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."
The seven candidates are contesting from the seats that will go to polls in the first phase of the elections scheduled to be held on December 1.
'This can eventually start the end of the current market frenzy, which has lasted for a full year.'
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.
That AAP managed a sizeable vote share in Gujarat is creditable. The BJP can no longer ignore AAP's growing presence in its strongest bastion, explains Ramesh Menon, long-time observer of Gujarat politics.
This is in view of the central government's decision to repeal Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).
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.
Assembly elections in Gujarat will be held in two phases on December 9 and 14.
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.
Ruling parties held sway in most of the 13 states in the assembly byelection results declared on Saturday, with the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies wresting seats in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan and the Trinamool Congress sweeping West Bengal.
The Indian government has advised states to intensify surveillance for respiratory illnesses, including influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory illnesses (SARI), following the detection of five human metapneumovirus (HMPV) cases in the country. The decision comes amidst reports of a surge in HMPV cases in China. The Union Health Secretary, Punya Salila Srivastava, chaired a virtual meeting with states and union territories to discuss the situation and public health measures. While there is no cause for public concern, the government is emphasizing the importance of preventive measures such as handwashing, covering coughs and sneezes, and avoiding close contact with those showing symptoms.
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.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has said that his party is ready for elections in Gujarat at any point of time.
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.
'Modi is imposing himself as the face of Gujarat to send a message that people should not forget that a Gujarati is prime minister.'
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar appear to have got the maximum representation in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new council of ministers, while assembly poll-bound Maharashtra also found a significant presence.
The incident took place on Saturday evening and a first information report (FIR) was registered at Khergam police station in the wee hours of Sunday in which Patel accused local BJP leader Babu Ahir, who is the district panchayat president, and his supporters of attacking him after being upset over a song sung in Patel's support at a garba event.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Friday demanded an accommodation for outgoing Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, saying he is entitled to it on account of being the convener of a national party.
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.
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.
'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'
A video of Nizamabad Lok Sabha MP D Arvind saying that people will go to hell if they don't support the BJP after benefitting from schemes implemented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has gone viral.
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.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
The Bharatiya Janata Party replaced at least 25 sitting MPs with new faces as the party released its second list of 72 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on Wednesday.
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.
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.
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.
The counting of votes for the bypolls to 46 assembly seats in 13 states and in the Lok Sabha segments of Nanded in Maharashtra and Wayanad in Kerala, a crucial electoral exercise since the parliamentary polls in April-May, will begin at 8 am on Saturday.
Bharatiya Janata Party candidates Dineshchamdra Jemalbhai Ananvadiya and Rambhai Harjibhai Mokariya won both Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat on Monday.
"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.
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.
"Word of the day! Definition of *snollygoster* US dialect: a shrewd, unprincipled politician. First Known Use: 1845. Most recent use: 26/7/17," Tharoor had tweeted in 2017.
Both leaders would skip the five poll-bound states and the northeast, Naidu said.
There is more at stake on the outcome of the two-phased election than the state of Gujarat. Only after the polls, the Left parties and the Congress party will decide their future strategy and the fate of the India-United States nuclear deal. Also, on the basis of the election results, the Congress will assess the advantages of going in for parliamentary elections around April 2008, a year before schedule
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