The entry of Kohli, a local businessman, into the BJP came a day after the prime minister rejected perceptions of a 'Modi wave' in the country. Lok Sabha elections in Punjab are due in one phase on April 30.
Sources said a 100-day agenda for immediate steps to be taken after a new government is formed in May was deliberated upon during the meeting for its quick implementation.
Attacking Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani's close associate Sudheendhra Kulkarni on asked as to how a leader who has "polarised" the society and even his party can run a stable and effective government at the centre.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to announce on Friday that Narendra Modi will be its candidate for prime minister, according to sources, despite strong opposition from party patriarch LK Advani.
The decision comes from BJP President Nitin Gadkari, so as to shut down the tussle going on between Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley that spilled into open.
A fierce competition among parties to offer freebies and guarantees, a scramble for tribal, OBC, women votes and a touch of Hindutva -- all have combined to make the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls a high-stakes battle with main rivals BJP and the Congress pulling out all the stops to gain power.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was today quoted as having said that Bharatiya Janata Party should declare its prime ministerial candidate in advance of next year's Lok Sabha polls, but he later denied having said so.
BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi said there is a groundswell of "hatred and dislike" against the UPA government and common people are eagerly awaiting to exercise their mandate to vote the government out of power.
Making a strong attack against Narendra Modi, whom he termed a "megalomaniac psychopath liar", Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh on Sunday stoked a fresh controversy saying why can the Bharatiya Janata Party not field a "better leader" like Sushma Swaraj as its prime ministerial candidate.
'They also think that if all opposition parties rally behind him, then 2024 will be Rahul versus Modi and that will be advantage BJP'
The recent war of words between the Bharatiya Janata Party and its alliance partner Janata Dal-United seems to have come to an end after the former assured its allies it would decide on the prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections after consulting them
Modi's record has so impressed L K Advani, the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, that, of late, he misses no chance to praise him, be it at the election rallies or public functions. Advani, writing in his blog recently, showered praises on Modi for getting Rs 12 lakh crore (Rs 12 trillion) investment into the state in times of economic slowdown at the January 13 investors' summit in Ahmedabad.
Samridh Bharat, Surakhshit Bharat (prosperous India, safer India) is the theme slogan of the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party's multi-crore media campaign for the coming Lok Sabha elections that is scheduled to be finalised by the party's prime ministerial candidate, L K Advani, by the month-end.
The PM name is to be decided only after the Lok Sabha results, a top opposition leader said.
A basic outline and roadmap for Opposition unity are likely to be deliberated upon with the contentious issue of seat sharing and leadership questions to be avoided for now.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's reported ambition to become the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate in 2014 may remain unfulfilled.
Raising the issue of black money stashed away in foreign banks, BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate L K Advani on Wednesday said that if the money is routed back to the country it could be used for development work.
In a first of its kind in Lok Sabha polls, a "recorded video speech" of BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will be shown in "3D" on Monday at 300 places across the country, including 18 in Delhi.
Activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal's allegations about some Indians having accounts in tax havens abroad gave the Bharatiya Janata Party an opportunity to flag the issue of black money again as the party asked the government to make public all details of such individuals and entities.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani will skip the meeting of party office-bearers in Goa on Thursday due to ill-health.
BJP's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani on Saturday said the UPA government woke up to enact new laws to combat terror only after the bloody Mumbai attacks.
Senior party leader and prime ministerial candidate L K Advani will contest from Gandhinagar constituency in Gujarat. Other prominent names announced in the first list include Navjot Singh Sidhu (Amritsar), Vinod Khanna (Gurdaspur), Shripad Y Naik (Panaji), Anurag Thakur (Hamirpur) and T P S Rawat (Pauri).
The results mark a defining turn in the fortunes of several regional satraps, especially in the BJP, around whom politics in their states have revolved for decades.
The JD-U leader rubbished speculations that he was maintaining an eloquent silence on the issue because of anxieties about tarnishing his own image for probity by aligning with "tainted" politicians and could even be thinking of breaking away with the "Mahagathbandhan", which besides RJD, also includes Congress and the Left.
The speculation was triggered after Shravan Kumar, a Bihar minister, who is also the Janata Dal-United's in-charge for UP, said there were 'demands' that the party boss enter the fray from the adjoining state.
BJP's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani had thought of calling it a day in politics when he turned 80 in November last year. Disclosing this in a television interview, the Leader of the Opposition said he contemplated retirement because he felt he had achieved a lot in public life.
Former Haryana Congress leader Kuldeep Bishnoi joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday along with his wife Renuka Bishnoi here in the presence of senior party leaders, including state Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
Addressing a 'fateh' (victory) rally with leaders from the ally Shiromani Akali Dal on the dais, the Gujarat chief minister, who donned a saffron turban, also dismissed as "rumours and a pack of lies" the controversy about migration of Sikh farmers from Kutch region in his state, promising that no Sikh farmer will have to leave Gujarat.
Citing his failure to check the post-Godhra riots, National Democratic Alliance constituent Janata Dal-United has made clear its opposition to Narendra Modi's projection as prime ministerial candidate but ruled out the possibility of aligning with "enemy" Congress at the cost of "friend" BJP.
Senior Bhartiya Janata Party General Secretary Arun Jaitley on Friday dismissed speculations about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi becoming a challenge to the party's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani. "Politics is not so juvenile that Anil Ambani or Sunil Mittal can get anybody in the PM's seat," Jaitley affirmed while talking to reporters at the BJP headquarters in Delhi.
The Nitish Kumar-led Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar will go for a floor test on August 24 to prove its majority in the state assembly.
The BJP and the AIADMK are unable to sort out ideological differences, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
"Truth alone triumphs!" This is how Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi reacted on Thursday to an Ahmedabad court's verdict rejecting a protest petition filed against the clean chit given to him by the Supreme Court- appointed Special Investigation Team in the 2002 communal riots.
The National Democratic Alliance had offered to extend outside support to the United National Progressive Alliance's prime ministerial candidate in 2007, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh has revealed.The NDA had made the offer to the UNPA during the presidential polls last year, the senior BJP leader told mediapersons in New Delhi on Saturday.The former finance minister also warned that the country was "hurtling towards an economic emergency" under the UPA govt.
According to BJP sources, the party propped up Chouhan in its election campaign when the Congress plank of promising to conduct a caste census started finding resonance with the OBCs.
The BJP leadership knows it can't boast of governance in the state as the Bommai government has little to show. So, the game plan is to project Modi, who will reiterate how important it is for a state to have the same party ruling in power at the Centre, observes Ramesh Menon.
If the BJP is waiting for a better assessment about the assembly polls, the Congress is doing the same to see if it should club the 2014 Lok Sabha elections with the assembly polls. says Anita Katyal
The legislature party of the PDP which met in Srinagar on Thursday afternoon unanimously chose Mehbooba Mufti as the chief ministerial candidate as also its leader.
As a controversy raged over Narendra Modi's interview to Doordarshan, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said that the party's prime ministerial candidate had never said that Priyanka Gandhi was like his daughter and that the interview aired on the public broadcaster was deliberately "distorted".
The Bharatiya Janata Party, if voted to power, will "revise" the country's nuclear doctrine to make it "relevant to challenges of current times", said the party manifesto while talking about maintaining the credible minimum deterrent in tune with the "changing geostatic realities".