'I have serious doubts about the longevity of the NDA government and the longevity of the 18th Lok Sabha itself.'
The announcement put an end to speculation that Sonia Gandhi may not contest in the upcoming polls due to health reasons and the party's newly appointed general secretary in-charge (East UP) Priyanka Gandhi Vadra may be fielded from her constituency.
'The Opposition parties will continue to woo Chandrababu Naidu even though he has said he will support the BJP.'
'The inauguration of the Ram temple was the pinnacle of the BJP's religious politics.' 'Politics is dynamic. What goes up has to come down.'
The two parties named the seats distributed among them in a statement signed by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.
'Besides Ayodhya, the BJP lost in nine other constituencies with a Ramayana imprint; it tasted success only in Thrissur.' 'In Rameswaram, K Navaskani of the Indian Union Muslim League won with a 44% voteshare in a 84% Hindu constituency.' 'In the 21 seats in the Ayodhya and Varanasi regions, both crucial to the Hindutva project, the BJP won just 7.' 'It won just 3 out of 12 seats around Modi's constituency,' points out Krishna Prasad.
Notwithstanding pressure, Air India staff refused to waive the charges for 193 kg of excess baggage being carried by three MPs from Guwahati to Delhi and flew the goods in cargo after they made the payments.
There will be total of 51 seats going to polls spread across 7 states in the fifth phase.
Launching our new Election Gupshup series: Congress pulls out its Brahmastra to dent the Modi mystique.
Changing the names of Uttar Pradesh cities has accelerated into a movement ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election, notes Ranjita Ganesan.
The chief minister will also pray at the nearby Hanuman Garhi temple on Wednesday.
The government on Wednesday named nine out of 15 members of the 'Shri Ram Janambhoomi Teertha Kshetra' trust constituted for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya as mandated by the Supreme Court. Here's all you need to know about the members of the trust who have been named so far.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is headed for a big win in the Uttar Pradesh legislative council polls, bagging Barabanki and Ayodhya and leading in several other places. But it lost Varanasi to an Independent candidate.
The BJP's bucket list this time includes districts such as Sultanpur, Aligarh, Firozabad, Deoband, Ghazipur, Basti and Mirzapur -- to rename a few. Virendra Singh Rawat reports.
Nishad said he will meet senior BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, in Delhi on Monday to finalise the constituencies where the party will field its candidates.
'What the Hinduisation of Muslim names by the BJP suggests is that the party's anti-Muslim outlook matches the virulence of almost any other far right outfit such as the Ku Klux Klan,' argues Amulya Ganguli.
The twin towns of Ayodhya and Faizabad were on the edge on Saturday as tension mounted on the eve of VHP's yatra with the UP government cracking down on the saffron outfit arresting some of its leaders and over 350 activists.
The districts going to polls in this phase are Balrampur, Gonda, Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Bahraich, Shravasti, Basti, Siddharth Nagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Amethi and Sultanpur.
'Why were they silent when over 128 temples and shrines including Shivlings were broken down at the time of the construction of the Kashi Vishwanath corridor?' a Varanasi resident asks Rashme Sehgal.
"Hungry for power" Narendra Modi has already assumed himself as the prime minister even before the results of Lok Sabha elections are out, Congress President Sonia Gandhi said on Thursday.
Although conventional political wisdom would decree that the construction of a 'magnificent' Ram temple at his 'birth-place' would bring the BJP a big yield of votes in the prospective elections, its leaders know by now that the mandir must not exist in isolation in its game plan, reports Radhika Ramaseshan.
Claiming there was nothing religious about Vishwa Hindu Parishad's 84 Kosi Yatra, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today described it as a "political drama" which his government had not allowed to be staged.
'She should review her strategy of social engineering and get back to the BSP's initial plank of social change.'
The Yogi Adityanath government on Wednesday transferred 20 senior IAS officers, shunting out Principal Secretary-Information Navneet Sehgal and others who wielded considerable influence under the Akhilesh Yadav dispensation.
SP has gained a majority in the 100-member Uttar Pradesh legislative council. The party had earlier faced difficulty pushing through its legislative in the upper house due to lack of numbers.
'What are the circumstances at that time? Had you thought Modi will come after Vajpayee?'
As the Uttar Pradesh assembly election battle hits new lows, Rediff.com's Aslam Hunani walks you through all you need to know about the fifth phase of polling on February 27.
The Congress, out of power in UP for 27 years is making a big pitch to bounce back, on a cocktail of caste politics and promises of agriculture debt waiver worth Rs 49,000 crore and power rate reduction for farmers hit by high input costs and diminishing returns., reports Amit Agnihotri.
"Crores of Muslim women had always demanded that triple talaq should be banned, as it is also banned in Islamic countries," he said.
Notwithstanding Congress' reprimand, Union Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma on Saturday intensified his attack on his friend-turned foe Mulayam Singh Yadav accusing him of conniving with the Bharatiya Janata Party to flare up communal passions and dared the Samajwadi Party leader to a public debate on Babri issue.
Mahesh Sharma Lord Ram looked set to occupy political centre-stage in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh despite the Bharatiya Janata Party's claim of a temple to the deity not being on its agenda
'The BJP should know that simple caste arithmetic may have ceased to follow the basic law of addition.' 'Adding up seemingly distinct vote banks can even cause overall reduction in numbers,' says Sudhir Bisht.
'The appearance of idols of deities inside Babri was not a miracle. It was a planned and surreptitious attack to put them on the intervening night of December 22-23, 1949'
The bench directed that the mediation will be held at Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh and the process should start within a week from Friday.
The Lok Sabha election will be held in 7 phases, beginning on April 11, 2019 and ending on May 19, 2019.
Mayawati is now gearing up for a fresh start for the 2019 general election. Unconfirmed reports from the BSP camp suggest she has already reached out to arch-rival Akhilesh Yadav, reports Sahil Makkar.
The results for the bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tripura were announced on Tuesday.
Arun Nehru's image of a political strategist, dealmaker and trouble shooter never allowed him to become a political leader of people, says Sheela Bhatt
According to an insider, "Winning is all that matters to the BJP. The leaders were warned that he was an undesirable character but they said look at his victory margin."
'Of all the PMs of India, I had the closest relationships with Morarji and Rajiv.' Mark Tully, the most famous foreign correspondent in India, remembers some encounters with prime ministers, dictators and militants.
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