The OBC face of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Maharashtra and former deputy chief minister, Gopinath Munde, who had joined the Union Cabinet for the first time a week back, was all set to spearhead the party's campaign in the upcoming assembly polls in the state to wrest power from the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party combine.
Nearly 1,500 akansha petis (boxes of aspirations) have been placed in colleges for students to reveal what they expect from a BJP government. While demonetisation figured high in villages, BJP strategist Siddharth Sikka says city youth were "more concerned" about law and order and sanitation.
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Saturday elevated her nephew and MP Abhishek Banerjee as the party's all-India general secretary, the second-most important post in the organisation, a senior leader in Kolkata said.
He also accused the Congress of delaying a solution to the Kashmir issue for seven decades.
Gandhi on Friday chaired his first CWC meeting after being elected as the party chief.
Notwithstanding L K Advani's resignation, BJP President Rajnath Singh made it clear that there will be no going back on the decision to appoint Narendra Modi as campaign committee chief.
'With the victory in Maharashtra and Haryana, the question which needs to be asked is why the government was reluctant to share names of these people, because there is a possibility that they may have been funding the BJP's election campaign.'
If the Congress came to power in MP, those responsible for the deaths of the six farmers would face strict action within 10 days.
The 25-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance split on Thursday amid continued deadlock over seat-sharing for the October 15 Maharashtra assembly polls.
The Congress president also hit out at the government over demonetisation, saying the move left millions of people 'suffering'.
Higher education policy may be at the core of the Tamil Nadu assembly polls next May, with a potential to break the ties between the ruling AIADMK in the state and the BJP counterpart at the national level, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Zala, a close associate of Thakor, was the MLA from Bayad in Sabarkantha district.
As the fierce contest between estranged saffron allies Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party to win the BMC continued, Maharashtra BJP president Raosaheb Danve Thursday said his party may be able to rule the cash-rich body with the support of some independents.
Slamming as "fascist" Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's pitch for a "Congress Mukt Bharat", Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Monday reached out to all non-BJP parties on the plank of secularism.
Amid speculation about the number of MLAs supporting him and senior party colleague Siddaramaiah for the post of Karnataka chief minister, state Congress president D K Shivakumar on Monday said his strength is 135, as under his presidency, the party won the said number of seats in the assembly polls.
'I would like to see Kharge include Shashi in the Congress Working Committee.' 'The other alternative is that the Congress will marginalise him.'
Fissures in Maha BJP were out in the open at a rally organised in memory of the late Gopinath Munde, with Eknath Khadse and Pankaja targeting former CM Devendra Fadnavis.
The comments came in backdrop of the political crisis in Karnataka after some Congress-Janata Dal-Secular MLAs resigned and the 10 party legislators in Goa joining the BJP.
Union minister Jairam Ramesh is back to doing what he does best: working out the logistics for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The coming year will be one that will test sabka vishwas to the utmost, predicts Aditi Phadnis.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist said that it will field a candidate as those opposed to the TMC and BJP needed an alternative.
The implementation of the five 'guarantees' announced by the Congress may cost the state exchequer an estimated Rs 50,000 crore annually.
Shah said that the people of the country will decide about the principal opposition party to BJP in the 2024 polls and they have not given this label to any party.
While PM Narendra Modi-Amit Shah dominated the national executive, senior chief ministers and 'margdarshaks' LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi were ignored
Anwar, an AICC general secretary, came out with a flurry of tweets calling for 'urgent and deep introspection' over the debacle of the party, the second largest constituent of the opposition coalition, which contested as many as 70 seats but returned with a tally of just 19.
With time on his side, that Hardik Patel will one day occupy the top spot in Gujarat is a no-brainer. But the BJP doesn't like rabble-rousers.
Releasing the manifesto titled 'Badlav Ka Sankalp' (commitment to change) in the presence of All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala and other Mahagathbandhan leaders, Tejashwi Yadav said their government, if elected, would first approve the process for appointments on about 10 lakh jobs in the government.
'The BJP had no traction in Karnataka and Siddaramaiah would have scraped through if he had not done all that he did.' 'When you pander to one community, the other community gets irritated.' 'Then, when you make fun of the cow and the treating of the cow as sacred, in your effort to belittle the Sangh Parivar and its obscurantism, you are hurting your normal voters too.' 'It is okay to make fun of the Sangh Parivar, but it is not okay to make fun of all Hindus.'
While many exit polls have given either the Bharatiya Janata Party or Congress a majority in Uttarakhand, several of them have predicted a close fight between the two major players or a hung assembly -- a scenario in which the role of winning independents and candidates of regional outfits like the Aam Aadmi Party, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal will become significant in government formation.
If we accept that there is a challenge in Punjab today, any realistic progress can only be made if the rest of the country, especially the government and the ruling party, engage with this sense of grievance, points out Shekhar Gupta
'The message has gone loud and clear (among the people of Assam) that the BJP is only interested in polarising (the country) and they are basically interested in (capturing votes in) the Hindi heartland and they don't bother much about rest of India.'
The JD-U, may be the BJP's partner for now. But it is a party at all only because of Nitish Kumar. The day Nitish Kumar exits, the JD-U will split into hundreds of pieces. Obviously, Prashant Kishor is setting himself up as the vessel that will collect all the pieces and put them together in some sort of political instrument, explains Aditi Phadnis.
Appealing with "folded hands" for an end to the three-month-long cycle of violence in Manipur, Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday urged the warring Kuki and Meitei communities to hold talks, even as the Lok Sabha adopted a resolution calling for the restoration of peace in the northeastern state.
Party will decide when the time was right to pass on the baton to Rahul Gandhi, says senior Congress leader Ambika Soni.
Earlier, when reporters asked Nath about his party's strategy for the elections in the central Indian state, he had said the party had not started talks of alliance with anyone.
Hit hard by defections in the last five years, the Congress in Goa on Friday made its candidates sign affidavits and take an oath of loyalty to the party in the presence of its senior leader Rahul Gandhi.
AAP's Atishi, who had unsuccessfully contested last year's Lok Sabha polls from the East Delhi constituency, was fielded from Kalkaji in place of sitting MLA Avtar Singh Kalka. She won the seat by a margin of over 11,300 votes.
Attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party for failing to bring back black money within 100 days of power, All India Congress Committee leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that administration was "an art that required patience and seriousness" and the BJP lacked the abilities.
The ruling BJP stole a march on the Congress on Friday by releasing its first list of 177 candidates for the assembly polls.
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