'Potent nationalism doesn't just distract from the economic task at hand; it actively undermines it.'
This crisis requires political sophistication and governance skills. This BJP has neither, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Will the Modi-Shah combine replace Vijay Rupani as Gujarat CM?
Former Union minister Yashwant Sinha, a bitter critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi regime, on Saturday joined Trinamool Congress days ahead of the high-octane West Bengal assembly polls.
She hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda as her leaders.
It is wrong to say the Congress doesn't matter. Certainly one set of people who do not believe that for a minute is the BJP. That's why even in his speech in Parliament on Constitution Day, Mr Modi called dynastic politics a threat to democracy, observes Shekhar Gupta.
AFSPA can be safely lifted from almost 90 per cent of Nagaland, argues Shekhar Gupta.
The 48-second video purportedly shows some seven to eight paramilitary and police personnel entering the Old Reading Hall and beating students with lathis.
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.
Much depends on the BJP's electoral performance in next year's assembly elections. If the party fares well in UP and some states like Goa and Gujarat, it will be able to fob off the attempt at a reappraisal of its Hindutva doctrine, observes Amulya Ganguli.
Singh said nobody anticipated that Scindia would quit the party.
References to cow, beef and Pakistan, which dominated political speeches and rallies during the keenly-fought Bihar polls, resurfaced on the media.
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 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.'
In the unlikely event of the BJP-NDA losing all five states going to the polls in February-March, the Presidential electoral college numbers could be significantly altered, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The BJP is the most progressive force within Hinduism today.'
'Certainly if Advani had agreed to Vajpayee in sacking Modi, then we would never have been talking of Modi today.'
Is anyone in the BJP listening -- to what Nitin Gadkari had to say, but possibly left unsaid? asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
Shah also said that India has now joined the league of countries like the United States and Israel in carrying out surgical strikes.
The Bengal outcome can have a marginal impact on national politics. Whereas elections in UP next year might still change the course ahead of the parliamentary poll in 2024, observes Virendra Kapoor.
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.
Elections 2024 is not as open and shut as has been presumed. There is some life left in it, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
If he doesn't win next year, it will set back the party's prospects in 2024. If he wins, it will be seen as his win as much as the BJP high command's, points out Shekhar Gupta.
'Each of them is a setu (bridge) that links the government with the party, but their territories are different.'
The Congress took a dig at the BJP, saying, "We realise you've been down for a long time now. If you need help getting back up, we're happy to help."
How Modi retrieves the situation and how he enlists new allies in the next two years will show if the BJP is fighting fit, report Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
Nowhere else has caste, power politics, and generational change come together to form a combination so potent that it is combustible.
But why should India be talking to the Taliban in the first place? There is no love lost there. India will never forget or forgive the humiliation to which the Taliban subjected it in the IC-814 hijack, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'Every seat the Congress gets above 100 will keep pushing the Modi-Shah BJP lower in the dangerous sub-200 zone,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
'The Shiv Sena as a party was going nowhere.' 'Now Uddhav Thackeray has shown his partymen that he can take the BJP head on.'
'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.
'Facing foes with a common intent is not something Modi-Shah's BJP has done before,' points out Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'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.
There are limitations to milking national security, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
India's 71st Republic day celebrations in the United States on Sunday were marred by protests and marches, albeit peaceful ones, against recent changes in the citizenship law by large number of Indian Americans in various cities of the country.
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.
The letters were reportedly recovered after the anti-Naxal operations in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli, in which 39 Maoists were killed, in April.
On a day Ashok Lavasa's decision to recuse from model code of conduct complaints became public, the EC said the 'full commission' would meet on May 21 to discuss the issue of dissent and 'related matters'.
'Why does Mr Modi only attack Nehru from the Dynasty?' 'At one level, it is pure politics,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
