Senior BJP leaders, including Amit Shah and J P Nadda, met with party leaders and allies to discuss the upcoming Bihar polls. Seat-sharing arrangements with NDA partners are expected to be announced soon.
The upcoming publication of West Bengal's electoral rolls is expected to intensify political tensions and debates ahead of the Assembly elections, reflecting concerns about voter inclusion and identity.
'The question for the TMC is not whether it can hold its bastions, but whether it can expand effectively into regions where the BJP already possesses a good ecosystem.'
'This election was won because of Nitish Kumar's face and his policies.'
All along, we were told SIR was an essential exercise carried out as part of the Election Commission's regular duties. But now that the ideological mentor of the ruling party has declared that SIR is a means of detecting infiltrators, one understands the unseemly haste with which it is being carried out, notes Jyoti Punwani.
If he cannot do it this term by using his bureaucracy and experts from different fields, it will be a tragedy, asserts Ramesh Menon.
'In times of adversity, families unite, but the reverse is happening in the Lalu family.'
The story of Bihar's educational reform is a lesson for all reforms done halfway.
A careful calculation of the BJP's support base seems to have been at work in the cabinet expansion that took place a day after the party's national president chaired a meeting of the "core group" here.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushil Modi on Tuesday met senior BJP leader L K Advani to discuss the future of the troubled alliance with key ally Janata Dal-United in the state.
BJP and RSS leaders are once again pushing to remove the words 'secular' and 'socialist' from the Constitution's Preamble, showing a deeper effort to change India's identity from a diverse, multi-religious republic to a Hindu-first nation, even though they don't have the numbers in Parliament to officially change the Constitution, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government marking its first anniversary on Saturday, the first year is likely to be remembered for the fulfilment of decades-old Hindutva demands as Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the huge majority his party won in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to push through its core agenda.
The Bharatiya Janata Party claims it has over six lakh committed workers in Bihar, a team of 10 deployed for each of the 62,200 polling booths.
In the clip, Prasad and Sahni were seen enjoying fish and roti, with Prasad explaining that he eats quickly during election campaigns.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar's wife Sunetra Pawar on Thursday filed papers as an NCP candidate for Rajya Sabha elections.
Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday night released the first list of 43 candidates for the high-stakes Bihar polls, giving about 60 per cent representation to those from SC and backward castes in an apparent attempt to target the base of rival Janata Dal-United-Rashtriya Janata Dal combine.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday failed to reach a decision on the fate of its troubled alliance with JD(U) in Bihar but indicated it favoured continuance of ties with its old ally without compromising on self-respect.
The National Democratic Alliance on Monday finalised its seat sharing for Bihar polls with the Bharatiya Janata Party contesting 160 out of the 243 assembly constituencies while allies Lok Janshkati Party and Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha being allotted 40 and 20 seats respectively.
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
Modi, Shah and Nadda have created a strategy to boost the BJP and the government's image.
'Maybe the BJP believes, in the post-poll scenario, it will have the might to foist, anybody endorsed by the RSS, upon Bihar,' observes Mohammad Sajjad.
Keshav Prasad Maurya's election from Sirathu in Kaushambi will be among the keenly watched contests in UP. If he and the BJP win, will he be luckier this time?
'Economic issues do not matter during elections; it is the emotional connect that helps swing votes.'
As many as 35 of 53 Nationalist Congress Party MLAs were present at the party meeting convened by Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar in Mumbai on Wednesday, party sources said.
'It is precisely because of the apprehensions about Lalu's revival that the upper castes have started re-thinking their electoral preferences. Out of confusion, they are simply deciding to vote for winnable candidates from their respective castes of any of the three parties -- the BJP, JD-U or RJD. This is what has considerably neutralised the NaMo wave in Bihar and resulted in Nitin Gadkari's remark that "Caste is in the DNA of Biharis". This is why Giriraj Singh, the BJP candidate from Nawada, made provocative statements,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Samajwadi Party and the Nationalist Congress Party on Monday announced entering into alliance for the coming Bihar assembly elections and claimed they were in talks with some other anti-BJP and anti-Congress regional parties.
Nitish Kumar has lost his credibility. He is now only a weak ally of the BJP. And he may no longer have a shot at a national role.
Political observers are keen to see if the BJP will now be guided by its more firmly entrenched ideological dominance in picking a face solidly identified with its core planks, or if it will choose a person tilted more to its electoral calculations. Or, whether its pick will be an ode to its core supporters or a outreach to relatively new groups of votaries.
Association of caste with the way people have tended to vote in Bihar has somewhat weakened.
The BJP believes that the only party still capable of leading a credible challenge against it is the Congress. Please note how BJP campaigners in states where the Congress may count for a cipher or thereabouts, mostly attack the Congress, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The accent on 'making the south feel wanted' was the reason why P Muralidhar Rao, who was dropped as general secretary, was partially reinstated in the central apparatus as prabhari in charge of Madhya Pradesh. 'Pressure from the RSS was brought to bear on Rao's return,' a source said. Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
Many factors like women, caste combination, education qualification, age and performance of the legislators will be taken into consideration before the formation of the Yogi government 2.0, sources said on Thursday. Several rounds of meetings have taken place within the party after the poll results came out on March 10.
Five of the six Lok Janshakti Party MPs in Lok Sabha have joined hands against their leader Chirag Paswan and elected Pashupati Kumar Paras, the youngest brother of Paswan's late father and party founder Ram Vilas Paswan, in his place, causing a big churn in Bihar politics.
Amit Malviya has been pilloried for allegedly threatening journalists, indulging in fake news and generally bringing a bad name to his party.
'The BJP can kill two birds with one stone by wresting back control of the message; and the steps are fairly obvious. Once the media is neutral, there is a level playing field,' argues Rajeev Srinivasan.
'The way discrimination against Muslims has become almost normalised is very upsetting.'
Chirag Paswan says his party's support to BJP is issue-based.
'There is core BJP support on the Hindutva line. It will continue.' 'Along with that, the BJP is ready to play the OBCs trifurcation card to its benefit.' 'If you see the post-Kairana result, the BJP spokespersons and IT cell have already begun talking about Hindu unity against Muslim unity, Ram vs Allah.'
There is disquiet and discomfort in the citizenry that can be touched and felt. No one is talking, but then, the Indian voter has not talked much -- with the conviction that all that goes up has to come down, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The calculated playing up of confidence by Amit Shah and his team obviously means that the BJP has a strong counter-strategy in place to turn the tables on the Congress before the monsoon session is over, reports Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
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