The desecration of Vidyasagar's statue during Amit Anilchandra Shah's rally, which the TMC projected to be a 'Bhojpuri' and 'Dhokla' invasion on West Bengal's culture, may help her gain some favour with middle-class and erudite Bengalis in the last phase of the polls.
'But for Rajiv's bloopers, the Hindutva campaign would not have got off the ground,' Amulya Ganguli points out.
The term, 'pro-Pakistani', is helpful for the BJP to depict its opponents as anti-nationals while the sedition law is handy for locking up or harassing the government's critics, points out Amulya Ganguli.
With two years to go before West Bengal elects its next government, the BJP's internal objective is to scale down the Trinamool Congress tally from 211 to 45 seats. This amounts to an annihilation of the TMC while enabling the BJP to win a record 250 seats in the 295-member legislature, reports Radhika Ramaseshan
The prime minister also launched a blistering attack on Banerjee, saying she did not care to express regret after a "leader very close to her" called Scheduled Castes "beggars".
'When it comes to national politics, the Modi-Shah BJP has successfully redefined secularism.' 'If a party like the Congress has to have a future, it has to move closer to the secular centre from the far Left where its Left infatuation during the UPA years dragged it,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
Even as back channel talks over power sharing were on between BJP and Shiv Sena, the latter, in an apparent attempt to mend ties with its former ally ahead of government formation in Maharashtra, praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for hosting a Diwali tea party for National Democratic Alliance allies.
In the wake of claims by former Home Secretary R K Singh, BJP on Tuesday said Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde should be sacked if it is proved in an inquiry that he tried to prevent Delhi Police from taking action against an associate of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
Antulay's ministry is also the nodal ministry for the National Commission for Minorities, which conducted a string of inquiries, mainly into complaints of religious rights violations in non-Congress states, in 2006.
The term of the 224-member Karnataka assembly ends on May 28 this year.
The RSS has accused Congress-led UPA of dilly-dallying over the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru to appease the minority community.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is all set to take up the Amarnath land issue, the Centre's 'soft' handling of terror and the 'appeasement policy' of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government in Saturday's youth rally in New Delhi, which will be addressed by party leader L K Advani.Announcing the youth rally at Ramlila Grounds in New Delhi, Thaker said, "The people of the country are agitated over the working of the government."
'Why are you not saying that the person who killed CRPF jawans was sent to Pakistan by BJP?'
Rubbishing opposition charge that Congress-led UPA government was adopting an appeasement policy with an eye on elections, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said he was not "apologetic" about empowering weaker sections, including minorities. The PM also said there need to be a consensus on the Women's Bill.
Jayanta Roy Chowdhury reports on how the West Bengal elections are being fought by the BJP and Trinalool Congress amid COVID challenges, 'Bangaliana', and campaigns based on religion, region, and caste.
Stating that the Shiv Sena was ready to provide the best lawyers to defend Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, arrested in connection with the Malegaon blast, Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Monday ridiculed Congress Member of Parliament Gurudas Kamat, who has demanded his arrest for backing her. "Whenever Congressmen have feats of Muslim appeasement, they dream of my arrest," Thackeray said in an editorial in the Sena mouthpiece Saamana.
Amit Shah, who missed campaigning in Bihar, made a two-day trip to Bengal starting November 5 to oversee BJPs preparedness for the state polls.
Replying to the debate in Rajya Sabha on a motion thanking the president for his address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament, he said for the first time in decades, people of Jammu and Kashmir got benefits of reservation.
Addressing her first press conference after the election results were declared, she accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of polarising the people on religious lines to garner votes in West Bengal.
She also hit out at the government for posting retired bureaucrats, who she alleged were its 'yes men', as head of institutions.
Under attack from rivals over the "puppy" remark, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said all forms of life are valued and worshipped in Indian culture, in an apparent bid to assuage feelings of the Muslim community.
Buoyed by a series of election victories including those in Karnataka and Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday took out its contentious demands for scrapping Article 370 and bringing in a uniform civil code from the closet ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
'Mahatma Gandhi, even for those on the extreme Hindu Right who believe he founded the politics of Muslim 'appeasement', is suicidal to target,' asserts Shekhar Gupta.
The Bharatiya Janata Party decided to put on hold Shah's proposed rally and the Rath Yatra, saying it will wait for the final order from the high court, which will now hear an appeal by the saffron party on Friday morning.
'The current BJP leadership believes the party's expansion across India, and thus their own survival at the top, depends on injecting communal tension into areas where it has so far been largely controlled,' argues Mihir S Sharma.
'We are not marketing (the) Modi name but the work and trust that it projects.'
'Why isn't the BJP ready to give reservations to Muslims despite the high court telling it to do so?' 'A K Antony said the Congress lost the 2014 election because of Muslim appeasement. Antony should have gone to the jails of Maharashtra and found out how many Muslims were arrested during Congress rule. I don't know what kind of appeasement this is.' 'We reposed faith in so-called great secular leaders and they deceived us.'
'This time, even the professedly secular parties have maintained a conscious distance from being identified with Muslims.' 'This could be interpreted as a success of the BJP campaign of what it has been calling 'minority appeasement', says Mohammad Sajjad.
Raj said MNS would contest all elections in Maharashtra.
12 years after he was sacked form JD-S, Siddaramaiah, offered Karnataka's CMship to his political foe Kumaraswamy.
An analysis of the results in Haryana reveals that caste-based voting is anything but dead. It could even help the Bharatiya Janata Party win a second successive term in the state in the forthcoming assembly polls, reports Nitin Kumar.
VHP national working president Alok Kumar also rejected questions about the muhurta of the event, saying the 'best advice' has been taken including from the Head of the Jyotish Department of the Banaras Hindu University on timing of the ceremony.
Upping the ante against Amit Shah after his "fireworks in Pakistan" remark, Janata Dal-United and the Congress on Friday approached the Election Commission demanding that the Bharatiya Janata Party chief be barred from entering Bihar for "inciting communal tension" till the election process ends.
How Swaroop Sampat paved the way for hubby in the BJP.
If the BJP wins Bengal, would Kishor's indiscretions have played a significant role in that victory? Victory for the TMC would be another badge of honour in his CV, but defeat would raise an unsavoury question: Which party was Kishor actually working for? asks Payal Singh Mohanka.
The bench also disagreed with the appellants that claim that their nominations were rejected 'arbitrarily and malafidely', saying 'cogent and convincing evidence needs to be led to prove this' and such a finding cannot be arrived at based on mere documents and annexures in a writ petition.
Courting controversy Triamool Congress MP Idris Ali on Wednesday made a shocking allegation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had 'links to terrorism' which is why the attack on the Pathankot Air Force Base was executed resulting in the death of seven defence personnel.
Opposition parties said it was a move to appease the party leader.
The fifth-term Lok Sabha member is the mascot of the party's Hindutva-wrapped agenda of development as the BJP makes a final push in its bid to capture power in the state
'There are many able, good, police officers in Bengal who are capable of handling this situation, but without Mamata Banerjee nothing moves.'
