A suitable non-Congress candidate from a regional party could help influence even some of the NDA allies like the Shiv Sena and the Janata Dal-United to vote for a consensus Opposition candidate, reports Archis Mohan.
Senior BJP leader L K Advani was on Sunday elected unopposed the working chairman of the National Democratic Alliance till incumbent Atal Bihari Vajpayee recovers from ill-health while acting NDA convenor Sharad Yadav has been elected as the convenor.
Along with Modi, senior BJP leaders including Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, all ministers in Modi 2.0 Cabinet, took oath as cabinet ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In all, 71 ministers were sworn-in along with Modi, taking the strength of the Union council to 72.
Sources later said differences between the two parties have been resolved.
The Shiromani Akali Dal had on Saturday quit the National Democratic Alliance over the farm bills issue.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday warned that Bihar's areas close to the borders (seemant) will become 'infested with infiltrators' if Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not voted back to power.
Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole on Wednesday slammed ally Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray's MP Sanjay Raut for his remarks on Haryana poll outcome, stressing that accusations against Congress won't be tolerated.
As the exit polls were sharply split on who would get to rule Bihar, Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday said their grand Mahagatbadhan alliance would win the Bihar Assembly polls with 190 seats.
In UP and Bengal, it is willing to sacrifice its interests to stop the BJP and would work towards ensuring the BJP did not win incremental seats in Odisha and Telangana.
Union Minority Affairs Minister Abdul Rehman Antulay has the last laugh. Neither he was made to apologise and retract his remarks on the doubts he raised over the killing of Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare, nor did he get the boot, much hyped by most of the Media and sought by the BJP-led NDA Opposition.
In the coming assembly election, negotiations over seat-sharing will be as important as actual outreach to voters.
A section of BJP leaders is of the view that the leadership may spring a surprise with its choice for the post by appointing someone from southern India.
Hand over cricket bats, balls to Indian soldiers, its mouthpiece Saamna said.
The first meeting of the reconstituted Congress Working Committee under Mallikarjun Kharge's presidency will be held in Hyderabad on Saturday during which the party's top brass will deliberate on evolving a strategy for upcoming assembly polls in five states and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The UPA government carried out six surgical strikes -- Bhattal sector in Poonch (June 19, 2008); Sharda sector, across Neelam River Valley, in Kel (August 30-September 1, 2011); Sawan Patra checkpost (January 6, 2013); Nazapir sector (July 27-28, 2013); Neelam Valley (August 6, 2013); and one on December 23, 2013, Congress spokesperson Rajeev Shukla said.
The bill seeks to provide Indian citizenship to non-Muslims from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Wednesday said the country needed a servantand not a ruler. Calling him a sevak, Modi said that if voted to power he would serve the country.
Following the death of Lok Janshakti Party leader and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Ramdas Athawale of Republican Party of India is the lone member from the Bharatiya Janata Party allies in the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre.
Such is the situation of the government in Punjab, the prime minister said while hitting out the Congress, and asserted that he will come to Jalandhar again and pay obeisance at the Devi Talab Mandir.
While the major fronts, the CPI-M led LDF and Congress-led UDF have given three and one seat respectively to women, the BJP-led NDA has set aside five seats for their female politicians in the upcoming LS polls.
The committee, comprising Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley and M Venkaiah Naidu
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said he wants the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance to win 400 seats in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls to ensure the Congress does not bring back Article 370 in Kashmir and put a 'Babri lock' on the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
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".
According to the Election Commission data, 30 out of the state's 40 Lok Sabha seats went to the BJP-led coalition in the latest elections, a sharp drop compared with 39 in 2019 and lower than the tallies of 2014 (31) and 2009 (32).
Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah on Tuesday suggested that it will take some time before the Narendra Modi government fulfills its development promises, saying the previous United Progressive Alliance dispensation had left behind a 'big ditch'.
The Opposition candidate in the July 18 presidential polls, Yashwant Sinha, held his first campaign strategy meeting on Wednesday at the Nationalist Congress Party office in New Delhi and said a "rubberstamp President" will not work in the country.
From the point of view of qualification, Murmu is probably educationally the least qualified among India's recent Presidents. But then, with the BJP in command, she will be required to do little but sign on the dotted line.
Amidst the fanfare over Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's plans to celebrate Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's birth anniversary in Kolkata on January 23, his daughter Anita Bose-Pfaff has said that the organisation's ideology and the nationalist leader's ideas of secularism and inclusiveness are 'poles apart and do not coincide'.
The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Monday announced walking out of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and said it would lead a separate front for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Asked how many seats INDIA bloc will get, Gandhi said, "Have you heard Sidhu Moose Wala's song '295'? So 295 (seats)."
Paswan also asserted that he has been working on his 'Bihar first, Bihari first' agenda for a long time and had informed the BJP leadership about his differences with the Kumar-led government well in advance.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in the assembly polls on Thursday has put the party on a stronger wicket for the election for the post of President expected later this year.
Former chief minister of Puducherry V Narayanasamy on Wednesday cautioned the voters against supporting the alliance comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party, AINRC and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in the coming assembly polls as these parties would have no qualms to merge the Union territory with Tamil Nadu.
Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday said that fire-crackers will burst in Pakistan if the NDA did not form the next government in Bihar.
Jharkhand Mukti Morcha working president Hemant Soren was on Sunday sworn in as the 11th chief minister of Jharkhand at Morhabadi Ground in Ranchi. Governor Droupadi Murmu administered the oath of office and secrecy to Soren, in the presence of senior political leaders and chief ministers from across states.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's 'mission 84' (winning 84 out of 126 assembly seats in Assam in 2016 polls) has run into a hurdle put up by the United Liberation Front of Assam-Independent. The militant outfit has threatened to use force to stymie all activities of the saffron party in Assam after January 10, 2015.
Congress leaders from Maharashtra Ashok Chavan, Prithviraj Chavan and Pradesh Congress Committee chief Balasaheb Thorat attended the meeting along with the top brass of the party, including Ahmed Patel.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
However, a majority in the Council of States will continue to elude the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
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