Former Karnataka Chief Minister and Karnataka Janata Paksha President B S Yeddyurappa on Tuesday scotched speculation about joining the Bharatiya Janata Party, saying he would retain the identity of his party.
Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien said the situation in Bihar is one of the reasons behind the Parliament session being cut short by the government.
If Saudi Arabia, with just two Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, can create a huge tourism-based ecosystem beyond oil, Ayodhya is sure to become the world's hottest religious tourism site in less than a decade, predicts R Jagannathan.
Ahead of counting of votes, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah on Monday said his party was open to the idea of taking support of Mehbooba Mufti's People's Democratic Party to form government in the Union territory.
Venkaiah Naidu told the members that provocative statements are being used by anti-BJP forces to deflect the attention from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's development agenda.
The party says it has trained over 1,00,000 workers in the last one year.
Hitting back at Rahul Gandhi, the JD-U spokesperson accused him of "not being serious" in fighting corruption.
Bharatiya Janata Party and Lok Janshakti Party on Thursday night stitched a pre-poll alliance with the Ram Vilas Paswan-led party returning to the NDA fold, 12 years after it quit over Gujarat riots, and it will fight seven out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar under a seat-sharing deal.
Ahead of the crucial third round of discussions, the opposition INDIA bloc on Wednesday exuded confidence that it would provide a formidable alternative to bring political change in the country and asserted that it has several prime ministerial faces against BJP's only one.
'Rahul Gandhi is the face of the INDIA alliance. If he contests against a BJP candidate and defeats her/him, it will send a strong message.'
The BJP blames Nitish's PM ambition for his decision to walk out of the NDA.
Modi's decision to bring Shah in his cabinet signals that he will now play a crucial role in the government.
The Trinamool Congress on Thursday dismissed that it has reached an understanding with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya Sabha where the National Democratic Alliance does not have a majority.
Sources said the opposition parties would look to avoid the prickly leadership question as of now and emphasise on building a common ground.
The Vodafone India head said hope is high now with the new government coming with a strong mandate and he is sure that the new government will quickly start to address some of the blocking factors for stronger economic growth.
Notwithstanding Bharatiya Janata Party's assertion there will be no witch-hunt if it comes to power, Uma Bharti has said that Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra will be in jail if the National Democratic Alliance comes to power. Bharti also alleged that Vadra had made money by breaking all norms.
The Janata Dal-United's decision to break its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party not only changed the political equation in Bihar but also created a buzz in the political circle from Patna to Delhi that whether Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman and JD-U MP Harivansh will continue on his post or going to resign.
Government-controlled oil-marketing companies (OMCs) have held back petrol and diesel price revisions for a week and are expected to continue doing so, ostensibly owing to political reasons. It appears that the Centre has informally conveyed to the three major OMCs to not revise fuel prices for the time being, two people in the government said. This informal directive follows the talks between the Centre and states on cutting taxes and bringing the auto fuels under the good service tax regime not fetching the desired results, so far.
The announcement made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday to repeal the three contentious farm laws is expected to bring to an end the year-long confrontation between the government and the farmers, which has left more than 700 dead in its wake.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and its two Assam allies -- the Asom Gana Parishad and the United People's Party Liberal -- on Wednesday 'almost finalised' their seat-sharing pact for the Assam assembly polls and a formal announcement will be made in a day or two, sources said.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh today accused the National Democratic Alliance government of turning the programme to clean Ganga as a "Hindutva project" by attempting to polarise politics through the initiative on the holy river.
In a letter to NDA Chairman and BJP veteran leader L K Advani, with whom he shares an uneasy relationship, Yeddyurappa requested him to involve Karnataka Janatha Party in all the deliberations of NDA by inviting it to all the meetings.
After the first meeting called by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Delhi and attended by 17 parties, the leaders said that it has been decided that a common candidate who will 'uphold the democratic ethos of the country' will be chosen as the opposition nominee.
With the "secular alliance" successfully halting a Bharatiya Janata Party victory in Bihar bypolls, an elated Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar today expressed satisfaction over the "experiment" and said the results would have been better had the parties discussed seat sharing in better way.
As in the past, many of the exit polls gave a clear majority to the BJP-led NDA going way off the mark in ground realities while those that predicted victory for the 'grand alliance' did not anticipate the sweep.
What should have been a direct contest between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress in the Ladakh Lok Sabha constituency is now a three-corner fight with an alliance of local groups fielding an Independent to challenge the national parties.
Asserting that Bihar will see a tsunami of development if the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance was voted to power in the state, party chief Amit Shah on Sunday hit out at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar saying he was just a mascot for the "corrupt" Congress and "symbol of jungle raj" Lalu Prasad.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday slammed the opposition alliance INDIA as a collection of arrogant dynasties who will take India back by two centuries as he exuded confidence that people will bless the "garib ka beta" with a record-breaking mandate in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
From the voter-level, traditionally anti-BJP, anti-Hindutva minorities and other secular voters would have an option, especially in the face of the mounting anti-incumbency against the ruling party -- as it happened in the 2001 assembly polls, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Siddaramaiah asserted that the Karnataka government was a 'strong' one and ridiculed state BJP president B S Yeddyurappa for repeatedly claiming that the coalition will collapse.
Out of the 26 seats where Modi addressed election rallies, the BJP won only 10.
Kumar said after the meeting that all parties from Bihar spoke in one voice on the need for a caste-based census, and asserted that statistics about different castes will help in formulating development schemes effectively as many of them have not benefitted so far in line with their actual population.
Among the keenly watched contests are those involving former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav (Kannauj, UP) and Union ministers Giriraj Singh (Begusarai, Bihar), Nityanand Rai (Ujiarpur, Bihar) and Raosaheb Danve (Jalna, Maharashtra).
Abdullah said they are claiming that terrorism is over but the ground situation shows that it has increased in otherwise peaceful Jammu region.
He asserted that the government purchase of farm produce will remain, adding that the mechanism of minimum support price will continue in the same way it always has.
How Modi retrieves the situation and how he enlists new allies in the next two years will show if the BJP is fighting fit, report Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
The former union home and finance minister also alleged that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government would not have taken the bold decision had Jammu and Kashmir been a "Hindu-dominated" state.
All opposition parties should come together to get rid of the BJP-led NDA government to ensure "Modi-mukt Bharat", he said, reminding the audience of BJP's "Congress-mukt Bharat" slogan.
The fulcrum of victory or defeat of parties attempting to form a government is held by smaller players and those willing to defect.
The National Democratic Alliance's presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu swept the floor of a Shiva temple in her locality in Rairangpur, in this nondescript, tribal-dominated town in Odisha's Mayurbhanj district at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, ahead of her journey to Delhi.
