'Undeniably, Modi's position has stabilised and he has staged a comeback of sorts from the weeks after the Lok Sabha results.' 'Coalition partners are likely to be more tolerant of Modi... The forthcoming elections in Delhi and Bihar will determine whether this continues or not.' 'To win Delhi and Bihar, Modi will have to work in conjunction with the RSS.' 'However, because of the 'truce' that has been worked out within the Sangh Parivar, Modi will have to be more consultative than he has been in the past ten years,' reveals Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said his party was fighting the 'Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Indian state itself', triggering a row with the BJP alleging that everything the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha does or says is in the direction of breaking India and dividing the society.
'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.
'They refuse to be transparent. They refuse to be accountable.'
I watched from my balcony and found that during the next eight hours up to 5.30 pm, not one prospective voter was seen to go to the Congress table, notes Rashme Sehgal. The rush was all around the BJP table.
Seven TMC MLAs within the Krishnanagar Lok Sabha constituency of party MP Mahua Moitra have written to Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee demanding her removal as Nadia Uttar organisational district president. The lawmakers allege that Moitra has been ignoring Assembly representatives while undertaking party programmes and indulging anti-social elements, causing significant damage to the party's image. The MP has responded by dismissing the complaint as "district-level rubbish."
Arvind Kerjiwal, who resigned as Delhi chief minister on Tuesday, is likely to focus on galvanising the AAP cadres and rebuilding trust among the people before the assembly polls, a senior functionary said.
If the DMK is able to sustain the momentum until the assembly polls, the AIADMK especially and the PMK and possibly the infant TVK too would find it hard to sign up with the BJP, explains N Sathiya Moorthy.
As the Bharatiya Janata Party looks set to retain Haryana, the Congress' poll campaign, which was built around various issues including unemployment, farmers' plight and Agnipath scheme, appeared to have failed to click with a majority of the voters.
Besides the national capital, polling will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir. Simultaneously, polling will be held for 42 assembly constituencies in Odisha.
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Saturday said it is some people's job to create doubts and asserted the systems in place at the Election Commission are strong to ensure no mistakes creep in.
As Donald Trump registered a historic comeback in the US presidential election, many former Indian diplomats on Wednesday concurred that the India-US ties will "continue to grow" from strength to strength, even as some of them cautioned that Trump is "highly unpredictable" and New Delhi will have to "wait and watch" to see what position he adopts going forward.
A delegation of diplomats from 16 countries, including the United States, Norway and Singapore, on Wednesday observed the ongoing assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir.
An approximate voter turnout of 59.06 per cent was recorded in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections on Saturday in 58 constituencies across six states and two Union territories with the polling percentage in the Jangal Mahal region of West Bengal touching 78.19.
The poll authority noted that in the past these cities have "suffered" from urban apathy in voting.
There is no use of the BJP targeting the likes of Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, directly by the party's political bosses, both in Delhi and the respective state capitals, or even using the Raj Bhavans to fire those salvos from. Successive elections have proved that it's counter-productive, if anything. But the BJP is yet to understand it, acknowledge it, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Congress leader said he sought to know whether the cooker blast was as big as the terrorist attack in Mumbai, Delhi or Kashmir.
The principal opposition party though appeared content securing 99 of the 543 seats in the 2024 national elections as against its all-time low of 44 in 2014 and then 52 in 2019.
Bucking anti-incumbency, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party pulled off a hat-trick of wins in Haryana to retain power and halt Congress' comeback attempt in the assembly elections, results of which were announced on Tuesday.
The EC said polling percentage in the Anantnag-Rajouri seat in Jammu and Kashmir is the highest in 40 years.
Even as KPs lined up across special polling stations in Jammu amid tight security, several of them had to return without casting their vote.
Will Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, who gets his orders from New Delhi, call the shots or allow a democratically elected government to independently govern, questions Ramesh Menon.
Long before the by-election was announced, a person with the name Prashant Kishor was included in the list of the electorate in Bhabanipur during the addition process in January-April, according to the Election Commission website.
Scenes from the election campaign in New Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Amritsar, Ranchi and Guwahati.
Delhi picked up the pace and a 67 per cent voter turnout was recorded till 6 pm.
This would give BJP the chance to explore Constitutional options for government formation if there is no clear-cut mandate, explains Sheela Bhatt.
Guidelines have been issued by the Commission for safe conduct of the electoral exercise in the midst of the raging COVID-19 pandemic. These guidelines include lowering the maximum number of voters for a polling booth from 1,600 to 1,000, staggering the polling hours and extending postal ballot facility to those above 80.
Newly appointed Union Minister of Agriculture Shivraj Singh Chouhan ditched a chartered plane and boarded the Shatabdi Express to travel to Bhopal.<
Unusual means of connecting with the electorate are also being adopted by ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government, who are doing their bit to reach out to the voters.
The Delhi high court on Friday refused to entertain a PIL seeking direction to the Centre and the Election Commission to make voting compulsory in parliamentary and assembly polls, saying it cannot force a person to vote.
Tanwar had joined the AAP in April 2022. Before joining the AAP, he was with the Trinamool Congress briefly.
Shinde rubbished reports that he was disappointed for not getting a second term as CM despite the ruling Mahayuti alliance winning a thumping victory under his leadership.
'After a month of working on the new machine, I realised that the black glass on the VVPAT lets the programmer manipulate not just the electronic system, but the paper vote too.' 'And it will not be detected even during the mock poll or the actual voting because of the black glass.'
Parties like the NC and Peoples Democratic Party claimed the administration has not addressed their main concern on whether ''outsiders'' ordinarily residing in J-K will be allowed to enroll as voters.
In a nail-biting finish, Conservative candidate Don Stewart won the Liberal stronghold of Toronto-St. Paul's by defeating Liberal Party's Leslie Church by 590 votes.
The former chief minister said if there was any danger of his losing from Budgam, then his party colleagues would not have allowed him to contest from Budgam.
Haryana is now in the same bracket as Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh where the BJP is the centre-point of politics.
'If the country felt very strongly about the BJP, then why did the country not put money where the mouth is?'
Indian Olympian Vinesh Phogat swaps wrestling arena for politics. Phogat retired from wrestling after she was disqualified ahead of the women's 50 kg freestyle final for failing to make weight.
If 74.9 per cent of NRI voters are from Kerala, Andhra Pradesh at 6.4 per cent, Maharashtra at 4.7 per cent, Tamil Nadu and Telangana at 2.9 per cent each follow way behind.
