'It will be the end of the Congress after the Lok Sabha election.' 'Many Congressmen and even Communists will move to the BJP.'
If everything goes according to plan, a resuscitated SAD could emerge as a central player in Punjab in three years, notes Aditi Phadnis.
K Natwar Singh wore many hats as he straddled the worlds of diplomacy, politics and writing but what remained consistent across decades was his sharp-wit and plainspeaking.
Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav had thrown barbs at the prime minister over his having no family.
The bill was defeated by a voice vote on February 23 in the upper house, where the Opposition has a majority, after it was passed by the assembly on February 21.
'When our daughters, wrestlers Sakshi Malik and Vignesh Phogat, were protesting at the Jantar Mantar, the police kicked them with their shoes.'
Interestingly, the choice of August 5 as the day of the bhoomi pujan coincides with the abolition of Kashmir's special status on the same day a year ago. Perhaps the RSS-BJP wants August 5 to be remembered as the date on which the foundation stone of their cherished Hindu rashtra was laid, notes Amulya Ganguli.
In the event that like in the 17th Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi again gets locked out of the House, the Congress needs a second-in-command who will keep the momentum going inside Parliament, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
BIf you know this BJP, it will now go forward to Jharkhand and Maharashtra as if June 2024 never happened, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday claimed that the Congress and Samajwadi Party will run a bulldozer over the Ram temple if elected to power, and asked them to take 'tuition' from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath 'where to run bulldozers'.
Reacting to the grand old Congress party's decline to the 'pran-pratishtha' ceremony invitations of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya, Digvijaya said that the ruling party had turned the event into a BJP and VHP event.
"Hindus will be a minority, not due to terrorists but due to themselves," he said.
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.
The ruling party sharply countered the comment, saying the Congress had "demeaned and defamed" Hindus of India.
'Kejriwal took political steps and micro level care at every level not to allow the consolidation of Hindu votes behind the BJP,' observes Sheela Bhatt, the distinguished political commentator.
'"Pakistan will come and bite you" doesn't work here.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have got a tough fight in Varanasi had Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra contested against him as Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) candidate, feel party workers from the temple town.
'The 2024 general elections proved that UP is not Gujarat.'
"The party will try to connect with these voters by organising 'Sneh Milan: Ek Desh, Ek DNA Sammelan' in various West Uttar Pradesh districts," he said, adding these conferences would start after Eid next month and the first convention will be held in Muzaffarnagar.
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The assault allegedly took place over playing Hanuman chalisa, a Hindu devotional hymn in praise of lord Hanuman, at a shop in central Bengaluru area.
The contentious bill will be tables in RS on Wednesday. The BJP hopes to get up to 130 votes in a 240-member upper house.
'With passage of time, Kamal did move away from the humdrum of commercial cinema, using it only as a peg to launch a new concept or new technology, as no other actor/film-maker has done in Indian cinema.' N Sathiya Moorthy assesses the career and politics of movie legend Kamal Haasan on his 70th brthday.
'Besides Ayodhya, the BJP lost in nine other constituencies with a Ramayana imprint; it tasted success only in Thrissur.' 'In Rameswaram, K Navaskani of the Indian Union Muslim League won with a 44% voteshare in a 84% Hindu constituency.' 'In the 21 seats in the Ayodhya and Varanasi regions, both crucial to the Hindutva project, the BJP won just 7.' 'It won just 3 out of 12 seats around Modi's constituency,' points out Krishna Prasad.
Targeting Modi over inflation, Priyanka called him a "mehengai" man.
'Laluji is like my father and I am like his son.'
In the Muslim community, views on this Lok Sabha election seem to vary, with some seeing it as crucial for India's pluralism while others feel neglected by political parties.
'Elsewhere in the world, you do not get a second chance to be launched. I think he (Gandhi) has now been launched 19 times'
However, the national party count has gone down to six from 14 in over seven decades.
'The whole Kashmiri population is seemed to be a suspect community. This status is not good.'
Struggling to gain political traction on issues of corruption, the West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party is shifting its focus to emotive topics such as the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in a bid to achieve its target of securing 35 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state.
A first information report (FIR) was filed in Ghaziabad on Monday against Alt-News co-founder Mohammad Zubair for allegedly promoting enmity among religious groups and other offences following a complaint by an aide of controversial priest Yati Narsinghanand, according to police.
In a statement, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh questioned the motive behind the inauguration of the "incomplete" temple by the leaders of the BJP and the RSS.
He further added that the people of India respect different languages, religion, food and customs which varies from region to region. "That's the India that I believe in, where everybody has a place and everybody compromises little bit," he said.
Manoj Tiwari is the only sitting MP whom the BJP has retained.
'The non-biological PM's capacity for malice, mischief, and maligning of history knows no bounds. It was on full display today from the Red Fort'
The Supreme Court on Monday imposed an interim stay on directives passed by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments that eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route must display names of owners.
In the past five years, UP's Opposition remained passive and defensive against the BJP, a trend that does not augur well for the impending battle.
There is no use of the BJP targeting the likes of Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, directly by the party's political bosses, both in Delhi and the respective state capitals, or even using the Raj Bhavans to fire those salvos from. Successive elections have proved that it's counter-productive, if anything. But the BJP is yet to understand it, acknowledge it, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday attacked the Congress over party president Mallikarjun Kharge's recent remark on Lord Ram and Lord Shiva, and accused the opposition party of trying to divide Hindus for its appeasement politics.
