The preferred format would be for the top BJP leadership in the government to reach out to the alliance leaders on a case-to-case basis.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday visited Tihar jail to meet two former party members of Parliament and L K Advani's ex-aide Sudheendra Kulkarni, currently under judicial custody in the cash-for-votes case, to express solidarity with them.
Accompanying Bharatiya Janata Party veteran L K Advani on his Jan Chetna Yatra, Swaraj was travelling to the Gandhi maidan in Patna from Hajipur when her health dipped.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha, who is in charge of party affairs in Karnataka, briefed the top party leadership about the crisis in the state following the suspension of talks between the BJP and JD (S) abt the impending power transfer
Shekhawat was accompanied by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other NDA leaders.
Amit Shah's fall has dented his boss Narendra Modi's eligibility to some day lead non-Congress centrist parties at the Centre. Here lies the real win for the Congress, as this will play as an advantage for its future leadership, says Sheela Bhatt.
Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Prakash Karat on Sunday said there was possibility of an alliance minus the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Advani has said that the BJP's response led to Sonia's resignation.
The Liberhan's leaked report has turned all the attention away from the sugarcane issue that was kicking up a storm in Parliament.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
In a startling revelation, expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh said on Wednesday that he had sent an advance copy of his latest book "Jinnah -- India-Partition-Independence" to senior party leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha L K. Advani, and therefore, this made his removal from the party after 30 years of association even more painful and shocking.
A move is afoot to extend the session of Parliament by three days from December 27 to 29 after a five day break from December 22, when it was scheduled to conclude, to facilitate adequate time for consideration of the Lokpal Bill. The Lokpal Bill is expected to be brought in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal has sounded Bharatiya Janata Party Parliamentary Party leader L K Advani on the move and has promised to get back.
Congress spokesman Manish Tewari has expressed concern about the agreement between Pakistan and Taliban about the implementation of Shariat laws in the Swat region. Tewari was speaking at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Samridh Bharat, Surakhshit Bharat (prosperous India, safer India) is the theme slogan of the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party's multi-crore media campaign for the coming Lok Sabha elections that is scheduled to be finalised by the party's prime ministerial candidate, L K Advani, by the month-end.
"We all know that we lost Rajasthan and Delhi due to our self goals. Those who were behind this self goal should understand that they may have damaged the party to some extent, but they have made huge damages for themselves," Advani said in his concluding address at the National Council.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader M Venkaiah Naidu has said that the party will discuss the strategy for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections at its national council meeting at Nagpur from February 6 to 8. Naidu, who was in Vijayawada to review arrangements for Vijaya Sankalp Yatra, a public meeting to be addressed by the party's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani on Wednesday, told mediapersons that 8,000 party functionaries from all over the country would participate.
Asked if it would not result in UPA disintegrating, Dwivedi snapped back: "Of course, there is UPA. But UPA does not fight elections. It is the political parties in UPA which contest elections."
The Speaker referred to the Home Ministry the matter related to Sanjeev Saxena, alleged aide of Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh, Sudheendra Kulkarni, a close aide of senior BJP leader L K Advani, and Suhail Hindustani, a day after the parliamentary inquiry committee said there was need for further investigation into the roles played by them.
The Karnataka unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party has unanimously agreed to welcome back former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa -- who had walked out of the party after he was asked to resign from the top post -- to improve its prospects in the state in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.
"The guidance and leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani has always been there and would continue," the BJP vice-president told reporters.
Congress Member of Parliament Jagdambika Pal, who served as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh for three days in 1998, had to face an awkward moment on Monday during the debate on the Liberhan Commission's report in the House, when the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party pointed out that the report listed him as a karsevak.Pal was the first Congress leader to speak during the Lok Sabha debate on the report, which indicts top BJP leaders L K Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh at the end of the three-day long Chintan Baithak blamed the Third Front for playing spoil sport and dividing the vote bank of the opposition parties, thereby helping the Congress to win the elections.
Raje is expected to meet party chief Rajnath Singh and L K Advani, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, in New Delhi on August 22, soon after they return from the ongoing chintan baithak (brainstorming session) in Shimla.
In a bid to end the impasse inParliament, the government reached out to the Bharatiya Janata Party saying it was ready for a discussion on 2-G spectrum issue and a Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe but rejected the demand for a JPC, which failed to cut ice with the main opposition.
Asserting that Pakistan should be given a 'categorical response', Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh said Saeed's release posed a 'grave threat to India's security'.
"Even when Vajpayee is ill in hospital, I was the first one to visit him, since the Congress believes he has contributed to the country," he said.
Gandhi said the party will defeat the saffron party and Narendra Modi in Gujarat just the way it was defeated in Ayodhya.
With important leaders raising questions over the way the party was going about in the aftermath of the Lok Sabha debacle, the Bharatiya Janata Party will have a two-day meeting of its national executive in New Delhi from Saturday, which is expected to witness fierce debate on the causes of the defeat and discuss ways for its revival.
Why did Modi single out the Congress and its leaders for the most pugnacious verbal assault while sparing other regional adversaries? If he is trying to get some parties to break the Opposition ranks, it means that the BJP's present bravado is for effect. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, begins a new column for Rediff.com.
Sensing an impending storm at its crucial meeting on June 20 to discuss its poor show in the recent Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to set up an in-house committee to analyse the reasons for its electoral defeat.The decision to set up the committee is expected to be finalised at the party's 'core committee' meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday. Besides party President Rajnath Singh and Opposition leader L K Advani, senior leaders will also attend.
The Opposition's stand on the Ayodhya consecration is puzzling. Their only objection seems to be that the BJP has hijacked a religious event for political benefit. In saying this, the Opposition is either being naive or hypocritical, argues Jyoti Punwani.
Talking tough, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday said its alliance with the Shiv Sena for the Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra cannot proceed if the latter wants to back Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar for the prime ministerial post.
Sonia Gandhi and L K Advani are faced with a lot of political headache ahead of the Lok Sabha polls with their allies trying to extract maximum seats in the seat-sharing talks. Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party have become the favourite punching bags for allies wanting to extract maximum seats from their rival groups being led by the two national parties.
Unfazed by BJP's rebuff, former vice-president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat today said he would definitely contest the upcoming Lok Sabha election if his health permitted.
'We could have instead chosen 'India Rising' to project the reality'.
Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari on Friday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of double standards."When the Ahmedabad serial blasts case was allegedly cracked, the chief minister of Gujarat and leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha L K Advani did not waste a second in calling press conferences, both in Ahmedabad and Delhi, to pat themselves on the back. The BJP will have to answer as to why it is trying to suppress the investigations into the Modasa blasts? he said.
BJP MPs refused to allow the house to function till the railway minister apprised them of the accident.
On the eve of the Trust motion, National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon briefed most of the UPA speakers, including Rahul Gandhi, on the intricate details of nuclear deal to prepare them well for the debate.
"We have strong reservations about the impact of Indo-US nuclear deal on foreign policy aspects but for us the top priority is to stop the Bharatiya Janata Party and L K Advani from coming to power. That is the why the MIM has decided to support the UPA government," Asad Owaisi told a press conference in Hyderabad.
