Stepping up his attack on Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party rebel Jaswant Singh on Tuesday said "personality cult" was not good in a democracy and it would harm the party.
If Advani's ideological leadership galvanised the party's cadres and core support, Vajpayee soaring oratory, common touch and easy charm won over the masses.
'Mr Vajapyee felt that you could pray to any god or not pray at all, but the country comes first.'
Nitin Gadkari has a message as much for his party as much purportedly it is for the Opposition. Listening to him, whatever be his reasons and motives, will help, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
What we have in the Congress is a useful glue to hold a non-cultural, unified Opposition together. That is the sacrifice the Congress must be willing to live with if showing the BJP the door is what the collective Opposition wants, observes Shyam G Menon.
'...It won't help the party run a peaceful and equitable India,' warns Vir Sanghvi.
'One of R&AW's greatest achievements is in projecting itself as benign.' 'This work -- done in tandem with the Diaspora and the MEA -- sells a story of India as mostly the victim.'
It is a record that the saffron party has created, where the majority of its legislators belonged to the minority community.
Sinha is a two-term BJP Lok Sabha member from Patna Sahib Singh but has been dropped by the saffron party which has chosen to field union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from the seat.
Archana Masih recalls that December evening 22 years ago when Atal Bihari Vajpayee logged into the Rediff Chat.
'Rahul Bhai was well known for speaking the truth.' 'He did not accept anything he considered wrong.'
The BJP may emerge as the single largest party post parliamentary elections and will have to seek support of allies, he said.
This was a difficult election to win, but the Modi card, the caste divide and the division in the Opposition vote bank helped overcome many challenges.
'Whether the Hindu voter will vote for us or not, we can't say, can we?'
Few had imagined the BJP would be able to travel this far when it was founded on April 6, 1980.
'After meeting the prime minister and Amit Shah, Yogi has come out with his position secure till the assembly election.'
'I was present at a meeting where he decided to permit the IAF to strike at Pakistan positions in Kargil, with the caveat that they should not cross the LoC.' 'Confident that the Indian Army would succeed, Mr Vajpayee was positioning himself to tell the world after the Kargil conflict was won that India did not violate the 'sanctity' of the LoC,' recalls Ambassador G Parthasarathy, who served as India's envoy in Islamabad in that eventful year, 1999.
Will the M (Muslims) in the RJD's M+Y move fast swiftly towards the MIM and away from the RJD, asks Mohammad Sajjad.
Stones were pelted from both the sides, following which police used cane-charge to disperse the agitators, an official said.
Banerjee, also the Trinamool Congress supremo, said political parties should not ignore their senior leaders.
Many bahubalis have fielded their wives and relatives as proxies.
'The 2019 election could well become a referendum on Narendra Damodardas Modi, in which case the BJP could prove all its critics wrong,' notes T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
An interplay of Modi government's outreach in Bihar and the sequence of events in Chirag Paswan's life could make Bihar a game of musical chairs when the results are out.
'The BJP's constitution promises allegiance to India's secularism and socialism.' 'This is the oath that it makes all its members sign,' observes Aakar Patel.
The party had supported CAB in Lok Sabha. Sena MP said the govt did not give satisfactory answers to the concerns raised by the party.
This was the first major election in the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, the women of Bihar were not intimidated by the pandemic and came out in large numbers to vote.
'The Bihar verdict has shown that the people of Bihar don't desire to go back to the mandir-masjid rhetoric.' 'Jobs, wages and development are the aspiration of the people of Bihar and we hope the next government will keep that in mind.'
An LJP parliamentary board meeting chaired by its president Chirag Paswan instead passed a resolution in favour of an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and said its MLAs will work to strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This is the first time, since the JDU-BJP alliance came to power in 2005, that the saffron party has staked claim for the speakers post.
Modi and the BJP have been targeting the Congress during the campaign for assembly polls, claiming that the grand old party opposed the scrapping of Article 370.
A protegee of Advani, she stood out due to her mass appeal, an ability most of the party's second generation leaders lacked, resulting in her being elected to the Lok Sabha four times.
Mitra, who had resigned from the BJP a few days ago, is considered close to veteran leader L K Advani.
'Villages are much better prepared than towns as far as COVID-19 is concerned.'
'If any party talks too much about Muslims, it will lose.'
The fact that Home Minister Amit Shah recently met Raje was a marker that Delhi will be compelled to take her more seriously than it would care to. Like B S Yediyurappa, she's a regional chieftain who can't be discarded at will, reports Radhika Ramaseshan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday attacked the Congress and its erstwhile government in Puducherry, saying the V Narayanasamy led dispensation had 'different priorities' than public welfare and flayed party leader Rahul Gandhi over his recent 'north-south' remarks.
'If Yogiji has to run this government without any problems, he has to remain in power, and if he has to keep the BJP bosses in Delhi and the RSS happy, then he has no option but to do it.'
Varun Gandhi adds that communists always joke with him and say he is a "communist in the BJP".
In his radio address 'Mann Ki Baat' last month, Modi said he had received letters from people complaining that his Independence Day speeches were "a little too long" and promised to make a shorter speech.
'The BJP is the most progressive force within Hinduism today.'
