'It is true that we changed our opinion.' 'I feel the BJP or any other political party is guilty of not understanding the real mood of the people.'
'The people of India have not only challenged the ruling dispensation with the constitution, they have also opened the eyes of the leadership that sits in the Opposition.'
'Our honourable CM is so shameless that she will say the state is among the safest for women.'
'They take each and every election with seriousness.' 'No other political party has that kind of cadre who is strongly aligned with the reason, motto and ideology of their party.'
'That's the beauty of Naveen.' 'His intermittent support to the NDA and Modi confuses BJP workers in Odisha.' 'It gives an impression that Naveen has a tacit understanding with the NDA and that the BJP will not really challenge him wholeheartedly.'
'Politics is not a post for retired people to enjoy.'
'The brutal violence of the UP government's first response to the anti-CAA protests suggests that the BJP will test drive the NPR/NRC in UP, where it has both a massive majority in the assembly and a chief minister whose instinct for Hindutva extremism and whose appetite for punitive policing allows a prime minister as darkly majoritarian as Modi to appear statesman-like,' notes Mukul Kesavan.
'By manipulating India's electoral laws, the aim of the Modi government is to weaken democracy to such an extent that it ultimately crumbles.'
'There is a design of fundamentalists that the north east must become an Islamic country.'
'You should raise your voice even at the cost of being called a deshdrohi. 'This country is built because of the raising of voices of the people and no one can silence such voices,' says Kannan Gopinathan who resigned from the IAS to protest against revocation of Article 370 in Kashmir.
The NDA candidate tells the Election Commission that the Maoists plan to kidnap him.
Unlike the LDF and NDA nominees who are at ground zero and campaigning hard every day, the Congress candidate's campaign is undertaken in absentia, dependent on an army of local and imported from the rest of Kerala Congresswomen and men.
'If you look through the optics of BJP leader Kapil Mishra, he was standing with a deputy commissioner of police while giving a hate speech.' 'Immediately, the message goes down that the police is 'with us' so let's start rioting.'
A realistic assessment will tell us that not much has changed between India and Pakistan; the relationship remains as fraught as before with little prospect of reconciliation, notes Ajai Shukla.
The 3,000-strong force, plus its highly trained dog squad, is responsible solely for the protection of one person: Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi.
'This business of monopoly of one family must end.' 'Here, they picked up a few leaders for him as he needed support which was okay, but later, they became his cronies.'
'I had to submit my resignation from the BJP after just two weeks because they were very regressive.' 'There was no space for a free thinking individual.'
'The economy of Kashmir has collapsed.'
'The BJP has lost 5 states and Lok Sabha elections are due in less than 90 days.' 'The reservation bill is a jhunjhuna (lollipop) for the upper castes.'
How has Raj Thackeray, who is as much a businessman as politician, been able to pull it off, when most Opposition politicians live in fear of IT and ED and CBI, asks Krishna Prasad after attending a Raj rally in Nashik.
In the crazily complex cauldron that is India, where caste, community, class and cash are just the primary ingredients, no one has yet come up with a fool-proof method to ascertain how voters make up their minds, on which button to press, in the privacy of their 'confessional' booths, notes Krishna Prasad.
'Somewhere along the way, elected office-bearers appeared to have lost sight of the interest of cricket and begun to pursue their own interpretation of what the game should be.' 'Families made it a tradition to have their representatives occupy, if not usurp, positions in state associations,' points out Vinod Rai, who will step down as head of the BCCI's Committee of Administrators on Wednesday, October 23.
Sudhir Bisht recalls the battle of 1984, in which UP's strongman H N Bahuguna was felled by Bollywood superstar turned political novice Amitabh Bachchan.
'The loose use of words like foreigner or Bangladeshis obscures the fact that the post-Partition migration to Assam has been of both Hindus and Muslims.'
In the heat and dust of a Baramati rally with Supriya Sule.
'Rather than an outcome of 'pro-incumbency', the exit poll results betray a completely lackadaisical approach of the Opposition parties.' 'While a new kind of politics was on display for the past five years, they were still mired in their old-style methods which will cost them the election,' predicts Utkarsh Mishra.
'Breaking down silos and ensuring a more integrated governance process is just as important to performance.' 'It has been a major priority in the last six years, especially in national security,' External Affairs Minister Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar points out when delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture-2020: India and the Post-Covid World.
From the Aadhaar verdict to #MeToo's arrival in the country to the entry into the Sabarimala temple -- India had a newsworthy 2018. As we step into 2019, these are the top moments from the year gone by.
The biggest winner was Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan who ran her ship with self-confidence and aplomb.
'If they were really serious (about conferring the Bharat Ratna on Savarkar) what were they doing for the last five years?' 'Why do they have to take so long?' 'Gandhi himself never got the Bharat Ratna so it does not really matter.'
We present our alphabet of 2020, pulling in everything you'll remember about this year we'd rather forget.
'In his 2014 election campaign, Mr Modi had boasted that he would apply the Gujarat model to the rest of India. We just have to ensure he doesn't start with Parliament,' says Shashi Tharoor in this fascinating excerpt from his new book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi And His India.
'The CAA should be kept in abeyance, without making it a prestige issue.'
'Laying down a clear policy on the future of illegal migrants will dispel anxieties and help in implementing the CAA, NPR and also the NCR,' suggests former Union home secretary Dr Madhav Godbole.
It is a sight that both warms and breaks the heart. The women of Shaheen Bagh seem oblivious of the cold, these women and their children, the latter ranging in age from 19 days to early teens, who have been occupying the road for over two weeks now. Some of them have not gone home for days, but their faces are clear, unlined by fatigue, their eyes bright and fierce as those of the falcon, shaheen, the area is named for.
'He totally gets the Gandhis...' 'If anything, he pays too much attention to the Gandhis.' 'I feel that in places like UP, where the Congress doesn't matter, he often spends time blasting the Gandhis.'
'It is the regional parties and their leaders who are the ones we have to watch.'
'There is no remorse over the Dadri lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq or of Pehlu Khan by cow vigilante groups.' 'But should you not have remorse for those who came to kill them?' 'They were Hindus. Do you accept that?' 'That to kill one Pehlu, 20 Hindus have become murderers.' Rajdeep Sardesai in conversation with Ravish Kumar.