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Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
The Karnataka election is being seen as the semi-final to the 2019 general elections and appears to be heading towards a close fight
The Bharatiya Janata Party's quest to strengthen its base in north India starts from Bihar, says Bharat Bhushan.
As the Lok Sabha election draw closer, a weary Congress is gradually getting reconciled to the idea of a stint in the opposition even though its strategists are convinced that the party will win up to 140 seats. Anita Katyal reports.
'The BJP suddenly seems vulnerable. This is not entirely surprising. In the past too, governments and leaders who won a thumping Lok Sabha majority lost popularity in a matter of months... The by-polls results shows that a degree of disenchantment with the Modi government is setting in,' says Praful Bidwai.
Pawar may not be in the Congress and heading a rival party having a love-hate relationship with it. But still he is considered the top Congress leader from Maharashtra, reports Sunil Gatade.
'The BJP has everything to lose if it performs poorly in UP. It dreads a repeat of Bihar,' says Rajeev Sharma.
Chairman of the committee S S Ahluwalia has sought an extension.
The issue of division of Uttar Pradesh had been lying dormant till now with major political parties including the BSP preferring silence so far.
Bodo tribals influence as many as 30 seats. No wonder, national parties are keen to forge alliances with Bodo groups.
The stage is now set for the first substantial round of polling in the Lok Sabha elections on Thursday, involving nearly 11 crore voters in 92 seats spread across 11 states, including Delhi and the national capital region and the riot-hit Muzaffarnagar.
Having focussed excessively on the Congress, and continuously drawing a Modi-Rahul parallel as if it were the sole selling point, the BJP has lost sight of the regional parties that are seeking to take the centre-stage, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
In the normal course, a high turnout reflects anti-incumbency but there is no correlation between high turnout and advantage to the National Democratic Alliance, says Dharmendra Kumar Singh.
In a not-so-veiled remarks targeted at Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, senior leader A R Antulay has squarely blamed the Congress high command for the situation the party finds itself at present
Many anticipate that by the 2021 assembly elections in West Bengal, the BJP may come to power, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The win in Assam is likely to have a ripple effect in other north-eastern states like Manipur and Nagaland which have been reluctant to embrace the BJP in the past,' says Nitin A Gokhale, the distinguished commentator on strategic affairs, who lived and reported from Assam between 1983 and 2006.
The Congress, out of power in UP for 27 years is making a big pitch to bounce back, on a cocktail of caste politics and promises of agriculture debt waiver worth Rs 49,000 crore and power rate reduction for farmers hit by high input costs and diminishing returns., reports Amit Agnihotri.
Narendra Modi's victory does not represent a victory of 'the Indian nation', but only an elite-driven polarising phenomenon. The sooner we -- and the BJP -- recognise this, the better, says Praful Bidwai.
The Congress on Friday said it was open to post-poll alliances, even though it exuded confidence of emerging victorious in all five states, including Uttar Pradesh in alliance with the Samajwadi Party.
Here's an analysis of the style and strategy of the man who did the magic for Narendra Modi and then Nitish Kumar and whom the Congress has now hired.
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
Exit polls often go wrong in India because pollsters don't sample voters in the poorest parts of the country or the core support bases of different political parties, explains Professor Atanu Biswas of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.
'UP, Maharashtra, AP (including Telangana), Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, MP, Bihar, Karnataka and Kerala.' 'We chose these nine not only as being among the biggest, but also because in these states radical change is possible,' explains Shekhar Gupta.
'Amit Shah was, briefly, a stockbroker before devoting himself to politics. By instinct or training, he knows the value of keeping blue chips in one's portfolio.'
The 'secularists'are more adept at the politics of intense and alarmingly exaggerated fear-mongering, as this kind of politics provides easy votes of Muslims without making them answerable for the concrete issues of poverty, unemployment, lawlessness, and of basic needs like roads, electricity, etc, which is exactly how Nitish Kumar was defeated in the elections, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Arun Jaitley, who is recovering from a kidney ailment, attended the proceedings after a long gap.
If the Congress can simply go from 110 million to 130 million votes, it will yield a very different kind of NDA.
'The Left's decline is now a reality, both nationally and in West Bengal.'Behind it lie: Ideological rigidity and confusion, outdated party programmes... a socially conservative upper-caste leadership,' says Praful Bidwai.
The government is banking on help from regional parties and rejigged numbers in the Rajya Sabha.
Counting of votes will be held today in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand which witnessed a record turnout in the multi-cornered contests to elect their assemblies.
'It is clear that Prashant Kishor will be nowhere near repeating his earlier massive wins.' 'Nonetheless, he deserves at least two cheers for having the guts to take on such a challenging task.'
Senior BJP leaders had offered the veteran politician the Lok Sabha Speaker's post after he went into a sulk over displeasure to contest from the Gandhinagar seat. However, it is yet to be known whether he has accepted the offer or not, reports Anita Katyal.
'Mr Modi's next challenger/s will need to invent a new politics,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday began a stock-taking exercise following the party's debacle in assembly polls in Haryana and Maharashtra even as a clamour for "course correction" grew within its ranks in the wake of the dip in electoral fortunes.
The ruling party is worried as the alliance represents over 50 per cent of the state's population, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
The Congress's revival plan says it needs to bring back into its fold Hindus repelled by the Sangh Parivar, take its message to youth and women and sections upset at curbs on their personal freedoms.
The BJP's panicky return to basic-instinct majoritarianism in Bihar has pushed Muslims back into the 'secular' basement, says Shekhar Gupta.
The Congress has already been deserted by the urban middle classes and the youth, but by outsourcing its battle against the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Admi Party, the grand old party could end up inflicting more damage on itself.
As its own national worth augments the BJP might decide to be more cautious with its local allies.
'AAP's real value must be measured not by the number of Lok Sabha seats it wins in the election -- which may not exceed 10 or 15 -- and not even by the number of votes it takes from the BJP, but by its ability to deflate Modi's superhuman '56-inch chest' image and the charisma so assiduously manufactured around him by the corporate-controlled media.'
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