'He has been made CM of Uttarakhand because everybody thinks he is not a challenge to anyone.'
'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.
'Savarkar was the closest the RSS had to a freedom movement icon, however flawed.' 'Indira Gandhi wasn't going to gift him to them.' 'And a non-career politician like Dr Singh understands it.' 'It is just that his party never listened to him,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'He was always opposed to a form of nationalism that was narrow, selfish and arrogant.' 'He will always remain a beacon of inspiration for freedom-loving people across the world and for movements of resistance against oppressive State power.'
Opposition parties have expressed solidarity with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
'We were ready to drink the poison of the Congress, but the statements show that the Congress is still seeped in its arrogance'
'Look at the number of billionaires, the number of new billionaires in India.' 'Adani and Ambani are not the only ones.' 'What's wrong with people making money as long as it benefits us?'
'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 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.'
Sasikala's declaration of staying away from politics does not necessarily have to mean that she was retiring for good. She is only taking time to evaluate the post-poll chances of hers before digging in again, if possible, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
He said a tie-up between the two parties could have caused a 'damage' to the BJP-led NDA on the 23 seats.
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.
Given Nitish's track record as an accomplished trapeze artist who can dump the BJP overnight and embrace the RJD, he can leave the saffron party stranded should he fail to get the chief ministerial crown for the fourth time, notes Virendra Kapoor.
'Doklam was almost like a trailer to what is happening in Ladakh today.' 'Modi failed to take note and failed to act,' observes Harishchandra Dighe.
In true Karnataka political style, which cuts across parties and loyalties, any reinstatement of Yeddiyurappa, even with adequate legislative majority, could trigger rebellion from within, which could embarrass the Modi-Shah duo than any other development elsewhere in the country, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
"Modiji reminded that nation bows before Constitution and not him!"
'We might have lacked somewhere but our commitment was absolute. We might have made mistakes and fallen short to some extent. We might not have done something but what did you do'
"Photographs (Nirav Modi Davos photo) mean nothing. Even you people are sitting with me and we being photographed and if somebody does anything will I be linked?" he told reporters.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has found that Ishrat Jahan and her accomplices were killed in cold blood so that the Gujarat Police could show a major hit.
'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.
'This is what Hindu Rashtra looks like, which has been enabled by conditions of democracy.'
There's a new duet in the BJP, and it is not sweet music to everyone's ears.
Jagat Prakash Nadda was elected unopposed as the Bharatiya Janata Party national president on Monday after he emerged as the only leader in the fray following the nomination process in which his candidature was endorsed by top party leaders.
Xi's presence in Mahabalipuram is more of a political message by Modi to the world -- as well as to regional parties in South India that they should be beware of the BJP's rise, says R Rajagopalan.
It looked as if the BJP was hoping to use Rajinikanth to press their seat-bargain with the AIADMK. Now with the Rajini bait gone, the question now is not how much the BJP would settle for, but how much the AIADMK would be ready to offer, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
'Kejriwal has given not only Modi and Shah some food for thought, but also to jaded Opposition leaders who must now wonder whether taking on the BJP's majoritarianism by the horns, as they have been doing so far, is the appropriate strategy in such extraordinary times,' notes M K Bhadrakumar.
Naidu said that efforts are on to bring together all non-BJP parties and that he had met Congress president Rahul Gandhi to discuss measures on protecting democracy.
He said 'in 2011, 2012 and 2013, lynching cases were much more than three years of our government, but no one raised questions then'.
The compulsions of the Hindutva vote bank over 25 years in Maharashtra have made the two parties the oldest ideological partners and it is unrealistic to believe the situation has changed, reports Sunil Gatade.
Raut said that the country is in such a state of mind that it can accept the Congress or Deve Gowda, but does not want the Modi- Shah duo
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."
'In India a strong leader with a majority has never yet been defeated by a challenger.' 'He (or she, as with Indira Gandhi in 1977) must defeat himself,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Rahul feels collective decisions taken with his mother and sister helped the party in the December assembly elections. Hence, he wants to follow the same strategy for the Lok Sabha election, too.
Few had imagined the BJP would be able to travel this far when it was founded on April 6, 1980.
The Congress, a responsible political party, has never cast unwarranted aspersions on the actions of Constitutional bodies, Surjewala said.
'It was a reaffirmation of his party's unrelenting defiance of its erstwhile ally, the BJP; an attempt to forge a new relationship with the community the Shiv Sena had always targeted; and a pointer towards the political imperative of taking everyone along if the fight against the ruling party had to succeed,' notes Jyoti Punwani.
'Modi cannot drag India back into a primitive epoch resembling the religious wars in medieval Europe and at the same time claim to represent the aspirations of modernity among Indians,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'If the Singh government was characterised by policy paralysis, this one is afflicted by hyperactivism, sans a roadmap,' says Yogendra Yadav.
'Kerala will witness a lot of fireworks in Wayanad and a kind of fight that it has not witnessed so far.'
