Despite being hailed as one of India's most progressive and most developed states, it is witnessing the fallout of lopsided progress.
The Maharashtra State Election Commission on Friday said polls to local bodies from other backward class reserved constituencies, which were scheduled on December 21, will now be held on January 18 and these seats will be converted as general category ones.
The development comes after the Supreme Court decided to strike down the recent 27 percent reservation in favour of OBCs in local bodies made by Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh governments.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Saturday said her party would contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on its own.
The most important lesson is that you have to build your political proposition, and sell it yourself. You can't leave it to the courts, media, NGOs and civil society and expect them to play the role of the Opposition. That's precisely what Mr Modi's challengers have been doing and we know the results, notes Shekhar Gupta.
If the corruption issue doesn't claim Mr Baghel, the Congress's chances in the assembly election later this year are good, observes Aditi Phadnis.
Faced with one of the worst showing in Lok Sabha elections in which her party failed to open its account, BSP chief Mayawati on Saturday said the parties which had supported the UPA at the Centre faced the anger of the people towards the Congress-led alliance.
The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind has asserted that efforts to create a rift between people from different religions should be treated as a "national crime", and welcomed the government's outreach to Pasmanda Muslims.
'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.'
'The problem lies in the popular perception that the Marathas are a rich, politically powerful and dominant caste in the state... The truth is different. The tragedy of this community is that only 137 Maratha families are the dominant players in state politics. The disparity is so wide, that the rest of the Maratha community isn't even half as rich, forget being powerful,' says N Suresh.
The ruling Congress is seeking to retain power in Chhattisgarh by banking on the welfare schemes of the Bhupesh Baghel government, while the Bharatiya Janata Party is hoping to corner it on the issues of alleged corruption, religious conversions and unfulfilled poll promises.
The postmortem report of the 45-year-old woman, whose body was found hanging from a tree in Bahraich on Wednesday, has "not confirmed rape", even as five policemen have been suspended in connection with the case.
The ruling Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress described it as the 'social cabinet', with 70 per cent representation to the BC, SC, ST and minority communities.
Garima Lohia, Uma Harathi N and Smriti Mishra secured the second, third and fourth ranks respectively in the examination, results of which were declared on Tuesday.
The Act provides for quotas in teaching positions in central institutions for persons from Scheduled Castes/Tribes, socially and educationally backward classes, and those from economically weaker sections.
The Congress has pinned its hopes on many of the old-timers and also given representation to some new faces in its first list of candidates announced for the Chhattisgarh assembly polls scheduled next month.
The Centre has moved the Supreme Court seeking review of the May 5 majority verdict which held that 102nd Constitution amendment took away the power of state governments to declare Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) for grant of quota in jobs and admissions.
The Supreme Court Monday took serious note of the election process reserving the post of president of a panchayat samiti in Maharashtra for the Other Backward Class category, saying it is 'clearly in the teeth' of the judgement delivered by the apex court earlier this year.
OBC leader Dharam Singh Saini on Thursday became the third minister to resign from the Uttar Pradesh cabinet this week, giving yet another jolt to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the run-up to the assembly polls.
Tuesday's exercise underlines Bharatiya Janata Party's attempts at wooing Dalits and OBCs, whose votes would be crucial to its fortunes in key states like UP and Gujarat.
'Naidu understands electoral calculus, that the regional parties are yet to gain confidence in Rahul as a vote-catcher,' points out R Rajagopalan.
BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala said the Congress has insulted Murmu.
Sukh Ram and Raja were charged with corruption during their tenure as telecom ministers. Sukh Ram was convicted while Raja has been acquitted. One had cash found under his bed; in the case of the other the trial judge mockingly asks: Where is the money? And if there's no money, where is the corruption? So, pronounced innocent. Sukh Ram is a Brahmin. 'Maybe he strayed just that one time, people like that aren't usually corrupt.' And Raja is a Dalit. 'Can you expect any better?' What race is in some places, caste is in India, says Shekhar Gupta.
The Centre has appointed senior IAS officers Vumlunmang Vualnam and Neeraj Mittal as new secretaries in the ministry of civil aviation and the department of telecommunications respectively in a major secretary-level bureaucratic reshuffle, a government order stated.
Yadav also promised caste census in the state after the formation of the SP government and equal representation and honour to all castes.
The talk in a tea stall in the Yadav-dominated village of Mohli in Munger district of Bihar is all about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's exhortations to 'Yaduvanshis' to dump Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has fielded an unprecedented 22 candidates from the dominant backward caste.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on a batch of pleas challenging the validity of the 103rd Constitution amendment providing 10 per cent reservation to economically weaker sections (EWS) persons in admissions and government jobs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has already 'accepted defeat' by requesting him not to stop schemes initiated by the Congress in Rajasthan, and gave a guarantee that the Bharatiya Janata Party will not stop any scheme but only try to improve it.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would not reopen its decision on granting reservation in promotions to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as it was for the states to decide how they implement it.
It had meant nothing but moments of intimacy, sweet but transient moments. An intriguing excerpt from Manju Kapur's new novel The Gallery.
'The BJP had no traction in Karnataka and Siddaramaiah would have scraped through if he had not done all that he did.' 'When you pander to one community, the other community gets irritated.' 'Then, when you make fun of the cow and the treating of the cow as sacred, in your effort to belittle the Sangh Parivar and its obscurantism, you are hurting your normal voters too.' 'It is okay to make fun of the Sangh Parivar, but it is not okay to make fun of all Hindus.'
Why did Karnataka's economic prosperity fail to influence the nature of electoral promises made by political parties in the run-up to the assembly elections? asks A K Bhattacharya.
The court held that the states were not required to 'collect quantifiable data' reflecting the backwardness among these communities.
Quite a few Hindi films have taken up issues related with sex, and managed to shine the torch on some pertinent issues.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the Bharatiya Janata Party has decided it would not adopt the path of appeasement and vote bank politics.
Plummeting to its lowest ever tally of winning only one seat in the current Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Mayawati said it was the media's aggressive propaganda showing the BSP as the 'B team of the BJP' that drove away Muslims and anti-BJP voters from it.
The comment has caused a furore in the state with leaders from major political parties lambasting him over the issue.
Criticism against the August 12 order continued to pour in from the state and various parts of the country with National Commission for Women chairperson Rekha Sharma and senior Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo member Brinda Karat strongly condemning the sessions court judge's observation.
"Had there been no demolition, probably the courts too would have ordered status quo," he said then. And his last wish, he said, was to live till the temple comes up.
Mayawati also alleged that women in the BJP are scared of their husbands meeting the PM fearing they might 'abandon their wives like him' and that Modi deserves the abusive language used against him by the opposition.
