It won't be wise old Modi versus an immature Pappu any longer. It will be Modi versus a whole collection of experienced Opposition leaders, predicts Vir Sanghvi.
Singh said nobody anticipated that Scindia would quit the party.
Shah also rejected West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's charge that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to a temple of the Matua community -- which is in sizeable number in the state -- during his trip to Bangladesh violated the poll code.
Is anyone in the BJP listening -- to what Nitin Gadkari had to say, but possibly left unsaid? asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The Modi Sultanate -- like the Congress Sultanate -- does not understand local aspirations and politics. It will repeat the same mistakes whenever it takes on powerful regional leaders.'
'Certainly if Advani had agreed to Vajpayee in sacking Modi, then we would never have been talking of Modi today.'
'The BJP may well be his ultimate destination.' 'In the process, he has probably shot himself in the foot.' 'It is unlikely that either Scindia or Pilot will be anything other than a No 3 or a No 4 in the Modi-Shah dispensation,' predicts Amulya Ganguli.
'Each of them is a setu (bridge) that links the government with the party, but their territories are different.'
'Potent nationalism doesn't just distract from the economic task at hand; it actively undermines it.'
This is not an election Budget in the sense that I might target the voter in the coming elections. But if you look beyond this round of state elections, and tilt the periscope to graze at the more distant horizon, see how the Narendra Modi government wishes things looking by the summer of 2024, observes Shekhar Gupta.
'UP, Maharashtra, AP (including Telangana), Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, MP, Bihar, Karnataka and Kerala.' 'We chose these nine not only as being among the biggest, but also because in these states radical change is possible,' explains Shekhar Gupta.
Nowhere else has caste, power politics, and generational change come together to form a combination so potent that it is combustible.
Shah, who held a closed door meeting to take stock of the party organisation, said he could 'sense massive public anger' against the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government in the state and gave a call to 'uproot' it in the state polls.
Maharashtra politics is at crossroads. Anything can happen in this dynamic situation. Uddhav will have to prove he is a worthy inheritor of his father's legacy and keep his cadre and leaders in the party stable. Fadnavis will have to prove that manoeuvrings on floor of the house was an inevitable political necessity to change the destiny of Maharashtra eventually. Modi and Shah will have to show that they can and will are resist use of 'the system' in the pursuit of power. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com analyses the situation.
'In Kejriwal's re-election, we are finally seeing someone who has successfully bridged his Hindu identity with ground-level development triumphing over the BJP,' notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'It is for the first time that Modi has chosen someone as CM who happens to be a mass leader, a polarising figure, a vote catcher, a powerful orator and a Hindu mascot all at once -- qualities usually associated with Modi,' points out Rajeev Sharma.
'The Nagas want a flag of their own, to share the Kohima skyline with the national tricolour.' 'The the government says you can have a flag for cultural and ethnic occasions.' 'The Nagas say that will be a bit like an NGO having its own flag,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
AIADMK coordinator O Panneerselvam is said to be upset at his son Raveendranath Kumar, a Lok Sabha MP, being denied a ministerial chance for a second time in a row, beginning with the formation of Modi 2.0 in 2019, reveals N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Since the rise of the Modi-Shah paradigm, the BJP has followed a simple formula.' 'Sweep the Hindi heartland and the two big Western states, and you can rule India with a majority by just adding some little bits on the platter from here and there,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
Modi-Shah can complain about the Congress playing caste politics but the fact is that in Gujarat it is threatening to return to the old normal. Caste again threatens to divide what Hindutva has kept united for 25 years, says Shekhar Gupta.
'Modiji did not say anything so that there was no influence. He endured all this silently'
'He has been made CM of Uttarakhand because everybody thinks he is not a challenge to anyone.'
'The Modi Model we see now is still the old Gujarat Model.' 'But with an acknowledgement that governing India is more challenging than governing Gujarat,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
Union minister Smriti Irani will also contest the Rajya Sabha polls from Gujarat from where she is already an MP and her term ends on August 18.
The BJP took a gamble and won; Uddhav Thackeray is down, but not out; Sharad Pawar accepts Modi's clout... The many meanings of the election results.
'The story of how Modi won a re-election in the face of severe agrarian crisis, mounting unemployment, looming economic crisis, is the story of how the power of the message can be put to devastating effect in the hands of a strong leader,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
There's a new duet in the BJP, and it is not sweet music to everyone's ears.
He said a tie-up between the two parties could have caused a 'damage' to the BJP-led NDA on the 23 seats.
Former chief minister of Goa and Congress veteran Luizinho Faleiro, resigned as an MLA and a primary member of the party on Monday claiming the state party unit is run by a 'coterie' of leaders even as he praised Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee saying the country needs a leader like her to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The letters were reportedly recovered after the anti-Naxal operations in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli, in which 39 Maoists were killed, in April.
'BJP leaders might ponder the all-consuming arrogance that grips the Modi-Shah combine a year ahead of the next general election,' says Sunil Sethi.
The AAP has declared candidates on six of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi.
Opposition parties have expressed solidarity with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
Ruling out any "operation" by the ruling alliance to poach the BJP MLAs, the chief minister said there was no necessity for it and that he was "relaxed."
'Modi wants to go down in history not necessarily as India's first overtly Hindu RSS pracharak prime minister, but as a world statesman who built the idea of India as a great nation.'
'Jignesh Mevani has many strengths: Youth, articulation, fearlessness, proficiency with social media, political and ideological flexibility.' 'Also focus, as in targeting the BJP as the one and only enemy for now and using that justification to align with the rest,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'On the Kashmir and Pakistan question, it is startling that Vajpayee and Advani did more than anybody in Indian history.'
Modi isn't going to voters on his track record but on the fear of the terrorist across the border and the Muslims within. It's a battle on his terms, says Shekhar Gupta.
