Speaking at the Congress manifesto launch programme, Gandhi said it is a much closer contest than what is propagated by the media, and expressed confidence in winning the polls.
Along with Modi, senior BJP leaders including Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, all ministers in Modi 2.0 Cabinet, took oath as cabinet ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In all, 71 ministers were sworn-in along with Modi, taking the strength of the Union council to 72.
Rajasthan is all set to vote on Saturday to elect members of a new assembly with the Bharatiya Janata Party aiming to unseat the ruling Congress, which is fighting hard to change the trend of alternate governments in the state.
A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh man, Manohar Lal Khattar toiled on the ground to build the organisation for last four decades till he was handpicked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lead the first Bharatiya Janata Party government in Haryana.
Those joining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers for the first time include three former chief ministers -- Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana) and H D Kumaraswamy (Karnataka).
States like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh had on Friday announced similar incentives.
Per capita income in the state has consistently been below the national average for at least 24 years. However, it has narrowed the gap with the all-India level in recent years.
The BJP is willing to offer two Lok Sabha seats, including Baghpat which is currently represented by its MP Satya Pal Singh, to the RLD and may also give it a Rajya Sabha seat, they added.
In his absence, the party stares at uncertainty as many of its other senior leaders are either in jail or in political obscurity.
Amid cross-voting, BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan on Tuesday won the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Himachal Pradesh, defeating ruling Congress' Abhishek Manu Singhvi, officials said.
Even if the BJP gets 60, 70, or even 100 per cent of the votes in the seats where it scored more than 50 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, these will still add up to only 224 seats, argues Shekhar Gupta.
Thackeray had addressed the audience as his deshbhakt and deshpremi brothers and sisters" instead of the traditional invocation of "Hindu brothers and sisters" at the Shivaji Park gathering in Mumbai.
The Delhi battlefield may not be a cakewalk for the Rhodes Scholar.
According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Union Minister of State Kailash Chaudhary was among the first to cast his vote, exercising his franchise in Balotra.
Please promise, especially those millions who trust you with their hard-earned money, never to let your voting preferences determine your actions on the markets. The most appalling and scary phenomenon was fund houses and brokerages going out on election yatras and writing copious reports promising more than 300 for the BJP. That was your wish as voters. Your investors are paying for it now, points out Shekhar Gupta.
The parties which gave chief ministers and sent scores of MPs to Parliament, drew a blank this time.
The Shiromani Akali Dal also issued a two-day ultimatum to her to stop "anti-party" activities, failing which, it said, strict disciplinary action would be taken against her.
Sharma's remark came a day after Grover and some other BJP leaders were held up for hours inside a temple complex in Rohtak's Kiloi as several villagers and farmers staged a protest outside.
The prospect of the Delhi chief minister's wife, Sunita Kejriwal, who has so far maintained a distance from politics, assuming a new role is also being discussed by people.
Some of the farmers allegedly tried to block Khattar's motorcade but police managed to provide a safe passage to the chief minister, sources said.
The Congress has 40 MLAs while the BJP has 25 in the 68-member state assembly. The remaining three seats are held by independents.
The Congress leadership is unlikely to remove Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda although his detractors have intensified their demand for his dismissal after the party's poor electoral performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The biggest shocker is in Haryana where at least three exit polls predicted decimation of the Opposition, but the BJP won 40 seats in the 90-member assembly and the Congress 31 seats.
With polls to elect the 18th Lok Sabha approaching, district poll panels are fixing the rates for expenses as part of the election expenditure monitoring process.
Confrontation between the Sikh bodies of Punjab and Haryana has become more political than religious, says Rediff.com contributor Upasna Pandey.
The National Democratic Alliance presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu on Thursday consolidated her lead after the second round of counting by getting nearly 72 per cent votes of the total votes of all MPs and MLAs of 10 states counted so far.
The Rajya Sabha elections have again highlighted dissension and lack of cohesion in the opposition ranks from Maharashtra to Karnataka and Haryana.
Some of Independents claimed that the Congress and the BJP have been in touch with them.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday named 14 candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls including former Union minister R P N Singh and Sudhanshu Trivedi -- the only outgoing MP renominated by the party.
Former Commonwealth Games gold-medallist Narsingh Pancham Yadav was elected chairman of the Wrestling Federation of India's Athletes' Commission in Varanasi on Wednesday, completing a process that was mandated by the sport's world governing body.
'During the election period, Modi did not refer to the government as 'Government of India'...it used to be called Modi Sarkar, Modi's guarantee. Today that Modi guarantee is no longer there'
Ensuring a free and fair electoral process is imperative for maintaining people's trust in representative democracy, the Supreme Court has said.
A day after his release on interim bail, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging he was on a 'One nation, One leader' mission to impose 'dictatorship' by putting all leaders from opposition behind bars and 'politically finishing off' those in the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The assembly elections in the states of Haryana, Maharashtra and Arunachal Pradesh will be held in a single phase on October 13.Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla announced the dates in a press conference on Monday.The counting of votes will take place on October 22.Electronic Voting Machines will be used in the electoral process in all three states, he said. The electoral battle will be fought in 288 seats in Maharashtra, 90 seats in Haryana and 60 seats in Arunachal.
Cricket climate change to medical practice, dropped candidates have their non-political life sorted.
United World Wrestling (UWW), the world governing body for wrestling, has suspended the Wrestling Federation of India for not conducting its elections on time.
The IOA ad-hoc panel on Wednesday rescheduled the WFI elections to July 11.
Meet IAF Veteran Bhopinder Singh Saini from the Viro ke Vir Indian Party.
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