Thushar is the son of Vellappally Natesan, who is the general secretary of the influential Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, which works for the welfare of Ezhava community, a backward caste with sizeable population in the state.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance is planning to celebrate the Ram Temple consecration ceremony, being organised in Ayodhya, in a grand manner in Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, represented by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Her visit comes a day after Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi campaigned at Wayanad for her brother and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi.
Hours after the Waqf (Amendment) Bill was passed in Parliament, 50 individuals embroiled in land disputes in Kerala's Munambam joined the BJP, hoping for a resolution to their claims. The residents, who have been protesting for 174 days, allege that the Waqf Board is claiming ownership of their properties. BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar assured them of the party's support and a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to express gratitude. The BJP capitalized on the Catholic Church's support for the legislation, accusing the Congress and the Left of appeasement politics. The opposition, however, questioned the impact of the bill on the Munambam issue.
Hoping to make its mark in Kerala, the BJP sewed up an alliance with the BDJS, the new party formed by SNDP, a powerful organisation of the backward Ezhava community.
On Easter, April 9, 10,000 BJP workers are being assigned to visit the houses of 100,000 Christian families. Plans are afoot to visit the homes of Muslims on Eid.
Adityanath says there is no scope for political violence in democracy.
A total of 1,203 candidates, including 109 women, are contesting for the 140 assembly seats in which a total of 2.61 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise.
The saffron party will use Lord Ayyappa the same way it made use of Lord Ram in the north to take away the Nair vote and make electoral inroads in the state.
Shah also attacked the Congress and said "the party was finished in the country due to corruption and family rule."
She said there were attempts to communalise the guru's teachings and this amounts to 'betraying' him.
The third phase of Lok Sabha elections scheduled for Tuesday will see the maximum number of seats going to the polls in a single phase -- 117 across 15 states and Union Territories. It will also be a test for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which will aim to defend the maximum number of seats at 62. This time the BJP will be tested in its bastion Gujarat -- where polling will be held for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state -- apart from Karanataka, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, where the party had done well in 2014. Here are some of the big political leaders' who await their fate on Tuesday.
The BJP scripted history by opening its account in the state assembly.
'It is our aim to capture power and rule in Kerala. We may not be able to achieve our target in one attempt.' 'By just hammering once, you will not be able to break a rock; you need to hammer the rock several times.'
'Narendra Modi is one person who came up fighting many injustices. So, he is a fighter all the time, and that makes all the difference.'
'In the long term, the party that is going to be irrelevant is the Left.' 'It seems absurd that the people of Kerala are the last ones to wake up to the reality that this kind of discredited dogmatic ideological politics has no place in the modern world.'
