Months after exiting the decades-long association with the Congress party, Azad said that he was not against its policy of secularism, but its weak party system.
Alleging that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party government has failed on all fronts, the Congress on Wednesday said the party will win with clear majority in the upcoming assembly elections in the state.
Sitharaman's nomination is a surprise because since long many RS vacancies from Gujarat are filled by non-Gujaratis like Arun Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu. A senior Congress leader from Gujarat told rediff.com, "Considering that Narendra Modi is one of the strongest chief ministers that Gujarat has ever seen, the frequent nomination of non-Gujaratis to the Rajya Sabha shows that even in the BJP the party high command of New Delhi dominates in certain issues."
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi appeared before the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team on Saturday and was questioned for the first time on his alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat riots that have come back to haunt him.
Modi will have greater satisfaction to see that Sonia Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel's Bharuch Lok Sabha constituency is also going the Bharatiya Janata Party's way.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi is scheduled to address two rallies in poll-bound Gujarat on Friday.
Top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa will attend the swearing-in ceremony in which Narendra Modi will take oath as Gujarat chief minister on Wednesday. Heavy security arrangements have been made at the Sardar Patel Stadium where Modi will be sworn in as Chief Minister at a grand function at around 11 am.
Assembly elections in Gujarat will be held in two phases on December 9 and 14.
The feud between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal United, over whether Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi could be the prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, worsened on Wednesday.
This is in view of the central government's decision to repeal Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).
BIf you know this BJP, it will now go forward to Jharkhand and Maharashtra as if June 2024 never happened, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Terming the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat as "unfortunate", the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday said the Narendra Modi government had taken "strong" steps to deal with the situation due to which such incidents have not recurred in the state. "As far as Modi is concerned, we consider the Godhra incident unfortunate and what followed afterwards in reaction to it -- we consider that also as unfortunate," BJP national general secretary Murlidhar Rao told reporters.
What these elections prove beyond any doubt (if ever there was one) that Modi's hold over public mind and Shah's mastery of election management are unparalleled. It doesn't seem likely that they will be matched any time soon in the Indian political scene, reaffirms Shreekant Sambrani.
Residents of Vadnagar, the native village of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, on Friday congratulated him as he completed a decade in office.
Gujarat Congress president Siddarth Patel and state assembly leader Shaktisinh Gohil on Wednesday led a delegation of party Members of Legislative Assembly and state leaders to President Pratibha Patil to seek her 'constitutional intervention' in the state to restore democracy, peace and law and order.
'I am a human and humans tend to commit mistakes. To ensure that the party does not suffer due to my mistakes, I resign from the party, whose forgiveness I seek'
Taking umbrage at Navjot Singh Sidhu's remark in which he termed him as an "anti-national leader", Gujarat Parivartan Party president Keshubhai Patel on Saturday appealed to the Election Commission to take suo motu action against the Bharatiya Janata Party MP and his party.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has said that his party is ready for elections in Gujarat at any point of time.
The Opposition had dubbed the directives issued by the three states as divisive and discriminatory against Muslims, and the apex court's order effectively ensured that the Yatra was held without their orders being enforced.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Opposition Congress in Madhya Pradesh, where assembly polls are due by 2023-end, are not attaching much importance to the presence of the AAP and the AIMIM citing the largely bipolar politics of the state.
The BJP leader from Bihar sought to compare his defeat in Kishanganj LS seat to that of Congress' Buta Singh after the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Bharatiya Janata Party candidates Dineshchamdra Jemalbhai Ananvadiya and Rambhai Harjibhai Mokariya won both Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat on Monday.
Rediff.com's Sonil Dedhia, who has been covering the run-up to the polls, will be on Zarabol chat at 2 pm on Friday to take readers questions on all the action on the political battlefield of India's western state of Gujarat.
Campaigning for the first phase of the Gujarat assembly elections to be held on December 1 ended at 5 pm on Tuesday.
Janata Dal-United, a key ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, has decided to go it alone in the upcoming Assembly election in Gujarat.
Voters, it is said, get the government they deserve. We will soon see what voters in Maharashtra choose. Till then, a sense of helplessness and scepticism hangs in the air, notes Ramesh Menon.
Terming Sanjay Joshi's decision to quit the Bharatiya Janata Party as "personal", the party's Gujarat unit on Saturday said his exit will not have a negative impact on its prospects in the assembly polls slated by the year-end. "Joshi's place of work has been in Delhi and in the last assembly election, he was not in Gujarat but still the BJP secured absolute majority. His resignation will not have any negative impact," said a party leader.
The gravity of the incident which happened in Parliament should not be underestimated, the prime minister said
There's nothing that Bharatiya Janata Party Supremo Narendra Damodardas Modi appears to like better than hitting the campaign trail, addressing countless meetings on the same day with a verve that is unprecedented in India's electoral history.
There is also talk on the chances of Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, R C Faldu and Kaushik Patel, senior ministers in the Rupani cabinet, being retained.
Several Bharatiya Janata Party legislators in Gujarat, who have been denied a party ticket to contest the assembly elections, have started exploring options to fight the polls and Uma Bharti's Bharatiya Janshakti seems to have emerged as the favourite platform for them.
Former ministers have either maintained silence or supported the `no-repeat' formula adopted by the top Bharatiya Janata Party leadership.
Kejriwal asked whether the BJP-led central government was waiting for the Lok Sabha elections to make a move in this direction.
"BJP's victory in Gujarat assembly election is spectacular. We will win in Himachal Pradesh with a bigger margin," party in-charge for Himachal Satyapal Jain said.
The BJP president said the Gujarat poll outcome has "demolished the myth" that the Congress is getting revived on account of its leadership.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which contested the assembly polls in Himachal Pradesh for the first time, drew a blank securing just 1.10 per cent of the total votes cast.
Both leaders would skip the five poll-bound states and the northeast, Naidu said.
The accident, which comes days after similar incidents in Delhi and Jabalpur, gave the opposition Congress an opportunity to target the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
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