erala and Tamil Nadu will be going to polls on May 16 and ahead of the assembly elections, Rediff Labs analyses who's been making the most buzz
State after state has imposed an alcohol ban, and has had to retreat, unable to address the financial and administrative fallout. Are we set for more of this cycle, asks Aditi Phadnis.
'The BJP will not be able to create dictatorship of the kind it is perhaps dreaming of.' 'We have Bengal as the biggest example.'
Addressing an election rally at Pattambi, Kumar deplored the statement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi comparing Kerala with Somalia.
With the Communist Party of India-Marxist state secretariat deciding not to provide Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan a seat to contest in the coming assembly elections, sources say that the Congress-led United Democratic Front is all set to emerge as a clear winner.
A dominant force in the country's politics for decades, the grand old party's free fall continued as it lost Punjab to AAP and finished with just two seats out of 403 in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.
'For the last two elections, the Congress manifesto has been thrown into the dustbin.' 'This manifesto will also be thrown into the dustbin.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that the BJP has emerged as the "third force" in Kerala that will replace the two fronts in the next year's assembly elections.
Another meeting convened by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge at his residence in New Delhi on Wednesday with the floor leaders of the INDIA constituents in Parliament will, however, go ahead according to its schedule to formulate the opposition strategy for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The Left Democratic Front government, which assumed office in Kerala on Wednesday, decided to handover the probe into the brutal rape and murder of a 30-year old Dalit woman to a new team
The work we have done in the south and the northeast over the last 10 years under Prime Minister Modi's leadership, we have started getting results of the same, he said.
It may well be possible to defeat Modi. But nobody seems to know how, points out Vir Sanghvi.
Just as the superstars of Indian cricket only play IPL and international fixtures and ignore the Ranji and Mushtaq Ali trophies in domestic cricket, Narendra Modi should play a very limited role in state assembly elections, argues Sudhir Bisht.
Allegations of electronic voting machines malfunctioningreturned to haunt the Election Commission as four Lok Sabha seats and nine assembly constituencies went for bypolls on Monday across 10 states with moderate-to-heavy voting amid prestige at stake for the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as opposition parties ahead of the 2019 general elections.
The Election Commission on Friday rebuffed Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan for his reported statement that central police force (CPF) personnel would be confined to barracks during by-polls to three assembly seats in the state tomorrow.
The Congress party continues to be racked by arbitrary decision-making and the absence of accountability.
Maharashtra Opposition leader Ajit Pawar, who belongs to Nationalist Congress Party, on Saturday said Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) are trustworthy and the system cannot be manipulated by a single person.
Even if the BJP gets 60, 70, or even 100 per cent of the votes in the seats where it scored more than 50 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, these will still add up to only 224 seats, argues Shekhar Gupta.
The setback promises to have far-reaching ramifications within and outside the party as it is likely to fuel voices that have challenged the Gandhi family's leadership and also those who have been a votary of a non-Congress front to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party.
'Mamata Didi is the only politician who can take on the might of Modi.'
'Kerala will witness a lot of fireworks in Wayanad and a kind of fight that it has not witnessed so far.'
The rejig may take place before the assembly election results for Assam, Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
While the term of 288-member Maharashtra assembly ends on November 9, that of the 90-member Haryana assembly expires on November 2.
A bench of justices S Abdul Nazeer and V Ramasubramanian said the Kerala Police Act was the successor legislation of certain police enactments of the colonial era which aimed at scuttling the democratic aspirations of the indigenous population.
The Act deals with automatic disqualification of MPs and state legislators upon being convicted and sentenced for two years or more in a criminal case.
'Once I went to meet an MLA with a complaint, but he refused to even listen to me.' 'I was insulted. That is when I decided not to vote for anyone.'
During his whirlwind election tour in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, also the United Progressive Alliance's chief interlocutor, tells Saubhadra Chatterji the government has its own way of moving against corruption:
'When an individual becomes authoritarian, you can overthrow the individual easily. 'When the system becomes authoritarian, whoever challenges the system will be called a criminal or an anti-national.'
Terming the Kerala government's apprehension over safety of the Mullaperiyar dam as "unnecessary", Home Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday claimed it was borne out of "bypoll fear".
Tandon said, after the review meeting at Madurai and Chennai on Tuesday, they would decide on the Tamil Nadu election date.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will be in Gujarat's Surat city on Monday to file an appeal before a sessions court against his conviction in a criminal defamation case, his lawyer said on Sunday.
It is not much of an issue just now, but it could become one if the idea of caste census captures socio-political imagination, going beyond electoral tags and identities, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The plea filed by advocate Ashok Pandey asked whether the conviction of an accused can be stayed by the court of appeal and if, based on it, a Lok Sabha member's disqualification can be revoked.
Talking to reporters at a media briefing, 33-year-old Sreesanth said his name has been cleared by the court in a match-fixing case and he is, therefore, not worried about any Opposition attack on him regarding the controversy.
She called on all "progressive forces" to join hands to fight the "oppressive BJP regime".
Sivadasan noted that the post of the governor is being misused by the central government to forward its agenda in the states.
The mandate will help further the development agenda in these states, with good governance and policy reforms taking centrestage
There was no move to advance elections to the assembly in Kerala which would be held in the mid-May next year, Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi said on Tuesday.
After a marathon discussion lasting nine hours, the motion was defeated with 87 members opposing it and 40 supporting in the 140-member house with two vacancies.
