'The coronation of Yogi Adityanath as the surprise chief minister should set at rest all speculation over the nature of the UP mandate,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Ashok Gehlot, the otherwise soft-spoken chief minister of Rajasthan, has lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party over its decision to nominate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the party's prime ministerial candidate.
While all the Aam Aadmi Party MLAs present in the House voted in favour of the motion as expected, there was no vote against it due to the absence of BJP legislators.
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal who was under fire from Bharatiya Janata Party leaders after the Shiromani Akali Dal leadership, including Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal campaigned against the saffron party nominees during the assembly elections attended the oath-taking ceremony of Manohar Lal Khattar in Panchkula on Sunday.
The Bihar CM may be in the Opposition but his endorsement of Ram Nath Kovind, the NDA's presidential candidate, is among the many recent decisions that puts him apart from the others.
Nitin Gadkari has a message as much for his party as much purportedly it is for the Opposition. Listening to him, whatever be his reasons and motives, will help, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
BJP CMs promote a lawless culture, one where groups backed by the State are encouraged to attack fellow citizens, where being trigger-happy is the official police policy, notes Jyoti Punwani.
The strategic move will also bolster the BJP's push to decimate Uddhav Thakceray-led party by depriving it of its pet Hindutva and ethnic sub-nationalism plank.
Indicating a shift in stand, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Thursday said his party is open to consider quitting Maharashtra's ruling alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) if the rebel MLAs camping in Assam return and discuss their grievances with CM Uddhav Thackeray, while coalition allies Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress vowed support to the beleaguered governing bloc and asserted its majority can only be determined in the assembly and not outside.
Yogi Adityanath took the oath as Uttar Pradesh chief minister at the auspicious time of 1600, Friday, March 25, 2022, at the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana cricket stadium in Lucknow.
An MP-MLA court in Prayagraj on Tuesday held gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed and two others guilty in the 2006 Umesh Pal kidnapping case.
The new chief minister, if from the Congress, will have little or no time for political administration, to ensure that he does not lose the voter's goodwill even before the Lok Sabha polls. He can count only on one thing. That the BJP may not want to upset him too early lest an early failure should become an added problem for the party in all the polls to follow, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
A delegation of the Maharashtra government led by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to discuss issues like Maratha and OBC reservation, and Cyclone Tauktae relief measures, informed State Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil.
'I hope he will continue to be what he is. And doing so, he won't be much different from those whose example he is being given right now,' says Utkarsh Mishra.
On instructions from the central leadership, Maharashtra BJP leaders have retreated behind a veil of silence, the senior leader said.
Already, there is a feeling even within the BJP's AIADMK ally that the BJP is overdoing things on the ED/I-T front, as corruption is not an election issue in the state -- as long as the people are otherwise not excessively unhappy with the governing party, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Sabarmati railway station is the venue for the ground-breaking ceremony, be chaired by Modi and Abe, of the Rs 98,000-crore Ahmedabad-Mumbai high-speed rail project.
During his interaction with the chief ministers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured that more economic activities would resume; he also said that zone identification may be left to the states.
Instead of the usual cavalcade of around 100 trucks, decked up elephants, akhadas and singing troupes, this year's procession consisted of only three chariots, pulled by nearly 100 youths from the Khalasi community, and four to five other vehicles.
Stepping up protest against the Centre's paddy procurement policy, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Monday led a dharna in the national capital organised by his party, and warned the Modi government to respond within 24 hours if it will buy the grain from the state.
Janata Dal-United leader Ali Anwar on Sunday said that the Bihari community knows how to get rid of communal forces.
The Congress may stand a better chance in the assembly polls if it followed the 'Himachal model', suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday dared the Bharatiya Janata Party to defeat it in the ensuing Mumbai civic polls, saying his party's bond with the city was unbreakable, and also hit out at Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde over his rebellion and for laying claims to his late father's legacy.
'In politics, not everything is spoken and there are a lot of messaging done very discreetly.'
In an apparent jibe at the opposition BJP in Maharashtra, Pawar said some people were getting anxious after losing power.
Days after Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was booed by the BJP activists during a rally attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren too faced a similar situation when hundreds of BJP supporters jeered at him and shouted anti-government slogans on Thursday.
Amid signals of disgruntlement among a section of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka over the delay in expansion or reshuffle of the cabinet, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, who will be on an official visit to Delhi on April 30, said on Thursday he has not thought about meeting the party high command for now.
Suspended Indian Administrative Service officer Pradeep Sharma, who took on Narendra Modi over the snoopgate scandal when he was the Gujarat chief minister, was arrested on Tuesday in a corruption case, a day after the Enforcement Directorate attached his properties for alleged money laundering.
Low pressure over south-central Maharashtra and south Konkan is likely to move over the Arabian Sea and intensify into a depression in the next 48 hours, the India meteorological department said on Thursday. Under the influence of this cyclonic circulation, heavy rains are expected over the ghat areas of Maharashtra, Konkan and south Gujarat during the next two days, the IMD said.
"Yes, We Can," chanted Narendra Modi, as he borrowed United States President Barack Obama's iconic 2008 poll campaign slogan to fire up his audience largely comprising youth at a public meeting in Hyderabad.
'Why should Khargeji work against the Gandhis for the sake of proving his independence?'
The Nitish Kumar government in Bihar came under fresh attack on Monday from state Bharatiya Janata Party president Sanjay Jaiswal whose party seems annoyed with junior ally Janata Dal-United's shrill demands for special assistance from the Centre.
Vellore is one of the two seats that the DMK alliance won by the narrowest of margins in 2019. For the DMK's vote-score to be so low in a constituency with a substantial Muslim population has not missed the BJP strategists' eyes, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
While Modi had a party and an organisation that supported him, all Mulayam, a self-made man with no inheritance in politics, had was a set of (fairly flexible) beliefs.
Addressing a rally in Bankura district, she described the BJP as a "party of outsiders", and alleged that it is bringing "goondas to create terror" in the state.
The move came at a time when deliberations between the Congress, the NCP and the Shiv Sena seemingly reached the final stage on Friday.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah and chief ministers of National Democratic Alliance-ruled States are at the ceremony.
'Mr Badal wanted to talk to a member of the Gandhi family to bring about some sort of rapprochement between the Akalis and the Congress which were the two major parties at that time.'
Today, a friendship forged by common ideals behind prison walls has become a transactional understanding, notes Aditi Phadnis.
