'The people of Gujarat are more religious than people of other states, this gives the BJP an advantage.'
BlueKraft has published The Emergency Diaries -- Years that Forged a Leader to chronicle Modi's role in the underground campaign during that period, after speaking to a number of people associated with him at that time.
In a jolt to the opposition Congress ahead of the assembly polls in Gujarat, senior MLA Mohansinh Rathva on Tuesday resigned as a party member and legislator and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The ruling BJP and opposition Congress have together fielded sons of sitting and former MLAs in at least 20 of the total 182 constituencies.
An alliance between the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress in Delhi and in different states, including Gujarat and Haryana, for the Lok Sabha polls may be officially announced on Saturday, sources in the AAP said.
Here is the timeline of the Emergency that lasted for 21 months, which is considered as the darkest period in the history of Independent India.
The Jain community, for whom feeding pigeons is a sacred tradition, have fiercely opposed the closure, with demonstrations in Mumbai highlighting the cultural significance and the distress of pigeons dying on streets.
'Modi's charisma may have weakened as last year's Lok Sabha poll results showed but in the eyes of the Sangh Parivar, it has not waned.' 'Minus a strong BJP government at the Centre for another decade and more, there is apprehension that an anti-Hindutva government could reverse many of the ideological gains that the Modi dispensation has achieved through its three terms,' points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'They contest to ensure they win the election.'
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.
Congress leader Udit Raj criticized party colleague Shashi Tharoor for his reported remarks that India breached the Line of Control (LoC) for the first time during the 2016 surgical strike on a terror base, saying he should be declared a "super spokesperson of the BJP". Raj argued that India had crossed the LoC in 1965 and 1971, and that the UPA government had also conducted surgical strikes. Tharoor had reportedly said that India breaching the LoC to conduct a surgical strike was "something we had not done before". This is not the first time Raj has criticized Tharoor for his comments on India-Pakistan relations. Last month, Raj had hit out at Tharoor for his reported "no country has 100-per cent foolproof intelligence" remarks, questioning how Tharoor could be giving the BJP a "clean chit" on the Pahalgam terror attack. Tharoor had hit back at Raj, saying the latter is a former BJP MP and "is better qualified to understand who speaks for the BJP".
Thousands of people participated in a 'silent march' in Kolhapur on Sunday, demanding that 36-year-old female elephant Mahadevi (also called Madhuri), be brought back from Vantara wildlife rescue, treatment, and rehabilitation centre in Gujarat's Jamnagar district.
Former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, who died in a tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad on Thursday, joined the list of several top Indian politicians and prominent personalities who lost their lives in aviation accidents.
A court in Ahmedabad on Friday sentenced Gujarat Congress Working President and MLA Jignesh Mevani and 18 others to six months' simple imprisonment in a 2016 case of rioting.
The party claimed 16 lakh votes were polled in the last one hour of polling on December 5.
By getting Jagdeep Dhankhar to resign at short notice, Narendra Modi has sent a message to his own ideological clan that he brooks no one trying to get too big for their boots, observes Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The Congress alleged a polling booth situated in Samla village falling under the Limbdi Assembly seat of Surendranagar district was captured by some anti-social elements.
The priority in ticket distribution will be given to youth, women, and those with a clean image, he said.
Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Thursday headed for a second straight win from the urban constituency of Ghatlodia, where he had taken a comfortable lead of almost 20,000 votes over his nearest rival after five rounds of vote counting.
Amid this unrest came the verdict of the Allahabad high court on June 12, 1975 that found Gandhi guilty over discrepancies in the electoral campaign, which led to the Emergency on the night of June 25.
Only 15 per cent of the tweets posted by Congress' official Twitter handle during Nov 21-27 were on the Gujarat polls.
New Delhi looks to be testing Omar's endurance with unconcealed glee, never feeling shy to bite whenever a moment comes its way. After all, ruling the country's only Muslim-majority UT/state has been the BJP's burning desire, points out Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs.
NCP's Kandhal Jadeja was the only MLA to win from the party.
An amended government order issued on Tuesday said Hindi will "generally" be the third language, instead of being mandatory, but gave an option to opt out if 20 students per grade in a school express the desire to study any Indian language other than Hindi.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clinched 23 out of 27 Scheduled Tribe seats in Gujarat as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the new entrant in the state's politics, swept aside the Congress to find a footing in the state's tribal belt.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray on Wednesday asked what was the need to "impose" Hindi on students and appealed to schools in Maharashtra to foil the government's "hidden agenda to deliberately create a language divide".
Drugs worth more than Rs 5,300 crore were seized and 102 people involved in illicit narcotics trade apprehended by the Gujarat police in the last one-and-a-half years, the state legislative assembly was informed on Tuesday.
The move is seen as a prelude to Chavda's joining the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The bench allowed the rejoinder affidavit to be filed by petitioners in two weeks thereafter and posted the matter for final hearing in January, 2025.
Of these 14, all but three won the election on Thursday.
BJP rule in Gujarat has spread depression says the Congress, which plans to come up with ideas to spread cheer among voters.
MNS chief Raj Thackeray alleges the state government's three-language formula is a precursor to separating Mumbai from Maharashtra, speaking at a rally with Uddhav Thackeray.
The move comes after at least six Congress MLAs in Gujarat resigned from the party to join the BJP.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge accused the BJP-RSS of carrying out a "well-planned conspiracy" against national heroes and said that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's ideology was contrary to the RSS' ideas. He defended the relationship between Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru, saying they were "two sides of the same coin". He also criticized the BJP-RSS for their alleged attempts to appropriate the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel.
The Rahul-led campaign not only recorded its best assembly performance in the state since 1995, but also matched the BJP blow for blow in planning and execution.
The Bharat Mata controversy in Kerala shows how political and symbolic fights between the state and the Centre have taken attention away from education, throwing the state's oldest university into confusion and disorder, observes Shyam G Menon.
After controversy over the use of a Sri Lankan child in a Gujarat Congress advertisement on malnutrition, the party is again facing flak for using photographs of farmers of other states in its advertisement related to electricity connections to farmers.
The Congress is chiefly banking on the issue of water woes and "incomplete" irrigation projects to make fresh inroads in rural Saurashtra, sensing a feeling of being "left out" among the populace.
The Gujarat government's competitive examination for the recruitment of junior clerks was cancelled hours before it was scheduled on Sunday after its question paper leaked, officials said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially commissioned the Vizhinjam International Seaport on Friday in Thiruvananthapuram in the presence of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, whose presence at the inauguration, Modi said, will give 'sleepless nights' to many.
