Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday said he is being targeted by people within his party because he is an outsider and decried criticism of his response to Narendra Modi's call to support the clean India campaign.
In an open defiance, Union Minister M M Pallam Raju on Wednesday questioned the government's hurry to push the Telangana bill and said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's disapproval of disruptions in Parliament was not "fair".
With Pinarayi Vijayan set to be chief minister, what will be the role for party patriarch V S Achuthanandan? And what are the key takeways from the election results in Kerala?
Thiruvananthapuram did not give him a resounding victory, but did not abandon him either. If he learns his lessons and avoids the pitfalls of the past, he will have a bright political future, says T P Sreenivasan.
A total of 1,203 candidates, including 109 women, are contesting for the 140 assembly seats in which a total of 2.61 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise.
For Arnab Goswami, the television studio is a stage and he plays his part to the hilt, with a finger on the pulse of the English-speaking audience, says Veenu Sandhu
'In the long term, the party that is going to be irrelevant is the Left.' 'It seems absurd that the people of Kerala are the last ones to wake up to the reality that this kind of discredited dogmatic ideological politics has no place in the modern world.'
'What was predictable, but entirely missed by Modi's strident critics, is that the excessive and intemperate demonisation of Modi allowed him to assume his own metaphor -- the underdog, the martyr, the marginalised,' says Dr Aseem Shukla.
'The feeling in Telangana is that without her a separate state cannot be created... All the MPs and MLAs from Seema-Andhra have a business background. Their interest is to save their business,' Congress MP K Raj Gopal Reddy, who played a key role in Thursday's turbulent events, tells Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
'Shashi Tharoor has publicised whatever little he has done, far more than what he has actually done. Some of the bigger promises he made could never be implemented.' Ajit Joy, a former police officer and Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Thiruvananthapuram, tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier that he is a more attractive candidate in his constituency than sitting MP Tharoor.
The Andhra Pradesh chief minister has just witnessed his state's division and the idea of leaving the Congress to launch a regional party might leave him with nothing, says Aditi Phadnis
I am not a quitter. I was with the United Nations for 29 years. I don't know whether I will have 29 years in politics, but I don't intend to end with just 5 years, Dr Shashi Tharoor tells rediff.com's Shobha Warrier
