Stalin, like his father M Karunanidhi did in 2004, may play the king-maker in a way -- not the king, unless the 2024 post-poll circumstances throws up a situation where he alone becomes acceptable to the rest, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
More than 750 constituencies spread across four states and one union territory will go to the polls on Tuesday
It is now an imperative need to find a third alternative at the Centre after the failure of the Congress-led UPA alliance and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led combine's potential of being a threat to the country's secular fabric, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya said. The issue would be vigorously deated at the CPI-M Congress beginning in Coimbatore on March 29, Bhattacharya, a party politbureau member, told a Left Front rally in Kolkata.
The CPI-M, in its last Congress in Delhi, had decided to develop its independent strength and expanding its political base in new areas and among various sections of people, like Dalits, tribals, minorities, women and other downtrodden sections more vigorously. The two-day meeting of the central committee in Delhi will give final touches to the CPI-M's Political-Organisational Report, which would be adopted by the party's Congress slated in March-April at Coimbatore.
The very timing of the Phalke Award on Rajini now, days ahead of Tamil Nadu voting in the assembly election, may have taken away the seriousness and credibility attaching to the Centre's decision, making it sound every bit political, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday described the plans by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to forge a third alternative as a "mirage".
The 19th Congress of the CPI-M in Coimbatore on Wednesday discussed the uneven growth of the party in the country. It demanded scrapping the Article 355, 356.
With BJP workers staging agitations across the state demanding that Thol Thirumavalavan apologise for his remark allegedly denigrating women, the VCK cadres countered it by flash protests and they allegedly attacked saffron party office-bearers at Madurai.
'The BJP has become a reasonably larger force in Tamil Nadu in the last two years.'
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Congress on Wednesday released the second list of office-bearers and executive committee members of its Tamil Nadu unit, prominent among them being Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's son Karti.
Unlike the regimes of Jayalalitha, Palaniswami and Karunanidhi, ministers are actually getting to make decisions on their own, with the unmentioned rider that they would be held responsible and accountable, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Solutions to seven major problems -- relating to solar power, nuclear power, healthcare, HIV/AIDS, stem cell research, forecasting of earthquake and precision forecasting of rain content for particular cloud condition -- were challenging areas for the young researchers, Kalam said.
Here's a recap of the events from the past 24 hours.
Stalin, along with cadres of the DMK and other parties, came in a procession in Tiruvarur and was detained in a marriage hall, police said, adding they will be let off later.
In a state where Hindu social identity continues to remain in the overarching Dravida umbrella, the 'Hindutva' political identity does not have the same, or even near-similar electoral purchase, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Rediff.com spoke to Dahiya and learnt that the state CPI-M unit, though insignificant in terms of political seats, is quietly helping people and changing archaic caste equations.
The United Progressive Alliance government has failed to address the agrarian crisis and the price rise of essential commodities and there is a need for a third alternative, Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Prakash Karat said on Saturday. Speaking at the party's 19th Congress in Coimbatore, Karat said this third alternative cannot be merely an electoral alliance.
Singh said, "It is extremely shocking and tragic that the prime minister of this country is pointing fingers at opposition parties for questioning the Army or the Air Force.
Umanath, who mentioned people like Mukesh Ambani and Kalanidhi Maran too, got stuck when he came to Amitabh. "Amitabh Bachchan has amassed more than Rs 190 crore," he said, adding sarcastically, "Yes, the same Amitabh you see in that advertisement for chocolate."
CPI-M leader W R Varadarajan said senior party leaders Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Jyoti Basu have requested the party to relieve them from politburo due to their advanced age and immobility. A decision on the request would be made on April 3. Both had urged the CPI-M to relieve them in the last Congress, but the party had requested them to continue as it felt their advice and guidance would be vital.
Though he did not name anyone, the prime minister's attack appeared to be directed against Congress and its vice president Rahul Gandhi, who recently made two trips to Hyderabad Central University to join protests over the suicide of a Dalit scholar Rohit Vemula.
