If the process becomes completely online, there will be no intervention from a state government at any level.
These few and far between 'sops for votes' are the reason why the Jenu Kuruba community, which is fighting the government for decades for even the basic amenities -- like land rights, access to water and electricity -- bother to cast their votes, said J K Thimma, head of the settlement.
Even as the grand old party seeks to promote opposition unity ahead of the hustings next year, Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, however, would be conspicuous by her absence at the event at Sree Kanteerava Stadium.
An average of nearly 78 per cent voters exercised their franchise to elect new assemblies in the key southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala and the Union territory of Puducherry on Wednesday.
Rampant corruption by Congress ministers must be counted as the single biggest factor to prompt the electorate to hand over a thumping mandate to the Communist parties, says M K Bhadrakumar.
"All students supporting the Left will participate in the campaign along with Kanhaiya. For the first time, the nation can see the power of the youth of Left," Yechury said.
For the BJP, Telangana is a sunrise state in the South, while Karnataka is a southern success despite the ups and downs.
'Man-made interventions vastly increased the magnitude of the tragedy.'
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and the Union Territory of neighbouring Puducherry are likely to go to polls in April or May.
'Unlike in other states, minorities form a significant number in Kerala. They have money and political power. In such a society, the emergence of a new communal power is not a healthy thing.'
Militant group Al-Badr has claimed responsibility for the twin suicide attack that rocked Samba sector in Jammu region on Thursday.
In Odisha and Kerala, the BJP is being accused of engineering splits in the BJD and the Congress
Singh has questioned the reliability of the EVMs on more than one occasion following the Congress' defeat in the recent assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
By keeping the Sanatana Dharma row alive and adding the Ayodhya temple consecration scheduled for January 22 and adding the free darshan promise from four polled states to the entire country, the BJP may have a self-fulfilling concoction, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
With assembly polls to four key states and one Union Terrority at hand, Vicky Nanjappa finds that one in four elected representatives has a criminal record.
Scripting history, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday stormed to power in Assam bagging a government in the north east for the first time dethroning the Congress which also lost Kerala while Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee retained power in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal with spectacular victories.
Communist Party of India-Marxist Polit Bureau member Pinarayi Vijayan will be the next Chief Minister of Kerala.
Looks like all political parties have thrown caution to the winds where 33 per cent reservation for women is concerned. Take the examples of Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal which recently went to polls.
'If you want to really grow, it has to be geometric progression like it happened at the Centre or Haryana or Tripura, where you made a quantum jump.' 'This is possible in Kerala provided we present a better alternative with a great leadership, but the current leadership is busy fixing each other.'
Asked how many seats INDIA bloc will get, Gandhi said, "Have you heard Sidhu Moose Wala's song '295'? So 295 (seats)."
Along with Modi, senior BJP leaders including Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, all ministers in Modi 2.0 Cabinet, took oath as cabinet ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In all, 71 ministers were sworn-in along with Modi, taking the strength of the Union council to 72.
Biju Ramesh's campaign may be different from what voters in Kerala are used to. But he is determined to do things his way... or rather, Amma's way.
The saffron party will use Lord Ayyappa the same way it made use of Lord Ram in the north to take away the Nair vote and make electoral inroads in the state.
If you have an appetite for crowds and the visual spectacle of many focused on one task or activity, a pooram will engage you, notes Shyam G Menon.
The lack of clarity on who is next in line, when the time comes, as indeed it will one day some day, reflects poorly on the management of the world's largest political party. It scarcely need be said that a squabble between the contenders, Shah and Yogi, is exactly what the doctor ordered for the Opposition, notes Krishna Prasad.
Creating a positive reform that does away with an official who constitutes a flawed aspect of Indian democracy will allow the BJP to rightfully claim this as one of its positive legacies, suggests Karan P Shah.
Addressing an election rally at Pattambi, Kumar deplored the statement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi comparing Kerala with Somalia.
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.
The six week-wait for who will rule Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Assam and West Bengal will end on Friday as counting of votes for assembly elections begins.
Undeterred by attacks from within the Congress for her comments on government formation in Delhi, Sheila Dikshit on Sunday stuck to her position, saying she did not back Bharatiya Janata Party's bid to power and was only explaining the "factual and constitutional" provision on the issue.
The party was trounced in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and is now left with only Himachal Pradesh in the north. It is ruling in only three states on its own and is in power in Bihar and Jharkhand as a junior partner in alliance with regional parties.
Muhammed Ameerul Islam was found guilty for raping and murdering the 30-year-old Dalit law student in Kerala last year.
The suspense over whether Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will contest the polls from Amethi and Raebareli respectively continued.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday urged party leaders in Kerala to shed their differences and fight the coming assembly polls unitedly
An estimated 223 people have lost their lives since August 8 in Kerala's worst floods in decades that has caused damage worth more than Rs 20,000 crore.
Pinarayi Vijayan is a name not many Indians are familiar with, but few state leaders have such a strangehold over their party as the secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist's Kerala unit has. Can you think of the leader of any other state political unit preventing his party's chief minister from getting a ticket to contest an assembly election?
The statement came after chief ministers of West Bengal, Punjab, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh announced that the law is "unconstitutional" and has no place in their respective states.
Vijay has a lot of young and middle-aged women fans, but as voters, they are possibly now with the DMK, or remain with the AIADMK. Recapturing this constituency would have helped Vijay's political launch and the GOAT script and dialogues could have gone a long way in helping out. But the kind of script and screenplay and the unusually and equally unnecessary long run-time (3 hours, 3 minutes) that GOAT offers takes the film experience over the heads of those that are not familiar with secret agents and uranium theft in Tamil cinema, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Stalin said one cannot and should not decide the mood of the entire country based on the results of one state elections.
Distancing himself from the comments, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the LDF's stand is not to personally attack Gandhi.
