What some of our leaders were up to on Tuesday and Wednesday.
In the wake of communal violence in West Bengal and Bihar, Sibal had on Sunday questioned the "silence" of Prime Minister Modi over the matter, and said "let not 2024 general elections be the reason" for the violence.
While P Muralidhar Rao, BJP general secretary, says, 'Digital electioneering is here to stay until the elections in 2021,' the BJP's rallies in Bihar will not be confined to cyberspace. Its strategists have devised other ways of getting around the hygiene protocol that Covid-19 has entailed.
If the Congress is contesting fewer seats than ever before, the BJP is set to contest its highest-ever number of Lok Sabha seats.
Opposition leaders on Saturday lauded the Congress for its victory in Karnataka and thanked the people of the state, saying that this win has showed that 'Modi is not invincible'.
'Modi is not assuring the nation that if he gets back to power in 2024 and remains in power till 2029, he will not change the Constitution.'
'The only thing that makes Nitish Kumar acceptable to Biharis, to the Mahagatbandhan allies, is the BJP.'
Ironically, rival Tamil Nadu governments expend the most on social welfare schemes, especially targeting women and youth and children, but that money comes only by selling more liquor. There is always the specious plea, which has been peddled very many times in the past, that without licensed liquor, drinkers would go after hooch and there could be more hooch tragedies and hooch deaths. No one is convinced, but no one can dispute it either, comments N Sathiya Moorthy.
While the BJP and the Congress have always supported the bill, opposition by other parties and demands from some for quota for backward classes within the women's quota have been key sticking points.
JD-U sources conceded that the BJP's "Bihari martyrdom" line will give the coalition an edge or "at least help us combat anti-incumbency if the Opposition makes an issue of Nitish's governance".
Bihar's ruling JD-U and Lalu Prasad's RJD on Sunday decided to contest the state assembly elections in alliance and constitute a six member committee to finalize seat-sharing.
Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Delhi has been sent as a special officer to oversee the counting process in Meerut and Bihar's CEO to Varanasi.
The Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee is keen to field senior leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from Varanasi and will soon send a proposal in this regard to the top leadership, said newly appointed party's state president Ajay Rai on Sunday.
This election has some striking resemblances to the landmark one of 1977, with sub-caste combinations and antipathies still the bedrock of measures
Lalu Prasad's eldest daughter Misa Bharti, a Rajya Sabha MP, and elder son Tej Pratap Yadav have been omitted from RJD's star campaigners' list released on Thursday for the upcoming by-elections to a couple of assembly seats in Bihar, a development seen as an attempt to push them to the margins in an intra-family feud to control the single largest party in the state assembly.
The speculations were triggered by Kumar's reference to the Rajya Sabha being "the only House" he has not been a member of.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday hinted that a meeting of opposition leaders may take place in Patna after the crucial Karnataka assembly polls were over as many would be busy electioneering there.
The Left parties said they have come together to provide an option to the public to provide "people's rule" in the true sense.
While EC Secretary General Umesh Sinha would be visiting Tamil Nadu next week, Deputy Election Commissioner Sudip Jain would be in West Bengal in the coming days, sources said.
It is not much of an issue just now, but it could become one if the idea of caste census captures socio-political imagination, going beyond electoral tags and identities, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Bihar's ruling JD-U and Lalu Prasad's RJD will contest the state assembly elections in alliance and a 6-member committee will be constituted for seat-sharing talks.
'Shinde and Fadnavis have different working styles and certainly there is a crack that has come between them.'
More than two lakh paramilitary personnel, thousands of vehicles and nearly a dozen helicopters will be deployed across the country to ensure smooth and violence-free elections beginning April 7.
A rapid vaccination programme is needed immediately for the interests of health and well-being of all concerned, Banerjee said in a letter to Modi.
The Congress party is in talks with various political parties to form a secular alliance against the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Bihar assembly polls, its spokesman Rajeev Gowda said on Monday.
In a stunning blow to the BJP on Wednesday, the party lost bypolls to all the three Lok Sabha seats it contested, including its bastion Gorakhpur, and Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh, besides Araria in Bihar.
Even if the BJP gets 60, 70, or even 100 per cent of the votes in the seats where it scored more than 50 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, these will still add up to only 224 seats, argues Shekhar Gupta.
Addressing the party's national executive, Nadda also reached out to Sikhs, who are in majority in poll-bound Punjab, by listing a number of measures the Modi government has taken for the community, including expediting action against 1984 riots accused, facilitating foreign grants to gurudwaras and keeping langars outside the review of the Goods and Services Tax.
'For Nitish Kumar the message is to be democratic. With the support of the BJP, he had suppressed criticism in Bihar. He would also need to change his highly authoritarian way of governance.' 'The Grand Alliance, given the decisive mandate in its favour, cannot afford to fail the people. They have a duty to make it a model for the rest of India,' says Apoorvanand.
"He (Manjhi) was in constant touch with BJP leaders. He recently met several BJP leaders... He wanted to be part of the June 23 meeting of opposition leaders... but I had apprehensions that he might leak issues/matters that will be discussed on June 23.
The overall voting percentage in the bypolls to 51 assembly seats was nearly 56.84 per cent, the Election Commission said while releasing data available till 7 pm, adding that the polling passed off peacefully.
The full bench of the Election Commission will meet on August 25 in New Delhi after the return of Chief Election Commissioner S Nasim Zaidi to discuss the Bihar assembly polls.
The former Congress president alleged that PM Modi had a "monopoly over corruption".
More than predicting the nature of elections, a closer scrutiny of seat and vote share difference yields an important tool to assess the value of our democratic process, say economists Yugank Goyal and Arun Kumar Kaushik
According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
From the voter-level, traditionally anti-BJP, anti-Hindutva minorities and other secular voters would have an option, especially in the face of the mounting anti-incumbency against the ruling party -- as it happened in the 2001 assembly polls, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Opposition grand alliance is proving to be a non-starter, with senior RJD leaders reluctant to be ordered about by an immature and entitled Tejashswi, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Cracks in the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar is frittering away the ground gained in social justice and contributing to increasing polarisation in the state, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The consecration of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya has demoralised them.' 'And, now it is reflecting in their individual reactions as they are losing hope to take on the BJP in 2024.'
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