Gopakumar said all of them were hopeful that they would step out of the prison "if Modiji intervened" but had no idea how long it would take.
On poll eve, both the BJP and the Congress claimed they were headed towards a majority and would form the government.
If Priyanka wins the Lok Sabha bypolls, it would be for the first time that three members of the Gandhi family will be in Parliament. Her mother Sonia Gandhi is a Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan.
Mamata Banerjee fended off a spirited challenge by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal with a landslide victory for her Trinamool Congress on Sunday for a third consecutive term and the saffron party and the Left Democratic Front were poised to form government again in Assam and Kerala respectively while the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam stormed back to power in Tamil Nadu after a gap of 10 years.
The JD-U Rajya Sabha MP said Nitish Kumar has built his image such that makes him the best fit for being the convenor of the opposition grouping.
The opposition party also said that it would like to remind the BJP that Hindu Mahasabha president Syama Prasad Mookerjee aligned with Jinnah's Muslim League to form the government in Bengal during the British rule.
'Metro man' E Sreedharan, a much-admired technocrat who is credited with changing the face of public transport system in the country, will join the Bharatiya Janata Party giving a boost to the saffron party ahead of the assembly polls in Kerala.
The "venom" that the Congress leader has been spewing against the prime minister in his "political frustration" has now turned into an insult to the country, Irani alleged.
'Barring Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the BJP will may make inroads in Karnataka, Andhra and Telangana in 2024.'
She said it was a strange thing for her to know that for the time being he has been disqualified from even fighting another election for eight years.
Nemom was one of the segments where the BJP had pinned its hope the most in the present election to open its account in the assembly.
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
Unfortunately, the best man does not always win, but I feel enriched by the experience of the campaign and getting to know Rajeev Chandrasekhar, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Some farmer outfits on Friday threw their weight behind the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) woman constable who allegedly slapped actor and Bharatiya Janata Party MP-elect Kangana Ranaut, saying the entire sequence leading to the incident needs to be properly investigated.
BJP MLA Purnesh Modi, complainant in the defamation case against Rahul Gandhi, has filed a caveat in the Supreme Court seeking that he be heard if the Congress leader moves a plea challenging the high court verdict refusing to stay his conviction in the Modi surname remark case.
In fresh escalation of political violence in poll-bound Kerala, a 28-year-old Youth Congress worker was hacked to death allegedly by Democratic Youth Federation of India workers at Evoor in Alapuzha on Tuesday even as the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India - Marxist workers clashed in Thiruvananthapuram district leaving at least 30 injured.
'What happened to Andhra Pradesh? It is the perfect example of the transientness of Federal Units.' 'Federalism is a transient thing in this country.'
While Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has made his national ambitions amply clear, even rechristening his party to aid the process, his Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin insists he is already in the national scene and used his birthday rally on March 1 to not only strongly pitch for the Congress as a force to reckon with in the efforts to dislodge the Narendra Modi-led dispensation at the Centre, but also sought to shoot down the prospects of a Third Front.
Personal competence, where it should have been acknowledged and appreciated, was sacrificed for that oft heard line: Party-is-supreme. It angered that at a time when lives are at stake amidst the pandemic, the government didn't deem continuity in leadership important for the health portfolio, observes Shyam G Menon.
In the first phase of the Lok Sabha polls, there were 135 women candidates while in the second phase, there were 100 women candidates, bringing the combined total for the first two phases to 235 women candidates.
Despite consumer inflation, joblessness, etc, ordinary voters still think Modi is the best to rule the country.< Going into the poll with a tried and tested prime ministerial candidate is a huge plus for the BJP --- and a huge handicap for the Opposition, points out Virendra Kapoor.
Sources said Rahul Gandhi is likely to contest from Rae Bareli, but a final call is yet to be taken by the first family of the Congress.
'The PM who is first among equals, who has to listen to others, take their point of view into account and who would have to be a good manager'
Announcing the party manifesto at the state headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, national spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata party said that the BJP will focus on the poor and the downtrodden in the state. He added that the party will be providing homes to the homeless if elected to power in the state.
Opposing the contention, the state government had argued that the Railways Act was only applicable to Special Railway Projects and SilverLine did not fall in that category.
'The CPM is not in a mood to introspect, and their total failure on all fronts is being covered up by crimes such as maiming and killing political opponents,' alleges Bharatiya Janata Party's Kerala president V Muraleedharan on the eve of his rally to protest the murder of his party activists in Kannur.
Bharatiya Janata Party's national secretary in-charge of Kerala, Muralidhar Rao, on Monday said that the national leaders of his party, including the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushama Swaraj, will be camping in the state for the electioneering of the BJP candidates.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday launched a stinging attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing him of not addressing the problem of Manipur even during the debate on the violence in the northeastern state in Parliament a few days ago.
Whether Rajeev Chandrasekhar wins or not, Thiruvananthapuram will likely never see such an interesting contest again.
In a fresh flare-up of political clashes in Kerala's Kannur district, two BJP workers and a CPI-M activist were stabbed to death and one person was injured in separate incidents in Thalassery, triggering panic and tension in the politically sensitive belts of the town on Wednesday, the police said. Violence broke out after the stabbing of a BJP worker Sumesh (40) by suspected CPI-M workers at Narangapuram in the town at 3 pm. He suffered serious head injuries and one of hi
We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
A controversy erupted on Tuesday after the opposition parties tagged a video of DMK leader A Raja purportedly showing him making remarks that India has never been a nation, but a subcontinent with diverse practices and cultures, prompting strong response from the BJP which described the comments as a call for 'balkanisation' of the the country and demanded for his arrest.
Both the BJP leaders asserted that Gandhi's disqualification was a natural outcome of the law as the Supreme Court has made it clear that a lawmaker stands disqualified from the time of his conviction.
His fresh attack came a day after he said the government is coming up with 'excuses' to stop the Kanyakumari-to-Kashmir yatra, which is currently in Haryana and will enter the national capital on Saturday.
More than 750 constituencies spread across four states and one union territory will go to the polls on Tuesday
'How come the BJP won even in the Muslim belt? I am 100% sure that the BJP would not win in the Muslim belt.'
The Congress chief, however, said he was not expecting any cooperation from the prime minister and the BJP-led central government for the development of Wayanad and Kerala.
Every passing day featuring parties within the INDIA alliance sniping at each other at state level is bad publicity for the alliance particularly given the proximity of the 2024 general elections, asserts Shyam G Menon.
'The entire electorate of Wayanad is joyful. Rahulji is with us and we are with him wherever he is.'
'What the UP administration wanted was political mileage, and they also had the silent approval from the central government.'
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