'He only promotes those leaders who will never show any resistance to him in future.'
In an unprecedented development, MLAs of opposition Indian National Lok Dal in Haryana on Thursday virtually stormed the assembly of neighbouring Punjab to protest against a move that could stall construction of a canal by which Haryana is supposed to receive water.
'The tide started to turn against the BJD when V K Pandian toured the districts gathering people's grievances last year.'
Family feuds, in what are essentially family-run outfits, have cast a shadow over the reunification efforts of Janata Party.
The Government on Tuesday expressed shock at the appointments of Commonwealth Games (CWG) scam accused Suresh Kalmadi and Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Chautala as life presidents of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA).
The Bharatiya Janata Party's bypoll win in four of the six seats it contested has invigorated the party ahead of assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
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 Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties, led by the Congress, staged a walkout from both Houses of Parliament on Wednesday, in protest against all states except two being 'ignored' in the budget, an allegation termed 'outrageous' by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharamanm, who said all the states never found a mention in any of the previous budgets, including those presented by the Congress.
Continuing his Lok Sabha plank of ousting the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday sought a clear mandate for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Haryana for putting the state on a growth trajectory.
Union minister Giriraj Singh on Saturday claimed that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United and its ally Rashtriya Janata Dal, founded and headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav, were heading for a merger.
Manohar Lal Khattar, who is stated to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was unanimously elected leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party legislature party, paving the way for his becoming the first chief minister of the saffron party in Haryana.
The 33-year-old Prajwal was the National Democratic Alliance candidate in the Hassan Lok Sabha constituency, which went to polls on April 26.
'Episodes of targeted attacks on Muslims established that for a section of people and, sadly, even officials of the State, the election results conveyed no lessons.' 'Opposition parties must not be hesitant in speaking out whenever the mob with tacit State support targets Muslims,' asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
Why did Modi single out the Congress and its leaders for the most pugnacious verbal assault while sparing other regional adversaries? If he is trying to get some parties to break the Opposition ranks, it means that the BJP's present bravado is for effect. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, begins a new column for Rediff.com.
Leaders of several Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties met on Saturday to take stock of the opposition's preparations leading up to the June 4 counting of votes polled in the Lok Sabha elections, and claimed they will get more than 295 seats, enough for them to form the next government.
An interim report on the action has also been sent by the field investigation wing of the income tax department to the Central Board of Direct Taxes in Delhi, the administrative body for the department.
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) will get a 'decisive mandate' in the Lok Sabha polls and may take even less than 48 hours to decide on its prime ministerial pick, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday, asserting that it stands to reason that the party which gets the maximum seats in the alliance will be a 'natural claimant' for its leadership.
'The 2020 assembly election was a Tejaswi Yadav election; whereas this is a Lalu Yadav election. It is his plan.'
Giving a message of larger opposition unity, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh will march with leaders of at least ten parties from Parliament House to President House on Tuesday and submit a memorandum against the new land bill.
There is a view that heavyweight portfolios like home, finance, defence and external affairs besides education and culture, two ministries with strong ideological hues, will be kept by the BJP, while its allies can get anywhere between five to eight cabinet berths.
Not all Opposition parties on board, say they are once bitten, twice shy.
'They have no incentive to be part of either the NDA or INDIA at this stage, but they may hedge their bets towards the winning coalition in the post-poll setting.'
Harivansh, a Janata Dal-United MP, is likely to get the support of 126 members in the Upper House, which has an effective strength of 244 MPs, sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party said.
Responding to the debate on the bill, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said the ban commercial surrogacy was "the need of the hour".
The original suggestion was to call it 'Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance', but the word 'democratic' was replaced with 'developmental' after Kumar and Yechury raised some objections saying it sounded too similar to the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), sources said.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Thursday said he will attend the inauguration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya in January if he is invited to the programme.
The former Congress president alleged that PM Modi had a "monopoly over corruption".
The Janata Dal-United leader maintained that having taken the initiative to bring parties opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party, he desired nothing for himself but admitted having stressed at the meeting the need to expedite seat-sharing arrangements.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday won four seats in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha, while the Rashtriya Janata Dal retained the Mokama assembly seat in the bypolls to seven assembly constituencies in six states.
The BJP senior leadership believes the YSRCP is a more reliable potential ally post-2024 Lok Sabha election than the TDP.
The opposition's Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) will hold a 'maha rally' at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan on March 31 to safeguard the country's interests and democracy, Aam Aadmi Party leader Gopal Rai said on Sunday.
'The water crisis is so obvious that people see no point begging for it from politicians.'
The alliance -- Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) -- has resolved to save the character of the republic 'being severely assaulted in a systematic manner by the Bharatiya Janata Party' and safeguard the idea of India as enshrined in the Constitution.
Initiating the debate on the bill from the opposition's side, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said that any delay in bringing the reservation into effect would be "gross injustice" to Indian women.
Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties will make all-out efforts to thwart the government's move to pass the bill even as the numbers are stacked in favour of the NDA with BJD and YSRCP pledging their support to the government on the bill.
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
In a veiled attack on Modi, Rahul said he has never come across a senior public representative who has constantly chosen silence in the face of untold violence against women.
'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.
Total of 59 seats spread across 6 states and one Union Territory will go to polls in the sixth phase on May 12.
While Bharatiya Janata Party's countrywide vote share shot up by over 12 per cent at the expense of other parties, the chart throws some contrary pictures as parties like Bahujan Samaj Party got no seat in spite of third-highest vote share, but Trinamool Congress and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam clinched over 30 seats each with less than 4 per cent vote share.