Wednesday announced that "she will stay away from politics," but would pray for the "golden rule" of the late party supremo.
From Chief Minister EK Palaniswami to Seeman to TTV Dhinakaran to elder brother M K Azhagiri, everyone's favourite target these days seems to the DMK chief Stalin, which is good news in an election year, but that doesn't mean he is going to sweep the polls, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
With election campaign ending in Tamil Nadu before it goes to polls on Thursday, N Sathiya Moorthy lists a few questions uppermost in the minds of voters.
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