Delhi Jama Masjid Shahi Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari called the killing an "act of cowardice" and "an act against Islam".
The TMC expects to emerge victorious by way of a majority of minority votes and a minority of majority votes, notes Arun Bhatnagar, a retired IAS officer.
His likable boy-next-door face and casual approach to public speaking have a unique appeal for the younger generation, but it stops there, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra, Ramesh said, has been a "real booster dose" for the public relationship of the Congress.
'In this election, the only thing that is going to matter is which caste aligns with which coalition.'
Bodo tribals influence as many as 30 seats. No wonder, national parties are keen to forge alliances with Bodo groups.
Amidst reports of Congress' confabulations with the Rashtriya Janata Dal for a secular alliance in Bihar in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday took a dig at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for the Congress preferring Lalu Prasad over him and said such an 'opportunistic' alliance was not a cause of worry for it.
What we have in the Congress is a useful glue to hold a non-cultural, unified Opposition together. That is the sacrifice the Congress must be willing to live with if showing the BJP the door is what the collective Opposition wants, observes Shyam G Menon.
The BJP has offered support to Jitan Ram Manjhi if he assures the support of 30 JD-U MLAs in return.
'The lesson the BJP has to learn from the violence in Gujarat is that once you practise the politics of hate against any community, it will surely get back to you some day.'
Assembly elections in Assam used to be a quiet affair and people outside the state would take little interest in the outcome. This time, even in faraway Delhi, people are keeping tabs on political developments in Assam.
'The Covid situation is like demonetisation.' 'People were upset with the government initially, but eventually they voted for the BJP again.'
Barely a few hours after Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu said at a rally that his party would fight alone in Seema-Andhra, the TDP has gone into damage control mode and says the statement was misinterpreted.
While the BJP is in a comfortable position to choose between the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party, both have its share of drawbacks. Prasanna D Zore/Rediff. com reports
The Congress MP from Sivaganga also slammed the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance and said the people of Tamil Nadu do not want a government which has any "stain, scent or shadow" of the BJP as its 'Hindi-Hindutva' agenda "irritates" them.
By presenting the battle in Bengal as one between Mamata on one side and Modi-Shah on the other, the saffron camp has projected the former as a larger-than-life figure, a portrayal which has the potential of turning her into Modi's main competitor in 2024, predicts Amulya Ganguli.
In what analysts are terming as a political masterstroke, the ruling Biju Janata Dal President Naveen Patnaik Friday decided that his party will field candidates from Other Backward Castes (OBC) for 27 per cent of seats in the forthcoming three-tier panchayat elections in Odisha.
'In some quarters it has been suggested that there will be an 'official candidate' backed by the leadership but on the contrary, it has been repeatedly stressed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in my conversations with them over the last two weeks that the Nehru-Gandhi family welcomes these elections'
Critics who cannot stop gloating, pronouncing Modi to be a lame-duck prime minister, may be making a huge mistake, predicts Virendra Kapoor.
Maharashtra politics is at crossroads. Anything can happen in this dynamic situation. Uddhav will have to prove he is a worthy inheritor of his father's legacy and keep his cadre and leaders in the party stable. Fadnavis will have to prove that manoeuvrings on floor of the house was an inevitable political necessity to change the destiny of Maharashtra eventually. Modi and Shah will have to show that they can and will are resist use of 'the system' in the pursuit of power. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com analyses the situation.
'I am not sure of the numbers killed, but they were not as high as the use of the word 'genocide' suggests.' 'There is another meaning you could take, 'cultural genocide', in that the Pandit community is extremely small and their forced departure led to a wiping out of their culture.'
Asking the people of Bihar to bring their own government to power, the post made a veiled reference to the alleged high handedness of bureaucracy under the JD(U)-BJP rule but fell shy of a frontal attack on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his arch rival, or the near hegemonic saffron party which considers him a bete noire.
Some analysts also pointed out that "outsourcing" political management to regional satraps such as Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana may have proven counterproductive and micromanagement by the Gandhi family was needed.
But his opponents are making a mistake. They shouldn't be smug, argues Vir Sanghvi.
If we have already excluded Muslims from political office by default, and if we are already harassing them daily through laws, like Nazi Germany did and like Pakistan did, then why do we need a Hindu Rashtra or a change from the present set of laws? argues Aakar Patel.
'Anyone can come and anyone can go.' 'There is no ideology or vision that differentiates one party from another.'
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi asked partymen to focus on Bharatiya Janata Party's return to power at the Centre instead of projecting anyone including him as the prime ministerial candidate.
The notion that the BJP gained its increased tally by wiping out the Left parties and the Congress is completely misleading. Equally misleading is the belief that the TMC held its ground in all its existing seats. A little more than a fifth of the seats Mamata Banerjee's party had won in 2016 was lost to the BJP this time.
The CBI after registering the FIRs carried out searches on Thursday morning at 14 locations in Jammu, Srinagar, Delhi, Mumbai, Noida in Uttar Pradesh, Trivandrum in Kerala and Darbhanga in Bihar, they said.
'He has been made CM of Uttarakhand because everybody thinks he is not a challenge to anyone.'
'While the Congressmen were fighting, the LDF was quietly doing its job, perhaps bringing in results in the lives of the people.' 'Pinarayi Vijayan and several ministers in his cabinet believed that the government should do real business, which is not to fight with the UDF but govern.'
A part of the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat, Raghopur assembly segment in Vaishali district will vote in the second phase on November 3. The 31-year-old, the younger son of Lalu Prasad, had taken the electoral plunge from Raghopur in 2015, when he had barely reached the qualifying age of 25 for fighting polls.
The bill, which criminalises instant divorce by Muslim men and seeks jail term for the guilty, was the first draft legislation tabled by the Narendra Modi government in this first session after it took oath of office for a second term in May.
'Narendra Modi might not have made 145 in Maharashtra, but it is definitely true that the Congress, and other dynastic parties, are well and truly stumped.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar is in trouble ahead of the upcoming state assembly polls as two of its ally the Lok Janshakti Party and the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party on Sunday played pressure game to bargain for more seats.
'For the UDF, it will depend on how far Rahul Gandhi will succeed with the goodwill he has.' 'That will make a difference.'
Deol on Sunday evening issued a statement on his Twitter handle in Hindi, saying the matter is between the farmers and government, but there are people who are trying to gain something out of the agitation.
BJP leaders in Madhya Pradesh, led by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, on Monday held a protest against Kamal Nath, while the National Commission for Women sought an explanation from the Congress leader for his 'item' jibe against state minister Imarti Devi.
Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti will campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party "as and when required" and there is no question of cancelling her rally, Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said on Friday, dismissing suggestions that she was being pulled out after her controversial remarks at a public meeting in Delhi.
Aam Aadmi Party calls Bhagwant Mann its people's choice for CM candidate in Punjab. Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com traces what makes Mann so indispensable for his party.
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