Sharad Yadav, President of the Janata Dal (United), is one of the architects of the proposed merger of six political parties who trace their roots to the erstwhile Janata Dal. Yadav tells Archis Mohan how the grand alliance with Left parties and even the Congress is the need of the hour.
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
The government on Tuesday introduced a constitutional amendment bill reserving 33 per cent seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, reviving a proposal pending for years and blending history, politics and societal imperatives on the first day in the new Parliament building.
What some of our leaders were up to on the weekend.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the Bharatiya Janata Party has decided it would not adopt the path of appeasement and vote bank politics.
The country now has six national parties - Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, Communist Party of India-Marxist, NPP and AAP.
The decision of some key regional parties like the Biju Janata Dal, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and the Aam Aadmi Party to skip a key opposition meet called by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the presidential poll has cheered the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as it believes that their absence has only highlighted the faultlines and one-upmanship among its rivals.
The conference was seen by many as a show of strength by the Opposition with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, his Jharkhand counterpart Hemant Soren and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav joining in to raise their voice against oppression of backward classes.
By comparing I.N.D.IA. with banned terror outfits, Modi has exhibited the kind of nervousness never ever associated with him even at the height of the Gujarat riots, and certainly since his prime ministerial days, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Droupadi Murmu scripted history on Thursday by becoming India's first tribal President in the one-sided contest, defeating Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
Cross-voting by Left and Congress MLAs on Friday helped Trinamool Congress gain an extra seat in West Bengal while a similar action by Congress MLAs in Andhra Pradesh saw the Telangana Rashtra Samithi making its debut in Rajya Sabha as high drama marked the polls to the upper House in the two states.
As many as 35 of 53 Nationalist Congress Party MLAs were present at the party meeting convened by Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar in Mumbai on Wednesday, party sources said.
As the Opposition held its first meeting on the Presidential polls and names of Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi also cropped up, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice with senior party leader and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress), Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal).
What is the Amul Vs Nandini battle. Why does the opposition see red over the Gujarat dairy brand's Bengaluru foray with its brand of milk and curd. An explainer seeks to shed light on the issue.
The new chief minister, if from the Congress, will have little or no time for political administration, to ensure that he does not lose the voter's goodwill even before the Lok Sabha polls. He can count only on one thing. That the BJP may not want to upset him too early lest an early failure should become an added problem for the party in all the polls to follow, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Janardhana Reddy said he has not launched it with the objective of becoming CM right away in 2023.
Various indicators make it amply clear that there are grave challenges facing the new government of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, reports Indivjal Dhasmana.
It is not much of an issue just now, but it could become one if the idea of caste census captures socio-political imagination, going beyond electoral tags and identities, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The launch of a new party by former Karnataka minister and mining baron G Janardhana Reddy has spiced up the poll scene in parts of state.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Wednesday said he aspired to become the CM of the state and also took a jibe at his 83-year-old uncle asking when will the Maratha strongman retire from active politics, as he appeared to be ahead in the numbers game for control of the Nationalist Congress Party after its vertical split.
Consolidating its position, the Bharatiya Janata Party wrested high-profile Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh from the Samajwadi Party and won three assembly seats, including that of Chief Minister Manik Saha, in Tripura in by-election results announced on Sunday.
Counting of votes for the bypolls in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand will be taken up on Sunday.
Political observers are keen to see if the BJP will now be guided by its more firmly entrenched ideological dominance in picking a face solidly identified with its core planks, or if it will choose a person tilted more to its electoral calculations. Or, whether its pick will be an ode to its core supporters or a outreach to relatively new groups of votaries.
Sibal, a prominent Opposition voice and a former Congress leader, also said that instead of a common minimum programme, the Opposition parties should talk about a 'new vision for India'.
Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari reveal that Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar's name is now doing the rounds as President Kovind's likely successor.
If only the Congress could rebuild on its strengths and develop a modern enough ideology, we could again be moving towards a clearer two-party political landscape, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
His son and party chief Akhilesh Yadav lit the funeral pyre. The former Uttar Pradesh CM had died aged 82 at a private hospital in Haryana's Gurugram on Monday.
The Election Commission will start counting votes for Vidhan Sabha elections on May 23. The assembly elections were held in four states -- Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim -- simultaneously with the Lok Sabha Elections over April and May. The Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim Assemblies went to polls in the duration between 11 April and 19 May, and the Election Commission will declare the results for at least 534 assembly seats - which is almost as many as the Lok Sabha seats - on May 23.
In renaming TRS and repositioning it as a 'national' party, KCR is also eyeing a pole position in opposition politics ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Some of our leaders were busybusy over the weekend.
Opposition leaders urged Modi to use the opportunity for the country's benefit.
'...it gets a survey report that they are going to lose elections.' 'The fear of losing elections will make them immediately conduct a caste census.'
The two leaders also discussed the special category status promised to the southern state.
Railway officials also indicated that possible 'sabotage' and tampering with the electronic interlocking system, which detects the presence of trains, led to the Friday accident.
The joint statement was issued by senior leaders of 13 opposition parties, including interim president of Congress Sonia Gandhi, the Nationalist Congress Party patriarch Sharad Pawar, and the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Some of the Congress's new-found enthusiasm for hitting the streets will show its result in the Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Karnataka elections. That is when we will know if the Congress will go to the regional parties or the parties will come to the Congress.
The youth leadership taking the reigns of the states was a rare event in the last century as very few broke the glass ceilings.
A new realignment should be expected in equations between the non-BJP, non-Congress parties and the government at the Centre. Aditi Phadnis reports.
The Congress may stand a better chance in the assembly polls if it followed the 'Himachal model', suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
If there is unity in the Opposition, it is only about regional parties other than the DMK not wanting Rahul Gandhi or any other Congress leader for prime minister, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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