For the BJP, Telangana is a sunrise state in the South, while Karnataka is a southern success despite the ups and downs.
Muhammed Ameerul Islam was found guilty for raping and murdering the 30-year-old Dalit law student in Kerala last year.
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.
The BJP often forgets that in Dravidian Tamil Nadu, the voter does not mix religion, which is personal, and politics that is in the public sphere, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday urged party leaders in Kerala to shed their differences and fight the coming assembly polls unitedly
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.
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.
Counting of votes will take place on May 15.
A total of 1,203 candidates, including 109 women, are contesting for the 140 assembly seats in which a total of 2.61 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise.
Distancing himself from the comments, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the LDF's stand is not to personally attack Gandhi.
As voters queued up in Kerala to cast their ballot in the assembly polls on Wednesday, Union defence minister and senior Congress leader AK Antony reiterated that the United Democratic Front will come to power in the state with a thumping majority.
'What authority has a secular government to administer Hindu temples? When Hindu temples are ruled by secular governments, what religious freedom do Hindus have?'
Though it's been just five years at the helm, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress is fighting severe internal dissidence and would crumble like a pack of cards if it loses, says Devanik Saha.
The seats identified are from Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the Northeast.
It comes a day after party chief Sonia Gandhi proposed, at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee, the formation of a group to assess the party's losses in Kerala, Assam, West Bengal and Puducherry.
The Kerala Government will look into demands for changing the official spelling of the state to 'Keralam' to make it conform to the way it is pronounced in Malayalam, Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan told the Assembly on Wednesday.
UDF, LDF raise voice against cow slaughter ban backed by BJP leadership.
Parliamentarians and legislators across the country voted on Monday to elect India's 15th president, choosing between opposition pick Yashwant Sinha and National Democratic Alliance nominee Droupadi Murmu who is favoured to win the battle to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
'In each hartal, enormous amount of public money is wasted. The entire state comes to a standstill. How long can this go on?' 'Every year 3 crore people sit at home not because they support hartals, but because they are forced to do so.' 'This is part of a larger measure to curb democratic rights.'
Flaying both the Congress-led United Democratic Front and Bharatiya Janata Party-National Democratic Alliance and a section of the "right wing" media for trying to tarnish the image of the government and its development and welfare programmes, he said the people have rejected their 'vicious propaganda' by giving the Left a decisive mandate.
"No explanation can satisfy me," the Governor told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday evening, a day after making it clear that he would not remain a 'mute spectator' as he sought a report from the Pinarayi Vijayan government.
Asked how many seats INDIA bloc will get, Gandhi said, "Have you heard Sidhu Moose Wala's song '295'? So 295 (seats)."
'It is our aim to capture power and rule in Kerala. We may not be able to achieve our target in one attempt.' 'By just hammering once, you will not be able to break a rock; you need to hammer the rock several times.'
In a setback to the Congress in Kerala, senior party leader K Sudhakaran on Thursday said he would not contest against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Dharmadom constituency in northern Kannur district.
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.
Stalin said one cannot and should not decide the mood of the entire country based on the results of one state elections.
''This chief minister is so obstinate that he is ready to use the police to attain his goal.' 'Had he been more mature rather than obstinate, Kerala would not have reached a boiling point.'
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.
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.
Among the long queues of voters, there were some famous faces too who exercised their franchise.
The Maharashtra legislative assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a bill which makes Marathi a compulsory subject across all schools in the state. The development came on `Marathi Bhasha Din' (Marathi language day) which is celebrated on February 27, the birth anniversary of poet and Jnanpith award winner late V V Shirwadkar. The state legislative council had passed the legislation, titled `Maharashtra Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Marathi Language in Schools Bill, 2020', on Wednesday.
A 29-year-old woman from Bihar, suspected to have links with the alleged recruitment of youths from Kerala to Islamic State, is being questioned in Kerala's Kasaragod by the state police after being taken into custody from New Delhi.
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.
Congress-led United Democratic Front on Friday managed to wrest power from the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist-controlled Left Democratic Front in Kerala with a wafer-thin majority of two seats in the 140-member Assembly, in the closest poll battle in the state in three decades.
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.
65-year-old Sathasivam, whose appointment triggered debate in legal and political circles on the propriety of giving gubernatorial assignment to a former CJI, is the 23rd governor of the state.
