The going is not going to be easy for the DMK and its allies in Elections 2024. Despite the seats sweepstake in the 2021 assembly polls, the vote-share difference of 5.6% (DMK's 45.38% versus AIADMK-BJP's 39.72%) is not insurmountable on a bad day, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Archana, a beauty pageant titleholder who won Miss Bikini India 2018, Miss Uttar Pradesh 2014 and Miss Cosmo World 2018, had joined the Congress party in November 2021.
The two-time CM, who had also been the Rajasthan Governor, died at a Lucknow hospital on Saturday after prolonged illness.
VHP leader says that the ghar wapsis will continue till 15 crore people are reconverted.
'By making Rachel Rajeshwari, Tejashwi has done an exemplary thing.'
The Hindutva social media continues to present the DMK especially as anti-god, anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin. The strategy did not work in the past, it has not worked in the present, and would not work in the future, as a massive vote-getter, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Kapil Mishra had been invited because he was an "anti-corruption crusader", one 'IIT B for Bharat' organiser said. But in his half hour-long speech, Mishra didn't mention corruption. His entire focus was on the long "battle" Hindus had fought for their identity.
How Modi retrieves the situation and how he enlists new allies in the next two years will show if the BJP is fighting fit, report Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
A new Congress leader may make an electoral impact by his very presence. Congress voters who had moved away from the party, after being influenced by the BJP's 'family rule' campaign, can now return with a certain moral satisfaction, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Fadnavis was sworn in on November 23 in an early morning hush hush ceremony, with the support of Ajit Pawar, who then headed the 54-member Nationalist Congress Party legislature party.
No report of the violence was sent by Mumbai's police commissioner to the government. Why was the violence then considered serious enough to be included in the Terms of Reference? Was it a balancing act to counter the accusations that were then being made against Hindutva leaders Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote?
'If Rahul Gandhi disappears, Modi has to talk about his own policies and why they failed'
Here are some of the political leaders' who await their fate.
When almost the entire political class was engrossed in the Bihar polls, the Congress shahzada was holidaying in a hill station. As the Bihar contest and other by-elections have shown, a large number of states have become Congress-mukt, fulfilling the Hindutva brigade's dream, notes Amulya Ganguli.
With several political stalwarts of Uttar Pradesh no longer on the scene, it will be keenly watched how their children lead at the hustings this time without their formidable presence.
Words and actions like those of R N Ravi and a vocal section of the state BJP have only added to Tamil fears and suspicions, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'By the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, they moved back to the BJP almost totally and later their backing helped us win the local body elections.'
the simmering discontent deep in the two parties is likely to mar the prospects of some candidates, making the contest keen, reports Shishir Prashant.
It is increasingly clear that for the BJP to try and establish itself as an electoral force in Tamil Nadu, the party has to come out of the old Brahminical mould, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Tamil Nadu's voters wanted tough leaders at the helm, to the point of being autocratic. It was what Karunanidhi, MGR and Jayalalithaa ended up becoming, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Hardcore right-wing outfit Hindu Yuva Vahini's hero-worship of Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse has clear communal overtones.
Though a pyrrhic victory for the BJP, the party he chose to align himself against his former mentor Banerjee, it nevertheless is being seen as a morale booster for the saffron party as his former party, the Trinamool Congress under Banerjee's leadership, has garnered an overwhelming 213 seats out of 292 seats which went to polls.
A victory in Nandigram would not only establish him as one of the tallest BJP leaders in Bengal but would push him miles ahead of others in the chief ministerial race if the party is voted to power.
Why Aaditya Thackeray's decision to plunge into electoral politics is significant.
Rashmi Shukla's testimony comes as a revelation because the proceedings of the Elgar Parishad form the basis of the Bhima Koregaon case which has become an international cause celebre.
As of now, there is nothing to suggest that the 'Michaelpatti episode' has the potential to polarise Dravidian Tamil Nadu on religious lines, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
This senior cop who deposed in such detail about the Elgar Parishad, however, claimed to know nothing about the opposition to it from organisations such as Milind Ekbote's Samastha Hindu Aghadi as well as Pune's then Mayor Mukta Tilak.
'While it seems that the sole option left for the Shiv Sena chief is to sit in the Opposition and wait and watch, there are two other choices before him to show his party rank and file if he is a quitter or a fighter.'
Stalin's personal intervention in the Adheenam row may have contained the avoidable political damage and social tensions at least for now, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Indications are that Modi will have words of encouragement for Stalin, and the meeting is likely to be much less acrimonious than critics of either would want it to be. notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Modi's real problem is not his silence on Hindutva excesses growing in the country. He needs to transform India without the minute-by-minute tweets.
'If any party talks too much about Muslims, it will lose.'
The 29-year-old next-gen Thackeray, whom his party wants to be the deputy chief minister in the BJP-Sena alliance government, won with a thumping majority from Mumbai's Worli constituency.
'It is perhaps a sense of intellectual inadequacy, of an ingrained inferiority complex born of the years when the BJP languished in the margins of Indian politics and society that, when faced with the soaring ideas about Indian pluralism, the Hindutva camp turns its face so resolutely against Nehru,' says Amulya Ganguli.
'If we accept this, then in a few years we will not see a democratic India that we know'
Stalin has given due respect to seniority in the pecking order, but has also taken into consideration the demands of individual ministries and the suitability of individuals, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The new chief minister will be one of the most closely watched politicians in the country in these media-driven times.
'The BJP is in no hurry because they have already won the battle.'
There is a deep-seated sense of rejection that the new generation Tamil youth have felt for a decade and more now, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'There was the indisputable fact that Savarkar knew Godse, Apte and Karkare well, he had corresponded with them closely, and funded their extremely provocative newspaper, and they looked up to him as their icon.'
