The current public mood is that it will be a hung assembly. No one, not even in the BJP, is talking about even a simple majority for the party.
A special court in Ahmedabad which acquitted all the 67 accused in the Naroda Gam post-Godhra riots case has criticised the probe conducted into it by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the Supreme Court, and said the evidence of the prosecution's witnesses was full of contradictions and could not be relied upon.
Lakshman Prasad Acharya has been made the governor of Assam with the additional charge of Manipur while Gulab Chand Kataria has replaced Banwarilal Purohit as the governor of Punjab under major gubernatorial appointments, the Rashtrapati Bhavan has announced.
Modi also said the way the Indian elections are being conducted could be a learning process for other democracies.
Godhra is one of the 14 seats which the AIMIM is contesting in the next month's elections to the 182-member Gujarat assembly.
Venugopal said not just the Congress but the entire nation has "condemned this erroneous conviction and disqualification, and resolved to stand by Rahul in this noble fight".
With the strategy working in its favour, the BJP could be encouraged to undertake similar steps in states, including Karnataka, where elections are due next year, to counter factors that might work against it.
The repatriation orders for the two Indian Police Service officers come in the backdrop of a spate of terror incidents in the Jammu region, along the India-Pakistan border.
'The BJP must realise that a resurgent Rahul Gandhi will take the battle straight into its camp.' 'He is not going to be held back by the misdeeds of UPA 1 and 2, so there is no point harping on them,' says Sanjeev Nayyar.
'It is not just about numbers. Sometimes coalitions and alliances have symbolic value.'
There is little doubt that the prime minister's own charisma exceeds that of his party, but 2024 is proof that no party can ultimately depend on one person to deliver victory all the time, points out R Jagannathan.
The first list has 10 Patel or Patidar faces, 11 tribals, 10 OBCs and five SCs.
Patel will be administered the oath as the 18th chief minister by Governor Acharya Devvrat at a function to be held at the Helipad Ground near the new Secretariat in Gandhinagar at 2 pm.
Among the major parties, out of the 25 BJP candidates, four, or 15 percent, have criminal cases against them, with two facing serious charges, as per the data of ADR.
Sarma, whose stock is high in Delhi had earlier captured eyeballs as the BJP's first star campaigner from the region in far away Gujarat and Delhi.
'The BJP's problem is what rabbit can it pull out of the conjurer's hat?'
The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist on Monday took a veiled dig at the Congress by asking it to safeguard its newly elected Karnataka MLAs from being poached by the Bharatiya Janata Party as was allegedly done by the saffron party in Goa amidst the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Party sources said the issue of Rupani's successor will be discussed in the legislature party meeting likely to be held on Sunday.
Mining magnate Anil Agarwal has said Gujarat was picked over Maharashtra for the Vedanta-Foxconn's Rs 1.52 lakh crore semiconductor project based on 'professional and independent' advice, as the political row in Maharashtra over the facility escalated on Thursday.
The controversy has sparked reactions across states. The famous Mankameshwar temple in Uttar Pradesh has now banned offerings of 'prasad' bought by devotees from outside and said they can offer homemade 'prasad' or fruits.
The Aam Aadmi Party tops the list with 61 such candidates.
Sharing his experience of the yatra so far, the Congress leader said he felt sad while talking to farmers, youth, and tribals.
The party claimed 16 lakh votes were polled in the last one hour of polling on December 5.
Ravindra Jadeja and his wife Rivaba Jadeja cast their vote in Gujarat's Jamnagar district during the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections on Tuesday, May 7, 2024.
The Parliament premises will sport a new look when the 18th Lok Sabha convenes for its maiden session in June as work is underway to integrate the entire complex, comprising four different buildings.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP is trying to make inroads into BJP-ruled Gujarat where the assembly polls are due later this year.
Addressing a rally in Veraval town after offering prayers at the famous Somnath Temple near here, the PM also urged the people to turn up in large numbers on polling day and break all the previous records of voter turnout.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The BJP has nothing to lose after a point. For the DMK it is a difficult choice, as it would not want to give too much of space to a 'national party' lest the 'Dravidian duel' of the past decades should be lost forever, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
He said politicians should work for non-political causes as well as they have a lot of impact on society. In this context, Modi noted the Gujarat government's work for "beti bachao" (save daughters) when he was the chief minister and said it helped a lot in improving the gender ratio.
Four Cabinet ministers and 8 ministers of state are to be dropped and the same number of ministers likely to be inducted in Prime Minister Narendra D Modi's council of ministers.
Two days after resigning from the Gujarat legislative assembly as a Congress legislator, Patidar community leader Harshad Ribadiya on Thursday joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Gandhinagar.
BJP candidate and minister Kunvarji Bavaliya defeated his nearest rival Congress nominee Avsar Nakiya by a margin of 19,979 votes, officials said.
It was not that differences did not crop up over other issues between the two erstwhile allies, but Parkash Singh Badal always ensured that these were amicably resolved and the ties remained intact.
Actor Khushbu Sundar's tweet against the release of men involved in rape has set off a series of reactions and debate and her party the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday maintained that the release of 11 convicts by Gujarat in the Bilkis Bano case was as per law and there was absolutely no politics involved.
This is Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya's maiden Lok Sabha election, but political experts and voters feel he can easily win Porbandar seat in his home state Gujarat, despite the electorate facing some key issues like unemployment.
The Opposition had dubbed the directives issued by the three states as divisive and discriminatory against Muslims, and the apex court's order effectively ensured that the Yatra was held without their orders being enforced.
The Election Commission on Thursday said that there were 'multiple factors' leading to the delay in the announcement of the Gujarat assembly polls, adding that the recent Morbi bridge collapse tragedy was one of them.
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