As the second phase of polling commenced on Thursday amid heightened security, bigwigs came out to cast their votes for constituting the 17th Lok Sabha. Among those who took to their respective polling booths were former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, actor-turned-politician Rajinikanth, BJP candidate from Bengaluru South Tejasvi Surya, and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, among others.
The Aam Aadmi Party's spectacular electoral debut in New Delhi is now creating ripples down south.
'New Delhi is in a perpetual dilemma. It can't do without Yediyurappa, but it doesn't want a powerful CM. It stokes the opponents within against him. The result is he has never settled down in office, even in the present tenure'
Fighting Nandan Nilekani to extend his record winning streak in Lok Sabha polls here, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ananth Kumar says the former Infosys chief has committed "hara-kiri" by fighting on a Congress ticket as the party on Sunday symbolises "corruption and scams".
In the second phase on April 18, 97 seats,spread across 13 states and one Union Territory, will go to the polls.
Among the names being mentioned for inclusion as ministers are Tejasvi Surya, the 29-year-old MP from Bangalore South, Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, the 35-year-old MP from Ladakh, Locket Chatterjee, the 45-year old MP from Hooghly, and Dilip Ghosh, MP from West Medinipur and president of the BJP's West Bengal unit.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday released its second list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls. The Election Commission has cleared 52 candidates of which 20 are from Karnataka.
UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani on Friday said he will resign from his job by March-end to contest Lok Sabha election on Congress ticket.
The Karnataka verdict was something that even the Bharatiya Janata Party did not expect. Through the campaign when the leaders in the BJP were asked what they expected in Karnataka they said, "for the public we say 18, but realistically we are expecting anything between 10 and 12."
Many corporate figures, who are not full-fledged businessmen, have felt the need to make a change in the system. That's why they are joining the AAP, Captain Gopinath tells Rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa
Former Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan will be the Aam Aadmi Party's candidate from Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency while journalist Ashish Khetan will contest from New Delhi as the party announced its fourth list of candidates for 61 constituencies on Monday.
'Besides Ayodhya, the BJP lost in nine other constituencies with a Ramayana imprint; it tasted success only in Thrissur.' 'In Rameswaram, K Navaskani of the Indian Union Muslim League won with a 44% voteshare in a 84% Hindu constituency.' 'In the 21 seats in the Ayodhya and Varanasi regions, both crucial to the Hindutva project, the BJP won just 7.' 'It won just 3 out of 12 seats around Modi's constituency,' points out Krishna Prasad.
Santosh, an RSS 'pracharak' working in the BJP since 2006, is considered an ideologue who is equally well-versed with the dynamics of electoral politics.
Was some area in poll-bound Andhra Pradesh the real target of the two bombs that exploded in Chennai Central railway station early today?
Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan came down heavily on Congress leaders for "persistently and willfully obstructing the House" and suspended them for 5 days. The members who have been punished include a president's son, ex-chief ministers' sons and an ex-CM's grandson. Rediff.com brings you the complete list.
'The central BJP leaders were determined to push Hindutva hard, and it failed.'
Five time MP from Bangalore South Ananth Kumar says he feels no threat from Nilekani. "People may seek change, but the change they want is at the Centre", a confident Kumar tells Rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa in this exclusive interview.
The truck broke the closed boom gate at Madakasira after "overlooking all safety warnings" and hit the H-1 coach of the Nanded-bound train at around 2.20 am.
A six-time member of Parliament, Kumar had climbed the political ladder steadily from being an Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker to be the Union minister in his thirties.
With Eranna Bhimappa Kadadi and Ashok Jasti -- one Lingayat and one from the OBC -- named as BJP's candidates for the upper house, bypassing the recommendation of the state unit chief Nalin Kumar Kateel and Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa, as well as the core committee of the state, BJP leaders in Karnataka say the move is calculated to diminish the stature of the CM and create conditions for him to be eased out.
'The foundation of the 2014 triumph was Narendra Modi's appeal to voters in the Hindi belt. The Bihar Vidhan Sabha polls will demonstrate if he continues to appeal to them,' says T V R Shenoy.
Former Karnataka Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda will battle it out against Congress strongman Narayanaswamy in this IT hub constituency of Bangalore North, which is all set to vote on development, infrastructure issues. Vicky Nanjappa reports.
How many more years, how many more states, how many more campaigns, how many more candidates can he ask votes for, before he or the voters or both tire?, asks Krishna Prasad.
'If Shivakumar and Deve Gowda play the match well, this government will complete five years.'
The Lok Sabha election will be held in 7 phases, beginning on April 11, 2019 and ending on May 19, 2019.
With the Aam Admi Party rewriting the rules of the game in politics, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi plans to take a cue from it by dropping undeserving sitting MPs and fielding fresh new faces in next year's Lok Sabha elections. Anita Katyal reports
Nilekani says life has come a full circle for him, as he heads back to the company he co-founded over three decades ago.
This divisiveness is upsetting social cohesion and can throw the bright young people thronging to Bengaluru with billion dollar ideas in their creative minds off balance, warns Shekhar Gupta.
The broader market outperformed with the S&P BSE Midcap down 0.3%, while the S&P BSE Smallcap was little changed.
After a five-year stint as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Nandan Nilekani is set to contest the Lok Sabha elections from the Bangalore South constituency on a Congress ticket.
'Who's providing all this money to the BJP? And who's providing all this money to the Congress?' 'Where did all this money come from?' 'Who is enabling all these MLAs to be bought for Rs 50, 60 crores?' 'There's one MLA on whose behalf somebody claimed that the BJP invited him for Rs 60 crores. Whose money is this?'
With its on-going nation-wide membership drive, Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday claimed over 10 lakh people joined the outfit in the last five days.
Representatives of several northeastern organisations on Monday rejected the committee formed by the Centre to suggest remedial measures to address their concerns.
There is 'negligible' support from Indian youth for the Islamic State, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Tuesday giving credit to families from minority communities for discouraging their children from getting influenced by the terror group.
Interview with V Balakrishnan, Former CFO and board member of Infosys and AAP leader
'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.'
BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is predicted to win both seats -- Varanasi and Vadodara. Kejriwal is places at number 2 in Varanasi, says the ABP News-Nielsen exit poll. Senior BJP leader L K Advani is likely to win the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha for the sixth time.
'There were areas where the JD-S put up weak candidates against the Congress to benefit the BJP.'
'Why is the entire Cabinet running around in Bangalore?' 'Why are they making arrangements for horse-trading?' 'Is this not the BJP's greed for power?' 'They have won the entire country. Why are they so desperate for Karnataka?'
As the dust finally settles on the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections 2019 and Bharatiya Janata Party along with its NDA allies emerges as the clear winner, here is a list of who won in each of the 7 phases of elections.
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