There is no use of the BJP targeting the likes of Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, directly by the party's political bosses, both in Delhi and the respective state capitals, or even using the Raj Bhavans to fire those salvos from. Successive elections have proved that it's counter-productive, if anything. But the BJP is yet to understand it, acknowledge it, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
This time, it might start between March 5 and 12 in view of polls, government sources said, citing that counting of votes is scheduled for March 4.
The Congress is of the view that firming up of proper opposition alliances in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra is crucial.
Political analysts say that with 32 per cent vote share, the BJP would still be ahead of what BSP had polled in 2007 or SP in 2012.
The BSP chief's brother Anand Kumar has been appointed as the party's national vice president and her nephew Akash Anand as its national coordinator.
Gandhi said the party will defeat the saffron party and Narendra Modi in Gujarat just the way it was defeated in Ayodhya.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Rajasthan is all set to vote on Saturday to elect members of a new assembly with the Bharatiya Janata Party aiming to unseat the ruling Congress, which is fighting hard to change the trend of alternate governments in the state.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's campaign against the Centre's meat exports policy is likely to be replicated by senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in western Uttar Pradesh to increase the party's vote share in the Lok Sabha elections.
That he hasn't done so yet, has continued to be active on the political street, in public debate and on social media, signals an important change. It will give his party hope. Maybe the achievement of reducing Mr Modi well below the majority mark will now motivate him to stay committed, observes Shekhar Gupta
Nandi had defeated, by a margin of more than 14,000 votes, Keshri Nath Tripathi who was a five-time MLA, and had served thrice as the Uttar Pradesh assembly speaker and was the BJP's state unit president at that time.
With 'go solo' being the mantra for Congress after its success in Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh, the party is now set to dump Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal in the Bihar assembly elections scheduled later this year. An indication to this effect came when All Indian Congress Committee in-charge of the state Jagdish Tytler and Pradesh Congress Committee president Anil Sharma recently met party president Sonia Gandhi.
The Lok Sabha was remained disrupted on Tuesday as the Congress moved an adjournment motion in the House.
Officials said most of the preparations are complete and the counting will start at 8 am on Saturday.
The opposition parties snatched the high-profile Kairana LS seat in from BJP with a united force.
Opinion was divided on the success or otherwise of Rahul Gandhi's hard campaign in Uttar Pradesh during which he toured 207 constituencies.
Rahul also held a 75-km long road show and a Nukkad Sabha in Haridwar.
Shivpal was given 'Z' security in 2018 by the Adityanath government.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com does a deep dive into four elections when Narendra Modi resorted to anti-Muslim fervour and points out that Hindu-Muslim politics does not necessarily mean victory for the BJP.
As many as 624 candidates are in the fray in this round of voting being held in Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Sitapur, Hardoi, Unnao, Lucknow, Rae Bareli, Banda, and Fatehpur districts.
The Bhartiya Janata Party is back to adopting its old Hindu hardline agenda to garner votes in the on-going civic polls across Uttar Pradesh, where the party had failed to make a mark at the March 2012 state assembly elections.
The induction of Shiv Pratap Shukla, a Brahmin face in the BJP, is being seen as a well-calculated move to keep the upper caste in good humour.
'When the assembly elections happened in West Bengal, it was predicted that Mamata didi will win only by a thin margin but she won with a huge margin'
Having alerted her partymen on Wednesday about the possibility of an early Lok Sabha poll, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati is all set to plan her cards for the next electoral battle.
BJP candidate was attacked in West Bengal, EVM glitches were reported in New Delhi.
The parties seem to have forgotten their two decade-old antagonism for a 'political revolution' which they hope would 'last long'.
Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray chief Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday claimed a "Godhra-like" incident may take place during the "return journey" of the large number of people expected to converge at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh from across the nation for the inauguration of the Ram temple.
The bypolls in Goa, which is under President's rule, are crucial as their outcome is likely to rekindle efforts for formation of a popular government.
The fate of 961 candidates, including Union ministers Giriraj Singh, Subhash Bhamre, S S Ahluwalia and Babul Supriyo of the BJP and former Union ministers Salman Khurshid and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury of the Congress, will be decided by about 12.79 core voters in the fourth phase.
In the five years in politics Priyanka Gandhi has undeniably emerged as a thorn in the BJP flesh, notes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. It is time that this thorn is twisted a wee bit more when the elections have become far more uncertain than what it was when the Election Commission announced the poll schedule.
The first of the two-phase urban local body polls in Uttar Pradesh will take place on Thursday, a major poll battle in the politically crucial state ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections.
What will India look like if the colours of the parties ruling the various states were to be plotted on a map?
The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, trouncing its main rival SP, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
For the first time in his political career, he failed to carry his party to even a working majority -- and again, for the first time in his career, he finds himself in a situation where he cannot rule by dictatorial fiat, points out Prem Panicker.
BJP president J P Nadda also appointed former Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill its national spokesperson.
The Bharatiya Janata Party faces an uphill task of repeating its performance of the last assembly election of winning 53 out of 58 constituencies in western Uttar Pradesh where polling will be held in the first phase on February 10.
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
SP and SBSP leaders had shared the dais in Mau on Wednesday and announced that they would together trounce the BJP in the 2022 elections.
Modi also accused previous government of neglecting the pilgrim city and said criminals had a free in the state.
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