Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday said people of the country want change of power, but evaded a direct reply on whether his party would join an opposition alliance to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
'Undeniably, Modi's position has stabilised and he has staged a comeback of sorts from the weeks after the Lok Sabha results.' 'Coalition partners are likely to be more tolerant of Modi... The forthcoming elections in Delhi and Bihar will determine whether this continues or not.' 'To win Delhi and Bihar, Modi will have to work in conjunction with the RSS.' 'However, because of the 'truce' that has been worked out within the Sangh Parivar, Modi will have to be more consultative than he has been in the past ten years,' reveals Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
His five-year rule saw the Babri Masjid demolition, the rise of the saffron forces and also the country being placed firmly on a new economic path, away from the Nehru years of public sector socialism.
Bharatiya Janata Party's Sandeshkhali leader Gangadhar Koyal on Friday moved the Calcutta high court, claiming that technology-aided videos mimicking his voice were being circulated in a bid to defame him, and prayed for security be provided to him by central agencies.
A BJP source admitted that a census will inevitably reconfirm the numerical majority of the OBCs. 'That will overturn social equations and consign the upper castes to a twilight zone of marginalisation. The RSS won't accept it.' Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
'As soon as the BJP feels they are going to lose power, they will publish the caste census data of 2011 and conduct the caste census of 2021.'
The political heat in West Bengal has been giving the rising mercury levels serious competition since the high court order.
Moderate to high turnout was recorded in 13 assembly constituencies across seven states where bypolls were held on Wednesday amid sporadic incidents of violence in Uttarakhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to "lay down any yardstick" for granting reservation in promotion to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in government jobs.
'This is going to generate a new debate on reservation because the quota for Economically Weaker Sections is 10%, and that is for nearly 16% of the population.' 'For 16% you are giving 10%. This is set to raise eyebrows among the OBCs after the caste survey.'
Rohith Vemula's suicide exposes all of us as a nation, argues Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Bihar is no stranger to being at the centre of a tectonic shift in national politics fuelled by turbulent regional forces.
'He should not come to Kerala and fight against the CPI which is an integral part of the INDIA alliance'
A voter turnout of over 40 per cent was recorded till 1 pm on Monday in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections in 96 constituencies spread over 10 states and Union Territories amid incidents of violence in Andhra Pradesh and reports of poll boycott in some villages of Uttar Pradesh.
Any move of the present government to appease the Marathas may boomerang. Eknath Shinde is a worried man with the agitation not having an easy solution, notes Ramesh Menon.
They entered the Bihar poll battle to protect and carry forward their fathers' political legacy, but many of them could not win their own seat though some tasted victory.
'There are legions of unemployed degree holders across rural and semi-urban belts in Maharashtra. Now, they aren't finding brides.' 'This issue has now snowballed into a social crisis. In 2014 and 2019, they had voted for the BJP.'
'The BJP alliance needs to handle the Maratha quota issue skilfully and address its root cause, which is agrarian distress. Then there is stalled industrialisation. If these issues are addressed, caste fault lines would wither away. But, this is next to impossible in a short span of three-four months.'
"Making a person belonging to Dalit caste as the chief minister of Punjab is nothing but an election stunt. I have come to know through the media today that assembly elections in Punjab will be fought under a non-Dalit leader and not under Channi," Mayawati told newspersons in Lucknow
It had meant nothing but moments of intimacy, sweet but transient moments. An intriguing excerpt from Manju Kapur's new novel The Gallery.
Addressing a public rally in Sabroom in poll-bound Tripura, Shah said that the Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist had put the Ram Mandir issue in the jurisdiction of the court for long, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for it after the Supreme Court's order.
At present, 27 per cent quota in government jobs and educational institutions is given to OBCs, provided the annual income of the family is up to Rs six lakh. Those with higher earnings are referred to as the 'creamy layer' and are not eligible for reservation.
He allegedly hired a contract killing gang to eliminate Ramakrishnaiah, a police official said.
Rajsamand MP Diya Kumari and Jaipur Rural MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore are among the seven BJP parliamentarians who will contest the Rajasthan Assembly polls, according to the first list of 41 candidates issued by the party on Monday.
While Modi had a party and an organisation that supported him, all Mulayam, a self-made man with no inheritance in politics, had was a set of (fairly flexible) beliefs.
'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
The CBI has carried out searches at 15 locations in connection with the case related to attempt to murder of Dharma Mandal who suffered serious injuries after his family was attacked on May 14 night at their home in Nadia district's Chapra.
Where Laal Singh Chaddha succeeds most is heart, notes Sukanya Verma.
The action was taken a day after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party had urged the Election Commission to take steps against poll officials who "defaced" PM Modi's photograph in banners and hoardings put up in public places in the state, instead of removing them.
The Supreme Court on Thursday said that candidates belonging to the Other Backward Class category are required to be adjusted against the general category who were more meritorious than the last of the general category candidates appointed.
The victim, identified as Nargis, was attacked by a 28-year-old Irfan when she was with him in a park near Delhi University's Sri Aurobindo College, police said, adding, the accused has been arrested.
The chapters were dropped by the Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) for the 2020-21 session, as part of the 30 per cent reduction of the syllabus, keeping in mind the loss of academic schedule that the students had to face because of the pandemic.
The BJP-led NDA leaders have attacked RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav for his statement that Bihar assembly polls is a fight between 'backward versus forward' forces.
'The BJP is the most progressive force within Hinduism today.'
Given the politics behind it all, one possibility is for binding the governor to act according to the decisions of the state government and clarifying his position vis a vis bills and resolutions passed by the state assembly -- or, re-enacted if returned, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
"That is a fact of life because we are not being able, after 75 years, to bring the SCs and STs to the same level of merit as the forward classes," Attorney General K K Venugopal told a bench headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao.
The Congress is likely to enforce the 'One family, one ticket' formula granting exemption to only another family member who has been doing 'exemplary work' for the party for a period of at least five years, as the grand old party promised big ticket changes while acknowledging that it had not kept pace with changing times.
The events that unfolded after Advani's arrest not only benefited the BJP, whose political clout grew exponentially, but also catapulted Lalu to the forefront of the anti-saffron camp.
The political fight for the Dalits' cause escalated on Thursday with Congress president Rahul Gandhi accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having an "anti-Dalit" mindset and the Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah alleging the opposition party had a legacy of insulting the community.
The NSSO had enumerated 79,306 households in rural areas and 45,374 in urban regions.
