'In Western UP, last time a lot of Dalits voted for the BJP.' 'This time, there is a rethink among Dalits about the extent of their support for the BJP.'
The party fielded Maneka Gandhi from Sultanpur, while Uttar Pradesh minister Jitin Prasada has replaced Varun Gandhi in Pilibhit.
Embattled Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal walked out of the Tihar Jail on Friday evening, hours after the Supreme Court granted him interim bail in a money laundering case to enable him to campaign in the Lok Sabha elections, in a huge relief to his party struggling to gain momentum in the absence of its foremost leader.
The IUML is a major ally of the Opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala and an influential political party among the Muslim community.
In his absence, the party stares at uncertainty as many of its other senior leaders are either in jail or in political obscurity.
Electorally, the yatra seems to have paid dividends in the south, but the march does not seem to be helping the Congress in stopping the BJP's surge in the Hindi-heartland states.
Shiv Sena MP Shrikant Shinde on Tuesday tore into the Uddhav Thackeray faction for 'abandoning' Hindutva and Bal Thackeray's ideology and even recited the Hanuman Chalisa in Lok Sabha as his party opposed the no-confidence motion against the Modi government.
Union Minister Kapil Sibal on Sunday said Arun Jaitley's reported comment that the Bharatiya Janata Party was using Hindutva as an opportunistic tool has exposed the real face of the party and demand an apology from him. The senior Congress leader also asked BJP veteran L K Advani and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to tell the nation "what they now think about Jaitley."
Gadkari, addressing a gathering organised as part of the 'Savarkar Gaurav Yatra' at Shankar Nagar in Nagpur, said Gandhi should realise that he insulted the Hindutva icon due to some misunderstanding.
Asked about the BJP's claim that its performance in southern states will be exemplary, Tharoor said, "The claim of an 'exemplary' performance is yet another product of the BJP's propaganda mill."
'Many BJP MLAs and ministers tell us the police does not listen to them.'
'Their role model is Iran: high control of the citizens by the State.' In Iran it is Islamic control; in India, it will be Hindutva control.'
'How come the BJP won even in the Muslim belt? I am 100% sure that the BJP would not win in the Muslim belt.'
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.
Talking to reporters in Pauri, Yashpal Benam, the bride's father and Pauri municipal chairman, said he thought of getting his daughter married to a Muslim youth for her happiness.
'If you post on social media on an issue like power cuts in Tral, the police will come to your home and tell you to remove your social media post.' 'If you don't, then the local police threaten you that they will book you under PSA.' 'This is happening all the time in Kashmir.'
If Tamil Nadu voters preferred the DMK combine, it owed to the Modi-Annamalai combo's ideological battle which often crossed the line of political decency and also challenged 'Tamil pride', argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
Describing Fadnavis as a friend, Thackeray also said he does not view him as opposition leader.
Bihar Education Minister Chandrashekhar reiterated that temples are the path to "mental slavery" while schools mean the path of light in life, extending support to party MLA Fateh Bahadur Singh whose similar statement drew the ire of a fringe outfit that announced a "reward" of Rs 10 lakh to cut off his tongue.
He said Shiv Sena protected a political leadership for 25-30 years but they (the BJP) didn't want Sena and also the Akali Dal -- the erstwhile members of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The fifth-term Lok Sabha member is the mascot of the party's Hindutva-wrapped agenda of development as the BJP makes a final push in its bid to capture power in the state
Virtually reopening its Hindutva judgement, the Supreme Court has decided to expedite hearing by a seven judge-bench for an authoritative pronouncement on electoral law categorising misuse of religion for electoral gains as "corrupt practices".
'Commentators have said that dealing with allies as equals will make Modi more sensitive.' 'Remember that the people Modi is dealing with are equally autocratic in their own lairs.' 'Further, Modi always has handy the threat of dissolving Parliament and calling for fresh polls.' 'Most of his own party, and certainly his allies and opponents having blown their budgets of efforts and resources in the just concluded elections, have no stomach for this.' 'They are all greatly looking forward to the loaves and fishes of office on offer.' 'That gives Modi an unbeatable advantage in any push-comes-to-shove situation,' explains Shreekant Sambrani.
'When I felt that the party is drifting away from Hindutva, I tried to speak to Uddhavji. But nobody was ready to listen.'
'There is no scope for any doubt. This was a scheme designed to enrich the ruling party.'
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.
Seen by political watchers as the favourite to retain power for a third straight term, the Bharatiya Janata Party has set itself an ambitious target of winning 370 Lok Sabha seats, a goal aimed as much at projecting its strength as at diminishing the opposition in popular imagination.
'Those who hope for a strong united Opposition are disillusioned at the way in which the INDIA alliance has already been caught in debilitating squabbles.'
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh today accused the National Democratic Alliance government of turning the programme to clean Ganga as a "Hindutva project" by attempting to polarise politics through the initiative on the holy river.
'If Kanhaiya can be attacked inside the court, who will assure us about his security now when he is back on the JNU campus?'
'In today's situation, it is not going to help anyone's case if they try to politically contest with the BJP on ideological issues.' 'Instead, it is best is to swim along the tide, present the more acceptable face of the cultural Hindu, but not be a political Hindu as the BJP or Mr Modi is.'
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and the tribal face of the party, Vishnu Deo Sai, on Wednesday took oath as the chief minister of Chhattisgarh, 10 days after the saffron party returned to power after a gap of five years by unseating Congress in the assembly elections.
Hindutva is being conflated with good governance and economic performance in a determined bid to promote Narendra Modi, says Sonali Ranade
Rahul Gandhi has spoken to Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav about the Begusarai seat, but the CPI is unwilling to give up the seat.
A leader of Shiv Sena, a constituent of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance at the Centre, on Monday accused the Narendra Modi government of "compromising" on Hindutva issues and termed BJP's coalition with Peoples Democratic Party in Kashmir as "treason".
"It is most unfortunate that the UPA government, whose formation was made possible by secular forces, has been unable to confront the Hindutva forces and on the contrary adopted a vacillating position," CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat told a press conference on the sidelines of the 19th CPI-M Congress. This, he said, was "seen in the unwillingness to punish those guilty of complicity in communal rioting and carnage, to help the victims to access justice."
Kerala's election discourse operates surreptitiously. Its explicit face focuses on important national and local issues. At the same time, it seeks to secure apt communal equations to ensure votes, notes Shyam G Menon.
'There will be no compromise with someone who has betrayed the party at this stage even if she is my sister,' Congress MP K Muraleedharan told reporters.
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