Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi on Tuesday defended party president Rajnath Singh's directive to party members not to speak on the prime ministerial candidate issue and said till now no demand for choosing Narendra Modi for the post has come up before BJP Parliamentary Board.
Gujarat was labelled Hindutva's crucible and Modi was to become the chief 'chemist'. A revealing political saga excerpted from Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay's The Demolition, the Verdict and the Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United on Tuesday took out processions across the state, urging people to be on guard against the Bharatiya Janata Party's alleged politics of communalism.
Paswan said he was willing to contest the upcoming Bihar assembly polls as an NDA partner "if the BJP so desires", and made light of estranged uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras' recent meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Bharatiya Janata Party chief Rajnath Singh on Wednesday met senior party leader L K Advani in a bid to make him agree to Narendra Modi's candidature as the party's Prime Ministerial nominee ahead of the next general election, but appears to have got no assurance of his support on the issue.
"Yediyurappa's yesterday reaction is his personal reaction. Until now, there has been no discussion on seat sharing or anything. We have met cordially two or three times. Later on, let us see what is going to happen," Kumaraswamy told ANI.
'Don't be surprised if the Census forms come with a caste box.' 'I will be surprised if it doesn't. It will be a point conceded to Rahul Gandhi and his allies,' asserts Shekhar Gupta. The BJP machine could take all 3 in its stride, but this election has changed that, notes Shekhar Gupta.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday won the Churu seat, taking the party's tally to 163 out of 200 assembly seats in Rajasthan.
Former Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa, who is camping in New Delhi, may have to wait a while longer before re-claiming the chief ministerial chair from Sadanand Gouda, as the Bharatiya Janata Party is not in the mood to "reward" his indiscipline.
Thirty two BJP MLAs out of 55 reached Delhi on Wednesday to express their resentment against the continuance of Sushil Modi as the deputy chief minister in the Nitish Kumar government. Twelve of the MLAs left Delhi for Patna after sensing the mood of the party top brass.
'We are allies and equals. We have to run Bihar collectively'
Modi can abandon the path of Hindutva only at risk to his position within his own fraternity. But if he pursues a hard line, he faces the risk of being hauled up by his coalition-partners. For the first time in a decade, Modi is not in enviable situation, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Both Sawant and Rane are being seen as top contenders for the post of chief minister in the state.
Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi on Sunday called on party patriarch L K Advani after holding consultation with a number of party leaders including his key aide Amit Shah in New Delhi ahead of the formation of the next government headed by him.
Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje finally resigned as the leader of the Opposition in the state assembly on Friday.Raje, who initially refused to resign, has been dodging the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership for over two months on the issue.However, she did not hand over her resignation letter to party president Rajnath Singh. Raje met Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha L K Advani in Delhi on Friday and handed over her resignation letter.
'Number two' in the cabinet Nitin Patel has emerged as a strong contender.
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.
Union minister Smriti Irani will also contest the Rajya Sabha polls from Gujarat from where she is already an MP and her term ends on August 18.
With the RSS asserting it would not compromise on its basic ideology, hardliners led by Murli Manohar Joshi are expected to adopt a tough posture at the meeting.
A show cause notice has been issued to him asking him to explain his "anti-party conduct", the party said, adding that further action will depend on his reply.
Amit Shah, who orchestrated Bharatiya Janata Party's stellar performance in the Hindi heartland in the Lok Sabha elections, was on Wednesday named as the party's next president
Venting her grouse over entry of Badava Shramika Raitha Congress president B Sreeramalu in the Bharatiya Janata Party, senior leader Sushma Swaraj on Friday night said he was taken in despite her "stiff opposition".
A senior JD-U leader said Lallan Singh has expressed his desire to give up the top party post.
'Where is the remote control in the BJP? When I become president, the remote control will stay with me'
'You can attack and conspire to weaken us, but you cannot destroy the Congress permanently.'
Seeking to defend its leadership from the attack by its veterans, the BJP said the "healthy precedent" of collective responsibility for poll defeats was set by Vajpayee and Advani.
Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray chief Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said he will back any candidate announced by the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar as Maha Vikas Aghadi's chief ministerial face.
Kushwaha made the exasperated remark in reply to queries from journalists about Singh's relentless, and often personal, attacks on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Chandra Shekhar's uncharitable remarks about Ramcharitmanas which triggered a controversy.
'If, as happened in Baramulla during the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the youth in the Valley get triggered enough to jump into the wider fray, the end result would be difficult to predict, especially as the state's post-August 5, 2019 political format remains substantially fragmented and foggy,' points out Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the veteran commentator on Kashmir affairs.
The group is also reported to be seeking the ouster of some Rahul Gandhi loyalists from key AICC positions and top on their target are AICC general secretary Organisation K C Venugopal, chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala and general secretary Ajay Maken.
It also cautioned that if the legislation is passed, the "two crutches" on which the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government is running at the Centre would not be able to escape responsibility.
With his recent utterances on Narendra Modi and L K Advani leaving many leaders in Bharatiya Janata Party red faced, actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha on Thursday said he did not violate party discipline and stuck to his remarks.
The deputy prime minister is expected to visit the sites of the blasts and also the injured people in hospitals.
Downplaying Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's comment that he got mandate to serve the state till 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday said that one should not read too much into it as Modi has articulated a "tactical, legal and constitutional position".
Despite failing to secure a simple majority in Parliament, we will continue to see him on TV, newspapers, magazines, bill boards, vaccination certificates, railway stations, bus shelters, airports, sea ports, on the highway and on rural roads, sighs A Ganesh Nadar.
The People's Democratic Party and the National Conference -- the two Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) partners in Jammu and Kashmir -- will be taking on each other on the three Lok Sabha seats in the valley.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's parliamentary board on Tuesday named Droupadi Murmu, the party's tribal leader from Odisha, as the ruling National Democratic Alliance's candidate for the presidential election.
Chief Minister Manik Saha said that the BJP will contest in 55 constituencies in its bid to return to power in the northeastern state which has a 60-member assembly for the second time in a row.
The question now is whether BJP patriarch L K Advani will fall in line and contest from Gandhinagar or he would stick to his guns and not contest at all, says Renu Mittal
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