The 61-year-old feisty leader, who had single-handedly wrecked the red bastion in West Bengal in 2011, was unfazed by the Left-Congress alliance ahead of the assembly polls.
Amid chants of Buddhist scriptures, Nepal PM K P Sharma Oli on Monday offered prayers at an ancient temple in Kathmandu to mark the reconstruction of five heritage sites demolished by last year's deadly earthquake.
It also provides that no preliminary enquiry will be required for registering a criminal case and an arrest under this law would not be subject to any approval.
High voter turnout was recorded in the assembly polls in Assam and West Bengal where an estimated 82.02 per cent and 79.51 per cent of the voters cast their ballots till 5 pm.
General Zhao Zongqi is well known in India for having commanded the Chinese troops during the Dokalam episode. Zhao knows every inch and corner of the Indian border, at least the Eastern and Central sectors, including the Naku La area which witnessed fist-fights between Indian and Chinese troops in April/May. Claude Arpi introduces us to the PLA generals masterminding the Chinese aggression in Ladakh.
Rahul Gandhi's blunt denouncement of the ordinance on lawmakers was rubbished by the opposition with the Bharatiya Janata Party calling it a "desperate and belated" damage control exercise and saying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should quit if he had any self-respect.
Inscrutable have been the ways of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. She is a political strategist and tactician rolled into one that her unpredictable ways have won the day for her - mostly, says N Sathiya Moorthy
The DMK combine has won 37 of the 38 LS constituencies in Tamil Nadu, and bagged 13 of the 22 assembly bypolls. What swept away the AIADMK-BJP alliance in the southern state was not dravidian ideology but job loss and graft bias, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Shah said that the BJP hoped the Dalit nominee would be unanimously selected as the President.
The Modi wave has blotched the Congress party's copybook. For the first time since the Lok Sabha was constituted in 1952, the party has failed to secure enough seats to be designated as a parliamentary party, notes A Surya Prakash.
Chinese observers believe the Sino-US relationship will be impacted by issues in North Korea, Japan, India, Ukraine and Iran and that conflicts with these 'third parties' will without exception ultimately become conflicts between China and the US, points out former RA&W officer Jayadeva Ranade.
Bharatiya Janata Party leaders were enthused after they ousted the Left government in Tripura and scored positively in Nagaland too. Here are reactions from the party leaders.
We take a look at Time magazines top world leaders.
While critics and protestors have multifarious arguments to offer, the defence of CAA has been uni-dimensional and uni-focussed as has been the case with most policies of the Modi government and the political positions of his party. But to be drawn into an issue that has assumed more than local and national dimensions, Rajini has knowingly or otherwise, taken the plunge and in favour of the BJP -- or, so it has come to be seen, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The story of how Modi won a re-election in the face of severe agrarian crisis, mounting unemployment, looming economic crisis, is the story of how the power of the message can be put to devastating effect in the hands of a strong leader,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury was in Chennai on Saturday and AIADMK sources said Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa could be sounded as convenor for the proposed Third Front. Aditi Phadnis reports
If Manmohan Singh was hobbled by allegations of sleaze and a stagnant economy, Modi faces the twin challenges of high unemployment and an uncertain and potentially volatile situation in Kashmir, points out Amulya Ganguli.
'How do we explain that on the economic, internal security and strategic fronts, India's unstable coalitions have acted more decisively and boldly than all our full-majority governments yet?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
'Unlike in Gujarat, where he could ask for votes based on delivery, in 2019 he will have to appeal to his core Hindutva ideology, by firing over someone else's shoulders,' says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Tributes poured in as news came in of the death of the 10-time Lok Sabha MP who had joined the Communist Party of India-Marxist in 1968. Chatterjee was speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi defended the demonetisation move, the united opposition hit back at the government over common man's suffering.
'They plan to purchase votes.' 'We will not purchase people, but win the elections.' 'In our manifesto there are no free gifts. It says what we will do for the people.'
Biju Janata Dal members had staged a walk-out while NDA ally Shiv Sena did not participate in the voting.
Mamata Banerjee was on Friday sworn in as the chief minister of West Bengal for the second consecutive time, heading a 42-member ministry.
Earlier, two women devotees could not proceed to the shrine after protesters forced them to return. Protesters pelted police with stones and the latter hit right back with vengeance wielding batons with telling effect, leaving many fallen and writhing in pain on the road.
'The one aspect which no Indian military thinker would wish to see emerge is a LoC type of posture at the LAC.' 'The LoC is manned for 750 km and terrorist infiltration has led to the creation of a virtual fortress along its entire length.' 'Something mirroring this at the LAC is going to be expensive although deployment everywhere is not warranted there.' 'However, given the complete trust deficit, there appear few alternatives,' notes Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'Modi and Xi can solve the India-China border problem in a single sitting by keeping the big picture before them, by sweeping away the cobwebs of the past, and by mustering a statesman-like spirit and a long range vision,' says B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
From Chief Minister EK Palaniswami to Seeman to TTV Dhinakaran to elder brother M K Azhagiri, everyone's favourite target these days seems to the DMK chief Stalin, which is good news in an election year, but that doesn't mean he is going to sweep the polls, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
What Saisuresh Sivaswamy learnt about the election from television and the newspapers. A must read column, folks!
Sonia Gandhi's iftar was meant to be a powerful show of unity of Opposition parties to take on the Modi Sarkar, but that was not to be...
'You may be an MP or an MLA; when we go to Bengal, we go as cadre.'
Opposition members kept on shouting 'Pradhan Mantri sadan me aao'.
Even before the trends started coming, eager party workers were seen glued to their smart phones viewing the counting progress online.
BJP leader Vinay Katiyar alleged that the issue was being delayed 'under pressure' from the Congress, which denied the charge.
We present our alphabet of 2020, pulling in everything you'll remember about this year we'd rather forget.
'The control of the Church over Christian people regarding politics has become weak...' 'People have started to think independently and it is not for sure that they will obey whatever the Church asks them to do.'
Even as political parties in TN have decided not to field a candidate against CM Jayalalithaa in the assembly by-election, the BJP's ambivalence has shown up once again.
With election campaign ending in Tamil Nadu before it goes to polls on Thursday, N Sathiya Moorthy lists a few questions uppermost in the minds of voters.
Rahul Gandhi slammed the Modi government, accusing it of being against farmers, labourers, students and the poor.
'Nowhere in the country, except perhaps Jammu and Kashmir, do extremist groups enjoy political patronage as they do in Kerala. Terrorists are exported from Kerala to Afghanistan, Syria.'
