Tamil Nadu, which boasted of as many as nine ministers in the UPA-II government in 2009, did not get any representation in Modi 2.0 government.
Party leaders, sources said, maintained that Congress cannot afford to have a new leader at the helm for rebuilding the organisation at this juncture and that the responsibility for the defeat is collective and not individual.
The Bhartiya Janata Party along with the Lok Janshakti Party are all set to fight a pitched political battle against the ruling Janata Dal-United and also the Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal combine in Bihar. But there's one thing in common between the five major parties of the state -- all of them have fielded bahubalis, criminal-turned-politicians and their wives in the upcoming Lok Sabha election.
Senior leaders Damodar Raja Narsimha, Ponnala Lakshmaiah and Kunduru Jana Reddy figure in the list of 111 Congress candidates for assembly elections in Telangana released by the party on Monday night, ending two days of suspense.
Only three per cent of women candidates have been allotted tickets in Jammu and Kashmir assembly polls.
Union Minister Manish Tewari, who has been hospitalised due to a heart ailment, is unlikely to contest the Lok Sabha polls, sources said on Sunday.
In 2019, the voter turnout saw a decreasing trend from the first to the seventh phase, which took place on Sunday.
Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan has fielded himself and two close relatives including his son and brother, to contest the Lok Sabha polls in Bihar.
Will the AIADMK acknowledge the role of CAA and the anti-CAA protests, both inside the state and outside, as among the causes for the current electoral reversal, as many in the party now want? It is unlikely to be so, but then the pressure will increase on the leadership to reassess the BJP alliance at one level and the 'blind support' for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's controversial policies on the other, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The 2014 Lok Sabha election saw the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modi storm to power at the Centre with a "triple century", giving the National Democratic Alliance an unexpected 336 seats in the Lok Sabha .
Union Minister P Chidambaram has opted out of the Lok Sabha election with the party on Thursday night nominating his son Karti from his constituency Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu while another Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was brought as a candidate from Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir.
Mamata said TMC will win all 42 LS seats from WB.
"Nobody other than Modi can give a strong government," Shah said.
In yet another jolt to the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in Madhya Pradesh, the party member of Legislative Assembly from Maihar seat in Satna district has joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Barring a stone pelting incident at Soibagh area in Budgam district, the situation was peaceful in the areas where the polling was held, the officials said.
Assembly elections in Telangana and residuary Andhra Pradesh may not be held along with the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
That's a deficit the NDA will have to make up with the help of 'friendly' alliance partners, the very groupings the PM has said are 'family-run'.
Congress candidate Francisco Sardinha on Saturday won the Mormugao Lok Sabha seat by a margin of over 40,000 votes.
'Yeh dil maange more' seems to be mantra for over two dozen former chief ministers of various states who are contesting upcoming Lok Sabha elections on different party tickets.
'We were ready to drink the poison of the Congress, but the statements show that the Congress is still seeped in its arrogance'
The Bihar unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party has invited party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to contest from any Lok Sabha seat in Bihar, a senior leader said on Wednesday.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath expressed confidence that the BJP will win over 74 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
The Modi juggernaut is all set to paint the five south Indian states in saffron colours, writes R Rajagopalan.
The Aam Aadmi Party's candidate Savita Bhatti on Sunday opted out of Lok Sabha polls from the lone Chandigarh parliamentary seat. Savita, widow of comedian and satirist Jaspal Bhatti shot off an e-mail to the AAP office in Delhi mentioning that she is "not interested" in contesting the general elections.
Priyanka Gandhi was earlier actively involved in key decision making in the party along with her mother and brother, including the selection of new chief ministers for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh recently.
Rao had quit the UPA ministry last month.
Union Minister Praful Patel and Maharashtra minister Chhagan Bhujbal, who is the Nationalist Congress Party's OBC face, are among 18 candidates announced by the party on Thursday for the Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has won the Hamirpur Lok Sabha by-election, with its candidate Anurag Thakur drubbing his nearest rival, the Congress's O P Rattan, by over 1,74,000 votes.
Former Lok Sabha speaker P A Sangma's daughter Agatha Kongkhal will be the Nationalist Congress Party candidate for the May 22 by-election to Meghalaya's Tura Lok Sabha seat. Sangma has never lost from the Tura parliamentary seat since 1977, even though he changed his party affiliation from the Congress to the Trinamool Congress and then to the NCP.A law graduate registered with the Delhi Bar Council, Agatha has a string of degrees.
Apparently angry over the delay in finalisation of seats among United Progressive Alliance allies in Bihar, Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan on Saturday stepped up pressure on the Rashtriya Janata Dal, threatening to go it alone if an alliance does not happen soon. "I have directed my party workers to be ready to contest on all 40 seats in Bihar as the alliance talks do not appear to have fructified till now," said Paswan.
What does Siddaramaiah need to do if he has to continue as the chief minister of Karnataka? He has to win the Congress 20 seats, and sources within the party tell Rediff.com, and that he is under a lot of pressure. Vicky Nanjappa reports.
Mallikarjun Kharge was on Wednesday elected the Congress president after defeating Shashi Tharoor in an electoral contest, the sixth in the party's 137-year-old history.
Banker Meera Sanyal and activist Mayank Gandhi figured in the Aam Aadmi Party's first list of probable candidates released late on Thursday night for forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra while no senior leader's name featured from Delhi and Haryana.
A countrywide survey done ABP News and Nielsen spells doom for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.If Lok Sabha polls were held right now, says the survey, the UPA will win only 136 of the 543 seats in the Lower House.
S Bangrappa of the Samajwadi Party on Sunday won the June 2 bypoll to the Shimoga Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka.
In a surprise development, former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and sitting Lok Sabha member of Parliament from Bhopal, Kailash Joshi said on Wednesday that he has asked veteran BJP leader L K Advani to contest Lok Sabha polls from Bhopal.
Dimple Yadav, who won unopposed the bye-election to Kannauj seat in Uttar Pradesh, took oath in Hindi and in the name of God. Reddy, who had quit the Lok Sabha as a Congress member, was re-elected from Nellore in Andhra Pradesh as a candidate of the YSR Congress
"I came in between" Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Tuesday, taking a dig at the leaders of the Congress and the Samajwadi Party who had formed a coalition to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Telugu Desam Party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam continued to raise the issue of the dam over the River Cauvery and special status for Andhra Pradesh in both the Houses. While the Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the day soon after it met at 11.00 am, the Lok Sabha saw repeated adjournments, but managed to pass the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill amid the din.
