Leaders from 26 opposition parties, in power individually or in alliance in Delhi and 10 states, are meeting in Bengaluru to discuss strategy to take on the Narendra Modi-led NDA in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which pulled off a hat-trick of wins in Haryana by bucking anti-incumbency, managed to make significant inroads into the Dalit seats and Jat strongholds.
'Lalu is Lalu. His presence in the election campaign will make a difference for the Mahagathbandhan.'
'When voting clause by clause on Waqf came up in the JPC, the TDP and JD-U supported the BJP on each and every clause.'
Senior Janata Dal-United leader Dhananjay Singh pitched for Opposition unity ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and said party workers in Uttar Pradesh want Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to contest the elections from the state's Phulpur constituency.
Members from the Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal too were part of the group, their participation seen as another indication that the party is all set to switch sides from the SP to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Modi will stay in Patna overnight after the road show and address election meetings on May 13 in three Lok Sabha constituencies: Hajipur, Vaishali and Saran.
He is not just under attack from his opponent Shiv Chandra Ram of the RJD, but also by his uncle Paras.
There are states that could swing either way and change the results of the 2024 general election.
The government has to specify what it intends to do with caste census data. It will be closely tracked if the government would simultaneously move towards removing the present 50% bar on reservations using means which are permitted in law. If this is not done, the entire exercise will become meaningless and could boomerang on the BJP, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday clinched a stunning hat-trick win in Haryana overcoming anti-incumbency and dashing Congress' hopes of a comeback while the National Conference-Congress combine pulled off a spectacular victory in maiden elections in Jammu and Kashmir after abrogation of Article 370 in 2019.
Commenting on the seat sharing in the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), Samajwadi Party president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday said in Ballia that a decision will be made as soon as Surya Uttarayan occurs.
Nitish Kumar wants to assure the BJP leadership that he will continue to be a part of the NDA. But he also wants to secure a larger number of seats for his party in the 2025 assembly elections in Bihar.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla is expected to name the committee's chairperson soon.
"The turnout in the four Lok Sabha seats was low as compared to the 2019 polls but on the basis of feedback received from these constituencies, we are confident of winning these. People are fed up with false promises made by BJP leaders," he said.
Assisted by his personal staff and gunmen, Gowda, with a cannula on his right hand, attended multiple election meetings on Tuesday and addressed people sitting in his chair as he cited knee pain.
Janata Dal-Secular leader and former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Wednesday hinted that his party was interested in the agriculture portfolio in the new National Democratic Alliance government.
The padyatra concluded at the Lal Chowk area on Sunday with Rahul Gandhi unfurling the national flag but the official closing would take place on Monday in Srinagar, amid snowfall.
In the last six assembly elections, the state voted the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress to power alternately.
The TDP and the LJP also supported the Bill being sent to a parliamentary committee for further examination.
An invitation will also be sent to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, TDP president Chandrababu Naidu and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
'JD-U wants to emerge as the single largest party in Bihar after the next assembly polls by contesting more seats than the BJP.'
The Congress appeared to have bounced back in the state's political landscape after suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of the AAP in the 2022 Punjab assembly polls.
The only occasion when the BJP had 100 seats in the Upper House was in 2022.
'The BJP's numbers in this government are almost the same as those enjoyed by the Congress under P V Narasimha Rao when the reform process was kicked off in 1991.' 'As before, the only constraints on the prime minister's actions are internal, not external.' 'They come from his own assessment of the political consequences of any action,' points out Mihir S Sharma.
Questions are being raised on the future of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) as differences among its constituents come to the fore and several parties call for serious introspection by the Congress after a string of debilitating electoral losses.
Seventeen of the 25 ministers in the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government in Rajasthan, including Govind Ram Meghwal, who also led the party's campaign committee, lost in the assembly elections.
The Rampur assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh which fell vacant following the disqualification of SP leader Mohammad Azam Khan is one of the five seats going for the bypolls.
Yadav denied any possibility for a post-poll alliance between the BJP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal's Jayant Choudhary.
On the eve of the counting of votes in Rajasthan, both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have started reaching out to independent candidates, including rebels, and smaller parties.
A video had surfaced on social media which purportedly showed SP leader Mukesh Siddharth making the controversial statement.
Nitish slammed the opposition and expressed confidence that they will be defeated in the next Lok Sabha elections.
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav on Thursday asserted that 'something major' will take place, after Lok Sabha results are out, in Bihar where Chief Minister Nitish Kumar seemed to be 'not going along well' with ally Bharatiya Janata Party.
Leaders of 24 non-BJP parties have been invited for the meet on June 17 and 18, the first edition of which saw the participation of 15 parties.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, BJP national president JP Nadda and several other famous faces were seen at polling booths, exercising their franchise in the final and seventh phase of the Lok Sabha polls on Saturday.
The BJP's vote share in Cuttack went up from 9 per cent in 2009 to 38 per cent in 2019.
There is a strong possibility of opposition parties coming together to fight the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said on Monday, stressing that he has had good talks with them and many will join hands gradually.
Here are the number of seats won by parties in all states and Union Territories in the Lok Sabha elections.
'Every Haryana assembly seat has its own unique problems to earn victory for a political party and you as a politician need to know what are those issues and tackle it.'
