With its age-old fascination for education, southern states have done better than the North. Start-ups, IT hubs, and industry majors setting up shop have changed the face of the South. Nearly 79% of global offices set up by international conglomerates in India are in the South. Almost 46% of tech unicorns are from the South. The GDP per person in the South is 4.2 times higher than the North. None of these indicators can be ignored by any central government, whatever the political compulsions, notes Ramesh Menon.
The Bharatiya Janata Party sealed its alliance with the Telugu Desam Party on Saturday for the upcoming Lok Sabha and Andhra Pradesh assembly elections, with former chief minister of the southern state N Chandrababu Naidu asserting that the combine will sweep the polls.
'...to think apna time aa gaya after the 2024 election.'
If the alliance is sealed, the MNS may be given one seat to contest from Mumbai, the Maharashtra capital where his cousin Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction enjoys some influence.
'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Brand Advani is more credible than brand Rahul, the Bharatiya Janata Party suggested on Friday and said there is no substitute for experience both in governance and delivery.
'The BJP will use Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha to check Nitish Kumar.' 'They will not allow him to function freely as before.'
Soros, 94, in the recent past has spoken openly against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The ruling BJP believe that he tried to interfere in Indian elections.
It was a protest which held a mirror to the government of a state taking pride in its commitment to democracy, gender equality and social indices.One person, who in his employed days had known governments and political parties at close quarters, told me that public perception of how the Kerala government handled the ASHA workers' strike had been terrible, reports Shyam G Menon.
For Yogi Adityanath the successful management of the fair is a crucial part of building 'Brand UP' and making the state a $1 trillion economy.
The PM said the Congress and its allies should not encourage the "Pakistan agenda" and speak the language of separatists.
Is 2024 a done deal for the BJP? It was a done deal five years ago itself, but it did not have a guarantee.
Now, with the temple consecration, it seems to have acquired a Ramji Ki Guarantee, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Indications are that the DMK combine will win more seats than the AIADMK and BJP, but is facing a tough fight in about half a dozen from the rest, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy of the electoral contest in Tamil Nadu.
'Leave aside the negative fallouts of phraseology like 'urban Naxals' and 'terrorists', both the BJP and the Congress have to re-discover themselves in the context of the 2024 election results, including those of the upcoming ones for Maharashtra and Jharkhand,' observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
If it was Andhra Pradesh last Budget, it's poll-bound Bihar that has now turned to Centre with a list of demands. How the NDA government is delivering on promises.
The BJP lost 15 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. Union ministers have been deployed in all 15, tasked with turning the result around.
Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra's expulsion from the Lok Sabha triggered a political slugfest on Friday, with the opposition calling it a 'betrayal of India's parliamentary democracy' and the Bharatiya Janata Party asserting that it was an 'apt decision' as there was proof of the allegations levelled against her.
The opposition on Sunday asked the Centre to allow discussions in the Parliament on the United States prosecutors' bribery charges against the Adani Group even as Union minister Kiren Rijiju made it clear that the matters to be taken up in the two Houses will be decided by their authorised committees with the consent of the respective Chair.
Following the party's sweep of assembly elections in three Hindi heartland states against the odds, the BJP's brain trust is now busy game-planning as to how it can improve on its 2019 Lok Sabha election tally of 303 seats.
After being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, Trump started his inaugural address with a sentence that echoed Modi's coinage some years ago, notes Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Several BJP leaders in the past have raised a demand for changing the name of the country from "India" to "Bharat".
The specter of how the Munambam issue was exploited during the November by-elections is proof of the price Kerala is paying for its emergent politics. Controversies become the stuff of slow-burn and brinkmanship. The former promises mileage; the latter searches for an advantage, notes Shyam G Menon.
Former Karnataka Chief Minister S M Krishna passed away at his residence in Bengaluru early Tuesday morning, his family said.
'It would indeed be difficult for someone from outside the Gandhi family to run the party'
Banerjee accused the BJP of resorting to divisive tactics in the face of anticipated defeat in the initial phases of polling.
"We should not have a repeat of what happened in Mumbai. That there was a terror attack and there was no response," Jaishankar told reporters in Mumbai.
It was almost as if we were back to 'acchey din', when Parliament was a forum where two sides fought ferociously as equals. For that we need to thank Rahul Gandhi, notes Jyoti Punwani.
To me he always symbolised the sincere, confident, face of a Bharat whose rise is unstoppable. Ratan Tata was a Rishi who was unquestioningly trusted by people who never saw him and never met him, asserts Tarun Vijay, the former BJP MP.
'Priyanka did draw huge crowds and eventually all of those ended up voting for the Samajwadi Party.' 'The voters today are smart enough to vote for the party which they know is going to win or they know this party will come second, but no way will they vote for a party which will come third or fourth.'
Sanjay Jha's importance lies in his connections to senior BJP and RSS leaders to maintain a smooth relationship within the NDA government in Bihar and at the Centre and to contest the 2025 Bihar assembly elections together under Nitish Kumar's leadership.
The Congress and JD-S have made much of Amit Shah's remarks about milk co-operatives. 'If the Opposition harps on the statement, it could add to the narrative that Gujarat was trying to take over Karnataka.'
From putting up a decent performance in the last Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh winning 10 seats stitching an alliance with arch rival Samajwadi Party, Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party drew a blank in the current general elections, dealing a severe blow to its reputation of representing the voice of Dalits in the state.
Despite the upbeat statement, the party is expected to reflect on what caused the sharp fall in its numbers. It is expected to win about 240 seats against the 303 it had won in 2019.
Priyanka's victory seems assured, but the broader implications for Kerala's political landscape and South Indian politics remain to be seen.
The Opposition on Tuesday termed the Union Budget as a 'kursi bachao budget' driven by political compulsions and claimed that it ignored opposition-ruled states in a bid to 'appease' Bharatiya Janata Party's allies.
Jaitley evaded vital questions on this issue.
Manik Saha was named as the next chief minister of the northeastern state of Tripura at a meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party legislative party held in Agartala on Monday.
The BJP and the AIADMK are unable to sort out ideological differences, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Prashant Kishor feels that the Congress is a national party that can counter the BJP.
'When Fadnavis takes our help, it was sabka saath.' 'But when we support his rival, the latter is branded as appeasing Muslims.'
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