Given the dismal show of the Congress in the recently concluded assembly polls and the JMM eating into its vote bank, the possibility of Congress MLAs switching sides is not bleak, reports R Krishna Das.
Though the Congress, AAP and other Opposition parties may have high hopes and some positive takeaways to seize on from the results, it is the BJP which has a big headstart and is firmly in the lead.
Vice President Dhankar's and Law Minister Rijuju's recent interventions have the danger of destabilising the Constitutional equilibrium, cautions N Sathiya Moorthy.
Amid heightened buzz within a section of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party that the exit of Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa was on the cards, community factor seems to have come to the fore, with prominent Veerashaiva-Lingayat political leaders across party lines and seers throwing their weight behind him.
The Modi leadership could lose Election 2024 if a communal flare-up becomes cause for all-round catastrophe, warns N Sathiya Moorthy.
The reset button that the Bharatiya Janata Party has pressed on governance in the wake of the Covid-19 wave, which also saw a major overhaul by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of his own Cabinet, continues as Vijay Rupani on Saturday became the fourth chief minister from the party to go.
Shergill said the primary reason was that "the ideology and the vision of the current decision makers of the Congress is no longer in sync with the aspirations of the youth and modern India".
At its Jaipur meeting, the BJP will focus on this year's assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh while the Congress's Chintan Shivir in Udaipur will discuss how it can resurrect itself.
In Tripura, the challenge for the chief minister is less from the alliance partners and more from his own party, the BJP.
He laid stress on workers' connection with the ground and cited his own example when he was party in-charge for various assembly elections in the past.
While one headache for the Bharatiya Janata Party is over on Wednesday with the appointment of a new chief minister in Sadananda Gowda, the other one that remains is to keep the rival faction happy.
Chidambaram also stressed that there were lessons to be learnt by the Congress from the Gujarat loss, saying there is no such thing as a "silent" campaign in a hard-fought election.
'How and why did we lose so many seats in places where we were expected to win?'
CM Siddaramaiah announced the CID probe and warned of action against the seniors accused of harassing Ganapathy.
Among the 36 new faces in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers, eight are lawyers, four are doctors, two former IAS officers and four MBA degree holders, besides several engineers, making it an eclectic mix of professionals.
The Indian authorities have to reconfirm that Prabhakaran is dead. It may require seeking assistance from Interpol and also involve the re-opening of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, and more so, the investigations, formally or otherwise, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Wednesday expanded his 17-month old cabinet, inducting seven ministers, and indicated that excise minister H Nagesh would be dropped. Governor Vajubhai Vala administered the oath of office and secrecy to the ministers at a ceremony at the Raj Bhavan.
Anti-Congress regional parties may have felt the possible impact of Rahul's South-North yatra, pending a second East-West padayatra, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Janata Dal-Secular chief HD Kumaraswamy alleged "horse-trading" in the Karnataka Rajya Sabha elections claiming that Congress leader Siddaramaiah was pressurising JD-S MLAs to not vote for their own party but that of the candidate of the grand old party.
ndependent of the political fallout, which Stalin has sought to arrest through the withdrawal of the measures as fast as they were introduced, there are concerns about the way those decisions came to be taken, without adequate application of mind, not in official terms but in political and electoral contexts, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Though the chief minister indicated seven new faces will be inducted, he did not make it clear whether it will be a cabinet expansion or reshuffle.
If you are a BJP backer, you'd ask why Modi and Shah would even bother about Rahul Gandhi and Congress. But they do. Because they are serious politicians who win elections. That's why their priority is to ensure Rahul cannot shed his 'Pappu' image, points Shekhar Gupta.
Hitting out at Congress leaders for the party's performance in the Lok Sabha polls, Baig, a MLA from Shivajinagar, had recently held Siddaramaiah's "arrogance" and KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao's "immaturity" responsible for the "flop show."
The Congress, which is in the Opposition at the national level, has turned 'feeble and disintegrated', Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamana said on Saturday, and suggested that all anti-Bharatiya Janata Party parties, including the Sena, should come together under the UPA banner to provide a formidable alternative.
Later, Yeddyurappa said that his remarks were reported out of context.
With Eranna Bhimappa Kadadi and Ashok Jasti -- one Lingayat and one from the OBC -- named as BJP's candidates for the upper house, bypassing the recommendation of the state unit chief Nalin Kumar Kateel and Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa, as well as the core committee of the state, BJP leaders in Karnataka say the move is calculated to diminish the stature of the CM and create conditions for him to be eased out.
The toast of the Congress for their tenacity and the difficult choices they made to fulfil a five-month political commitment, their stories are many.
The Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said India is proud of its achievements and despite the scarcity of land and rainfall, it boasts of eight per cent of the world's biodiversity.
At 37, Annamalai Kuppusamy, is the youngest president Tamil Nadu BJP ever had and he is the first to rise to the position in the state unit within a year of joining the party.
Mining magnate Anil Agarwal has said Gujarat was picked over Maharashtra for the Vedanta-Foxconn's Rs 1.52 lakh crore semiconductor project based on 'professional and independent' advice, as the political row in Maharashtra over the facility escalated on Thursday.
'Parties which supported me were all threatened. This could hardly have been called a fair election.' 'This is Modi's India.'
The 84-year-old former external affairs minister said that there is a disconnect between the Congress leadership and the rank and file of the party.
If there is unity in the Opposition, it is only about regional parties other than the DMK not wanting Rahul Gandhi or any other Congress leader for prime minister, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra, Ramesh said, has been a "real booster dose" for the public relationship of the Congress.
There seems to be no "closure" for B S Yediyurappa, the Bharatiya Janata Party's "comeback man" in Karnataka, as he could never complete a full term in office, despite becoming the chief minister four times, surmounting odds. It's also too early to write a political obituary of the 78-year old Lingayat strongman and the 24X7 politician, the face of the party in the state for decades.
The PFI is alleged to have been continuously involved in anti-government propaganda and spreading the narrative that Muslims were being persecuted in India.
The Congress leadership has also asked its leaders not to make any public statements on sensitive issues.
AIADMK coordinator O Panneerselvam is said to be upset at his son Raveendranath Kumar, a Lok Sabha MP, being denied a ministerial chance for a second time in a row, beginning with the formation of Modi 2.0 in 2019, reveals N Sathiya Moorthy.
Thousands of people joined the Prime Minister in the mass Yoga demonstration in Mysuru.
The PMO said mass yoga demonstrations will be organised at 75 iconic locations across the country under the leadership of 75 Union ministers, with Modi attending the exercise at Mysore.
