Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday asserted that Marathi is the language of Mumbai and Maharashtra and anyone who lives here should learn and speak it. Fadnavis was speaking in the state assembly after Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Bhaskar Jadhav said the government should clarify its stand on senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi's comments that a person coming to Mumbai may not necessarily learn Marathi.
Though the party has made no announcement, former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, the deputy chief minister in the outgoing government, is being seen as the frontrunner for the key position.
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.
As counting of votes for the Gujarat assembly polls is underway, Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Hardik Patel predicted that his party will win over 130 seats, the most by the party till date in the Gujarat, and expressed optimism that the BJP will undoubtedly form the government for the seventh time in the state.
The Congress on Tuesday suffered a major upset in Himachal Pradesh at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya Sabha elections which were marred by cross-voting in all the three states though it won three seats in Karnataka while the saffron party pocketed an extra seat in Uttar Pradesh.
'Can you imagine that Surat's voters won't have any say now in exercising their fundamental right to choose a candidate of their own choice? This is what the BJP has reduced India's democracy to.' 'With this ugly act, in one stroke, the BJP has disenfranchised the voters of Surat.'
While the Congress is not willing to campaign in Muslim areas, the BJP encourages Muslims to attend its public meetings, reports Archis Mohan.
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Congress MP Rahul Gandhi will embark on a fresh padayatra (foot march) from Gujarat to Meghalaya and during that period leaders and workers of the party's Maharashtra unit would criss-cross the state, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee president Nana Patole said on Tuesday.
While the responses of the candidates were predictable, depending on which side they belonged to, an interesting point slipped through when Rahul Shewale cited the Dharavi Redevelopment Project as a scheme that would add to Mumbai's importance. No big infrastructural project in Mumbai, he said, could be successful without the Centre's nod.
The Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti leader said that reservation formula given by the Congress for his community will be over and above the 50 per cent quota for the Schedule Tribes, Schedule Castes and Other Backward Class.
Months before he demitted office as prime minister in 2014, Manmohan Singh had famously asserted that his leadership was not weak and history would be kinder to him than what the media projected at that time.
The BJP hopes that any vote AAP gets should only be from the Congress. At the same time, it does not want AAP to get too much of it. Because, a declining old opponent is a blessing as much as a rising new rival is a threat, points out Shekhar Gupta.
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.
'Has any prime minister spent so much time in one state holding election rally after rally?'
Asked about the reason behind his action, Giletwala said he was served a show-cause notice by the Congress after publicly siding with Modi and hence did not wish to continue with the Congress
Gandhi said the party will defeat the saffron party and Narendra Modi in Gujarat just the way it was defeated in Ayodhya.
The electoral bounty reaped by the Congress was nothing more than an ill-gotten gain of a casteist, divisive campaign; nothing to be proud of and certainly not a moral victory, argues Vivek Gumaste.
'Adivasi seats will sound the bugle of the end of the BJP regime in Gujarat.'
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.
The party's research department is quietly collecting data, facts and figures to puncture the Modi government's claims on the note ban, the goods and services tax, and the economic growth.
Bypolls are due in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
Gujarat is a tale of woes for the Congress, out of power for over twenty long years, with Narendra Modi performing an electoral hat-trick.
The message for 2024 is that the man on the street is not going to be euphoric if the G-20 crowns Modi as king-emperor for 2023, or if India sends its first man to space just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Even a 'temple consecration' in Ayodhya, or a Uniform Civil Code, or both of them together, may not have enough electoral purchase if fuel and commodity prices are not rolled back, and money-in-the-pocket does not fatten, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Sources in AAP claimed that the party was contacted by the Shiv Sena-UBT and the NCP-SP for campaigning by Kejriwal in Maharashtra.
'This is the victory of the people of Gujarat who want real development, not the hype of development.'
Over the medium and long term, the BJP hopes to devour the AIADMK, they having identified the party as 'ideologically not as sound as the DMK', predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Election Commission of India has announced that the Delhi Assembly elections will be held on February 5, 2023, with the counting of votes scheduled for February 8. The last date to file nominations is January 17, and the scrutiny of nominations will be done by January 18. Candidates can withdraw their nominations until January 20.
Amid protests against a proposed oil refinery in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district, state industries minister Uday Samant on Tuesday said the current site for the mega project was suggested by then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, while the Opposition urged the government to stop soil survey work and be sensitive in handling the situation arising out of the agitation.
If as critics point out, the environmental impact assessment study was commissioned only after the auction process got underway with not all the stakeholders getting to know of it, then the government has already compromised the trust it could have enjoyed with Kerala's public including its coastal communities, points out Shyam G Menon.
22 images that captures glimpses of a most unusual Indian who led the nation for 10 years.
These are the 25 seats to watch out for as Gujarat goes to the polls over two phases on December 1 and 5.
The Congress has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of trying to break the opposition party to win the Rajya Sabha polls.
Kanugolu had also made forays in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh following a directive from the party's central leadership but regional satraps Ashok Gehlot and Kamal Nath reportedly were not on the same page as the poll strategist.
The BJP is not taking the AAP challenge lightly. Amit Shah has cautioned party insiders to ensure that AAP does not cross a vote share of 24%. He has always seen AAP as a much more significant challenge than the Congress, observes Ramesh Menon, author, Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister.
The ex-CM said he had the honesty to face the protesters. He said the government should hold a dialogue with locals before coming up with any project.
In winning a seventh term, the BJP also matched the Left Front's feat in West Bengal.
He alleged Union Home Minister Amit Shah had directed BJP leaders in a "closed-door" meeting to "stop" him (Uddhav) and Sharad Pawar politically.
Exit polls on Monday predicted a big majority for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat while most of them gave an edge to it in Himachal Pradesh, indicating re-election of the ruling party in both states.
The appointment was made by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi who was authorized by a meeting of the Gujarat Congress Legislature Party in Gandhinagar on Tuesday to select the leader.
