Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday sought answers from Narendra Modi on CNT/SPT Acts, starvation deaths and 'divisiveness',a day after the prime minister threw challenges to Congress on citizenship, Article 370 and triple talaq. She also attacked the prime minister on economic slowdown, Citizenship Act, National Register of Citizenship and alleged assaults on women in different parts of the country.
The BJP is of the view that Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttarakhand governments could collapse and a Modi wave may resurrect its chances, notes Archis Mohan.
A basic outline and roadmap for Opposition unity are likely to be deliberated upon with the contentious issue of seat sharing and leadership questions to be avoided for now.
In order to maintain social distancing, the NTA has increased the number of exam centres from originally-planned 2,546 to 3,843, while the number of candidates per room has been reduced from earlier 24 to 12.
In order to maintain social distancing, the NTA has increased the number of centres from 2,546 to 3,843 for the NEET while the number of candidates per room has been reduced from earlier 24 to 12.
Kerala Chief Minister and CPI-M leader Pinarayi Vijayan, Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu, West Bengal CM and Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee, and Karnataka CM Kumaraswamy lent support to the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party government's fight with the Centre.
Gandhi came along with Mukherjee and while the former president left after sometime, the Congress chief offered to drop him back but Mukherjee politely refused.
Marandi returned to the BJP after 14 years and the party now wants him to lead the state unit. But a generation of new leaders isn't familiar with him, explains Radhika Ramaseshan.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is projected to get a majority in Jharkhand while Jammu and Kashmir may return a hung verdict with PDP emerging as the single largest party followed by BJP in assembly elections in the two states, according to two separate exit polls on Saturday.
A meeting of opposition leaders from many anti-Bharatiya Janata Party parties, most of them regional forces, hosted by the veteran leader and Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Tuesday is being seen by political pundits as a beginning of an exercise by them to join forces to put up a more cohesive challenge to the saffron party.
The senior Congress leader was in a coma since October last year, when he was admitted to AIIMS after he suffered a brain haemorrhage.
As the Opposition held its first meeting on the Presidential polls and names of Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi also cropped up, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice with senior party leader and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress), Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal).
More than 20 national leaders will attend the meeting, TMC sources said. Most of them have already arrived in Kolkata.
While the governments of Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have assured students that they will provide transportation to candidates, a group of IIT alumni and students have also launched a portal to provide transport facilities to exam centres for the candidates in need.
Didi embarks on her new mission: To unite the Opposition to take on Modi in the Lok Sabha elections of 2024, observes Payal Singh Mohanka.
These parties also asked the Centre to present a revised comprehensive economic package that will be a 'true stimulus' and sought reversal of all unilateral policy decisions, especially pertaining to labour laws, as they put forth a 11-point demand charter before the government during a virtual meeting, called by the Congress to discuss the situation arising out of the pandemic as well as the lockdown.
Every student of Classes 9 and 10 will receive Rs 2,200 and that of Classes 11 and 12 Rs 7,500 as scholarships, said the manifesto, which was released by Prasad in Ranchi, in the presence of Chief Minister Raghubar Das, Union Tribal Minister Arjun Munda and BJP's state unit president Laxman Gilua.
Among the 21 MLAs who have been appointed parliamentary secretaries for the "smooth functioning of the government" are Adarsh Shastri, Jarnail Singh and Alka Lamba.
Counting of votes will be held today in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand which witnessed a record turnout in the multi-cornered contests to elect their assemblies.
Defectors getting tickets is causing tremendous heartburn in the BJP, says Aditi Phadnis
Here are some day's snippets of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections:
There was considerable disquiet in the Congress after Mukherjee accepted the invitation of the RSS to address its workers at its headquarters in Nagpur.
By conventional yardsticks, Das was an audacious choice by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP president Amit Shah, like Devendra Fadnavis was in Maharashtra and Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana. Will his choice pay off in the elections next month?
'A rag-tag coalition is more insecure and hence, more inclined to reform,' argues Devangshu Datta.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi has convened a meeting of the party's strategy group on September 8, the sources said. Opposition leaders are keen that various like-minded parties should work closely with each other to take on the government in Parliament.
Varma sought 'ideological clarity' from Nitish over extending alliance with the BJP beyond Bihar despite having expressed apprehensions 'in private' about the BJP-RSS leading the nation into a 'dangerous space'.
Leave alone taking forward the seat-sharing talks with the existing and probable allies, the Mahagathbandhan remains an amorphous entity weeks before the first phase of polling on October 28, a situation that will make the rival NDA camp, which in any case looks sitting pretty, all the more happier.
If it splits now, who takes what away and leaves what behind? asks Shekhar Gupta.
Congress and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha appear to be inching closer towards forming an alternative government in Jharkhand which has been under President's Rule imposed after fall of the Arjun Munda government on January 8.
Ahead of the second phase of polls in the state, Banerjee's letter, which was released by the Trinamool Congress on Wednesday, seeks to drum up support from opposition leaders by stating how non-BJP states have suffered due to the saffron party led Centre's actions.
Left behind after elections will be the Biharis with their stagnant conditions of poor education, poor health infrastructure, poverty, unemployment, division of society and the aftermath of coronavirus. What will remain is the Bihari tenacity, observes Asmita Bihari.
Droupadi Murmu scripted history on Thursday by becoming India's first tribal President in the one-sided contest, defeating Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
Although conventional political wisdom would decree that the construction of a 'magnificent' Ram temple at his 'birth-place' would bring the BJP a big yield of votes in the prospective elections, its leaders know by now that the mandir must not exist in isolation in its game plan, reports Radhika Ramaseshan.
Yadav vowed to dislodge the government headed by Nitish Kumar, whom Congress leader Avinash Pandey in his address accused of "apharan" (hijacking) of the mandate in the previous elections.
The Congress, who has presently become a "leaderless" party, has also been facing multiple shocks at the state levels.
The Congress chief reiterated that Rs 30,000 crore was "wrongfully" given to Anil Ambani in the purchase of Rafale fighter planes.
Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com gives the lowdown on the 59 seats spread across seven states and one Union territory going to polls in the last and final phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on May 19, 2019.
Kerala, Punjab and Rajasthan are the other three states to pass a resolution opposing the contentious legislation, reports Archis Mohan.
Days after Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was booed by the BJP activists during a rally attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren too faced a similar situation when hundreds of BJP supporters jeered at him and shouted anti-government slogans on Thursday.
The JMM-Cong-RJD alliance won 47 seats in 81-member assembly while the incumbent BJP managed to win only 25 seats. CM Das lost his seat to a party rebel despite giving the first full-term government to the state.
