Fears of the Congress not having a credible face, after the death of its three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit last July, and ceding its vote bank to the Aam Aadmi Party came true with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party capturing the space once occupied by the grand old party.
According to DMK, the voters are already consolidated on ideological lines, hence the impact of anti-incumbency, whether against the BJP Centre or the DMK state may not be too much, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
India has strongly rejected as "baseless" allegations of its interference in Canadian elections and asserted that the core issue has been Ottawa's meddling in New Delhi's internal affairs.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said the government is close to reaching saturation in implementing social sector schemes designed to provide basic necessities to the poor. Addressing the students of Hindu College on the occasion of its 125th anniversary, she said the time has come for India to become economically 'aatmanirbhar' (self-reliant) and march forward to becoming a developed nation by 2047. Regretting that 60 years since Independence passed without any sense of urgency, Sitharaman said, "We have laid the material foundation for a Viksit Bharat" and empowering people by providing basic necessities to all.
Cricket climate change to medical practice, dropped candidates have their non-political life sorted.
What does the high voters' turnout of 68 per cent in first phase of Gujarat election mean? Sheela Bhatt tries to find out.
The bypoll assumes significance as Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti is seeking her election to the assembly from the constituency.
'If, as happened in Baramulla during the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the youth in the Valley get triggered enough to jump into the wider fray, the end result would be difficult to predict, especially as the state's post-August 5, 2019 political format remains substantially fragmented and foggy,' points out Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the veteran commentator on Kashmir affairs.
'This is the biggest crisis Kejriwal is facing in his life.' 'If he is able to come out of this, then he will have a great future.'
'Delhi voters have liked the politics of performance over noisy rhetoric and empty promises,' points out Vijaya Pushkarna.
'This may be good news for Rahul Gandhi, for no matter how Modi performs, there will always be some degree of dissatisfaction with his performance among large sections of voters,' says R Jagannathan.
There is a view that heavyweight portfolios like home, finance, defence and external affairs besides education and culture, two ministries with strong ideological hues, will be kept by the BJP, while its allies can get anywhere between five to eight cabinet berths.
"Special circumstances" exist in Punjab, Wasnik said and added that in view of these, the AAP and the Congress have decided to fight the Lok Sabha polls separately in the state.
It's just not a date. It's just not about selecting a candidate. It's not about helping some candidate win. It's about expressing emotion, after ten years, that could reach out in India and beyond it, notes Sheela Bhatt.
While the BJP demanded that the polls in the Raja Rajeshwari Nagar constituency are countermanded, the Congress alleged that the apartment belonged to a BJP leader.
The CEC said the chief electoral officer of Assam will give a factual report in the coming week on various aspects arising out of the publication of the final draft NRC.
Polling is scheduled in all 13 seats of Punjab and four of Himachal Pradesh, 13 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, eight in Bihar, six in Odisha and three seats in Jharkhand besides Chandigarh.
If Priyanka wins the Lok Sabha bypolls, it would be for the first time that three members of the Gandhi family will be in Parliament. Her mother Sonia Gandhi is a Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan.
BJP chief JP Nadda said that the party accepts mandate and will act as constructive opposition
Elections to the 40-member Legislative Assembly in Goa would be held today, where 10.25 lakh voters will decide the fate of 215 candidates, including nine women and 74 independents in the fray.
Manjhi's son Santosh Suman, who is a minister in the Nitish Kumar cabinet, made the statement a day after reports emerged that a seat-sharing formula has been arrived at in the National Democratic Alliance, and the HAM was likely to get only one of the state's 40 constituencies.
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.
The Congress had fielded Bam against sitting BJP MP Shankar Lalwani from the Indore Lok Sabha seat, where polling will be held on May 13.
In his first visit to the valley after becoming the prime minister for the third consecutive term, Modi emphasised the importance of enabling the people of Jammu and Kashmir to elect their representatives for the assembly.
Modi wants the BJP to gets an additional 10% of the vote share from what it won in 2019. Plans are afoot to get new faces to replace MPs with poor chances of winning. Sources say more than 100 MPs are like to be axed, notes Modi biographer Ramesh Menon.
The Congress needs to reorganise itself at the grassroots, infuse younger blood, and have more boots on the ground. Just offering freebies is not the answer anymore. Leadership matters, asserts Ramesh Menon.
This will be the first time that the Congress, since its ouster from power in 2014, will get the post of Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. It failed to get the position in the past 10 years as its tally was below the requisite 10 per cent of total seats in the House, both in 2014 and 2019.
Karan Bhushan rejects the charges against his father, saying the "allegations are political and made up. We will challenge them in court".
A significant enrolment of young voters in the electoral rolls has resulted in the unusually high voter turnout in the state assembly elections, Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath has said.
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
If AAP dominates both state and local elections, the move for unification may become the illness for the BJP instead of the medicine it was supposed to have been.
The ruling AAP is going into the Delhi election with the hope to repeat its stellar performance of the last assembly polls, while the BJP, which bagged all seven seats here in the Lok Sabha election, will be aiming at expanding its vote share in the
A number of high-profile electoral battles, starring veterans and debutants, formidable opponents and unlikely contestants, feature in Tuesday's outcome.
UP BJP spokesperson Manoj Mishra said state BJP vice-president J P S Rathore, in a complaint letter sent to the Chief Election Commissioner, has accused Akhilesh of violating the model code of conduct.
A day after an advertisement with photos of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the talking point in the state, an ad on the state's ruling alliance appeared in Marathi dailies on Wednesday featuring leaders like Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis.
Top Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy, who was arrested in New Delhi, appears to have managed to procure a voter identity card in a different name from the national capital, police sources claimed.
In the event that like in the 17th Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi again gets locked out of the House, the Congress needs a second-in-command who will keep the momentum going inside Parliament, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
The 'aura of invincibility' around Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been 'shattered' by the Indian voters who gave the Opposition a new lease on life, this is how the international media described the outcome of India's general elections.
The AAP will approach EC to put up banners outside polling booths.
Senior Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Sunday said the former chief minister Amarinder Singh-led Punjab government had to be replaced as it was being run by the BJP from Delhi.
