Uddhav Thackeray, who played the bold gambit of taking on the ally Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019 and forged an unlikely alliance with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, was on Saturday left struggling to make sense of his party's rout in the Maharashtra assembly elections.
On Thursday, the opening day of the movie itself, the Sangh Parivar came out with vehement criticism against the film on social media, while the Congress and a section of the Left platforms celebrated the film for portraying the right-wing politics as "villainous".
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief J P Nadda and new party entrant Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan were among the 41 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will witness polling on February 27.
Before the ceremony, Yogi Adityanath, who led the party to a thumping victory in the just-concluded elections, will be elected as the leader of the legislature party, party sources said.
He sought to nix speculation that the Congress and the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray were working on a 'Plan B' to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls without his faction of the Nationalist Congress Party.
If the idea was to garner AIADMK votes with or without the three faction leaders after the party broke ties with the NDA, it may not work after all, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'I want to ask the Congress only one question: What is more important than election management in politics?'
'One needs to understand what kind of means the BJP use to bring other party leaders in their party.' 'They are unscrupulous politicians and money plays an important role.'
Sukanta Majumdar, the state BJP president, said, "Amit Shah has set a target of 35 seats. We will achieve that".
In the coming assembly election, negotiations over seat-sharing will be as important as actual outreach to voters.
Here's how some of the heavyweights fared in the Karnataka elections.
Sources in both the BJP and the Janata Dal-United suggested such a possibility but it remained unclear if Kumar, the unquestioned leader of his party, has finalised a deal with the BJP top brass.
Congress rebel Satish Sharma, who defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party's Rajeev Sharma by nearly 7,000 votes and relegated his former party's heavyweight Tara Chand to the third position in the Chhamb seat, has found a place in the Omar Abdullah government, representing the Jammu region in the dispensation.
Karra, who became the J&K Congress chief last Friday replacing Vikar Rasool Wani, said a call is already there for all secular parties who are opposed to the "hegemonic attitude" of the BJP to unite.
Whether AAP bounces back or fades into political oblivion will depend on its strategy in the coming months.
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.
Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray chief Uddhav Thackeray will not switch to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, Maharashtra Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar president Jayant Patil asserted on Thursday, seeking to scotch speculation about a possible crossover by his key ally.
On the eve of the counting of votes in Rajasthan, both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have started reaching out to independent candidates, including rebels, and smaller parties.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday announced Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fight again from Varanasi in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as it named 34 Union ministers in the first list of 195 candidates.
If the Congress reached 90, it would have a pretty good chance of holding the BJP below the 272 mark. A hundred seats will rock national politics, argues Shekhar Gupta.
Against predictions by most exit polls that the ruling Congress had an edge in the state, the BJP banked heavily on the charisma of the PM.
Former wrestler Sakshi Malik made some startling revelations in her her recently-released book titled Witness, claiming that their protest developed cracks when 'people close to' Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat began to fill their minds with 'greed'.
'Whoever thought that building toilets and providing free rations to the poorest of poor Indians would give Modi a halo other political leaders would envy?' asks Sheela Bhatt.
A group of villagers in Maharashtra's Malshiras assembly segment, who had insisted on a "re-election" with ballot papers, have relented after police intervention. The villagers, who claimed the NCP (SP) candidate, Uttam Jankar, had polled less votes in their village than the BJP candidate, Ram Satpute, had planned to hold their own "repoll" on December 3. However, police warned them of legal action, and Jankar, along with police officials, had a meeting with the villagers, who ultimately decided to drop their plan. Despite this, they plan to continue their protest by other means.
There is no sign of it losing popularity with a significant section of the voting population, which appears to be attracted to the party for identity reasons, observes Aakar Patel.
Both Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan assured voters that they would bring jobs and industrial development to the state. Their alliance batted for a welfare-plus-development model.
First-time MLA Bhajan Lal Sharma was sworn in as the chief minister of Rajasthan at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party's top leadership on Friday, 12 days after the party ousted the Congress in the assembly polls.
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.
'Why should children, who are already burdened with so many subjects, be over-burdened with three languages?'
'Scores of important BJP MLAs are in touch with Akhileshji, but he has very humbly said that the SP's doors are now closed to BJP MLAs and leaders.'
Opposition parties demanded that all elections in the future be held through ballot papers.
The Congress, which has 37 MLAs, had fixed a quota of 30 first preference votes for its candidate Satav, and seven remaining votes were to go to its ally Sena (UBT)'s nominee Narvekar, party sources said. Eventually, Satav got 25 and Narvekar 22 first preference votes, which meant at least seven Congress MLAs cross-voted.
'Both the BJP and SP have workers and cadres across the state, and now it will boil down to which party manages booths smartly and gets its voters to come out.'
While the Aam Aadmi Party is contesting on four seats, the Congress has fielded candidates for the remaining three seats.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
"It is just that Fadnavis and I have swapped our chairs. Only Ajit Pawar's chair is fixed," said Shinde, who was the CM before the assembly elections with Fadnavis and Pawar as his deputies then.
Earlier, Modi was given a standing ovation at the meeting following the party's stupendous win in three assembly polls.
'Economic issues do not matter during elections; it is the emotional connect that helps swing votes.'
Amid deepening fissures in Kumar's ties with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress, BJP leaders have indicated that they are open to tying up with him again.
Kharge, who was elected Congress president recently, arrived in Himachal Pradesh Tuesday evening and addressed his first public meeting in Banuti in support of party candidate from the Shimla Rural assembly constituency Vikramaditya Singh.