Sixteen-year-old Nandan Maniratnam, son of Maniratnam and popular actress Suhasini, is the proud author of a new pamphlet on Leninism, which is on sale at the venue, along with other leading Left literature. He it was his reading habit that introduced him to the world of Marxism. A student of an international residential school in Chennai, Nandan came on his own to serve as a volunteer and assist the foreign delegates at the All-India Congress of the CPI-M.
The contemporary problem with the BJP in Tamil Nadu is that it has been trying hard to package the DMK especially as anti-god and anti-Hinduism, and seeking it to link to Periyar and M Karunanidhi, and by extension to Stalin, the latter's son and successor to the party mantle. Their hope was to consolidate the perceived 'pro-god, pro-religion votes', which they saw returning to the fold post-MGR, post-Jayalalithaa. But no such substantial vote-bank existed even in Periyar's time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
With six airports handed over to the Adani group for 50 years, the government is now all set to hand over another 25 airports to private players in a bid to 'monetise' them. Official figures reveal that since 2017-18, the government has spent and will be spending Rs 14,500 crore on significantly revamping infrastructure at most of these airports before handing them over to private players. The Airports Authority of India (AAI), which operates these airports for the government, has spent billions of rupees in building new terminal buildings, runways, reinforcing taxiways, upgrading aircraft landing systems, radars and a host of other heavy duty and capital intensive infrastructure works.
Tamil Nadu's new tourism strategy is aimed to position the state as an international tourist destination in Asia and Pacific regions by transforming it into a "tourism hub", Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa said on Monday.
Strategy or confusion? The Tamil Nadu BJP has many reasons to feel let down by Prime Minister Modi's whistlestop tour to the state on Tuesday, says R Ramasubramanian.
It is increasingly clear that for the BJP to try and establish itself as an electoral force in Tamil Nadu, the party has to come out of the old Brahminical mould, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
There is a deep-seated sense of rejection that the new generation Tamil youth have felt for a decade and more now, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
BJP leaders rejected the charge, insisting Jay has been 'wronged'.
New Union minister L Murugan's declaration of Kongu Nadu as his native place, instead of Tamil Nadu, may be part of a grand BJP strategy to create new states out of existing ones, particularly those that have anti-BJP governments, mulls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Union Minister P Chidambaram has opted out of the Lok Sabha election with the party on Thursday night nominating his son Karti from his constituency Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu while another Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was brought as a candidate from Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir.
The BJP office bearer said if Communists love this country, how did they take part in an "anti-national" event.
Higher education policy may be at the core of the Tamil Nadu assembly polls next May, with a potential to break the ties between the ruling AIADMK in the state and the BJP counterpart at the national level, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
It looked as if the BJP was hoping to use Rajinikanth to press their seat-bargain with the AIADMK. Now with the Rajini bait gone, the question now is not how much the BJP would settle for, but how much the AIADMK would be ready to offer, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'In the last three to four months the BJP vote share in Tamil Nadu, which was 2.86% in 2016, has gone up to about 5%-6%.' 'The AIADMK will lose the minority votes and others who don't like the BJP and Modi.' 'The AIADMK decided to take the risk to get the 5%-6% votes that the BJP will bring in.'
We know Ranbir plays Sanjay Dutt. But who else stars in the biopic?
The DMK has Stalin and Stalin alone as the key campaigner. The rest of them all, including half-sister Kanimozhi, are tied down to their own constituencies while those like party treasurer and former minister S Duraimurugan, to those of their children's constituencies.
Here's a recap of events that occurred in India in the past 24 hours.
The sub-quota scheme may now lead to a ganging up of non-Vanniyars in individual constituencies against the Vanniyars just as in the past, such ganging up against SC-ST candidates was seen in the non-quota constituencies, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
"What I said was if we had Rafale at the time (of aerial dogfight), then none of our fighter jets would have gone down and none of theirs saved," he added.
