Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat are over. Another set of state elections is due in 2018. Here's an assessment of the next round of the electoral challenge and how it could change India's political equations.
'It will not be a battle of unequals as it may have been thought a few months ago, but one on more or less a level playing field.' 'The Gujarat outcome cannot but breathe new life into the Congress for having almost succeeded in bearding the lion in its den,' says Amulya Ganguli.
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?
'There was a period when they questioned the flag and there were questions also against the Constitution.' 'That's long past.'
'For Nitish Kumar the message is to be democratic. With the support of the BJP, he had suppressed criticism in Bihar. He would also need to change his highly authoritarian way of governance.' 'The Grand Alliance, given the decisive mandate in its favour, cannot afford to fail the people. They have a duty to make it a model for the rest of India,' says Apoorvanand.
Although the Opposition has been making a hue and cry over demonetisation, the BJP's programmes have been attracting crowds.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati on Sunday attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress for "double-crossing" the common man by serving the interests of capitalists.
'The clearest interpretation of the November 8 mandate is that the backwards, Dalits and minorities, and a huge proportion of women cutting across caste and class, displayed massive consolidation to the extent that despite chipping of votes by the Left Front, by the Third Front and by the BSP, Mahagathbandhan candidates won, and in many cases by huge margins,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'AMU is a secular university with an Islamic ethos.' 'We do not discriminate on the basis of religion. Let me tell you Muslims do not need reservations. They need affirmative action in education.'
It was decided by Tamil Nadu Congress to push for at least 45 seats and in a worst case scenario climb down a few seats and conclude the deal and it has worked out as was expected.
'It is more of a catalyst.' 'People bring in their own demons and they are not created by fake news'
'The people of the state can be won over by love, and not by swords.'
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Thursday launched a frontal attack on Bharatiya Janata Party's PM candidate Narendra Modi saying the country will be "ruined" due to spike in communal riots if he is voted to power.
Meanwhile, the Congress said that that it is ready to go it alone in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha election.
Political Pundit R Rajagopalan lists his big takeaways from the election results.
'Am I wrong in presuming that UP is being seen as a new laboratory of communal politics like one has seen in Gujarat,' asks Ashutosh.
The rallies will be used to drill home the message of the "political will" that Modi government has shown to launch 'surgical strikes' against Pakistan-based terrorists.
Union minister Ramdas Athawale said 'so-called' cow vigilantes are like 'nar-bhakshaks'.
Nearly 2.6 crore people in 73 constituencies of western Uttar Pradesh are voting on Saturday in the first of the seven phases of high-stake assembly elections
Four days after a scuffle between intoxicated young men on Diwali night in Trilokpuri's Block 20 spiralled into a diffused communal riot that resulted in scores of injuries, dozens of arrests, and the incineration of at least one Muslim-owned shop, the violence appears to have abated but tension and suspicion persist.
'Across the country -- in Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Manipur, Delhi, Bihar, West Bengal -- men were lynched on suspicion of being thieves by ordinary people armed with rods and sticks.' 'But none of these lynchings made big news.' 'None of these lynchings were cow/beef-related.' 'The perpetrators were unknown people, not so-called gau rakshaks.' 'So why were these instances of mob violence considered less newsworthy than cow-related lynchings?' asks Jyoti Punwani.
The coastal districts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada have been reporting cases of cow vigilantism in the last several years.
Till recently there was no monument to the Maratha victory or the great Maratha General Mahadji Shinde. It was a defeat, such as never suffered by the British in India.
Beware of fake cow vigilantes, says PM Modi
Netas in Uttar Pradesh are using Rajkumar Hirani's film PK to play the politics of polarization.
In further rumblings within the Bharatiya Janata Party over its big loss in Bihar, party MP Hukumdev Narayan Yadav on Monday said the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat's quota comments 'agitated' backward castes who rallied around the grand alliance and asserted that many who voted for the Modi government are not RSS supporters.
Almost everyone in Gorakhpur has a story about an Adityanath intervention that helped push through a piece of work that would've been otherwise impossible.
'Fear is not created by those who are defending minorities and Dalits.' 'Fear is being created by the actions of political leaders like Yogi Adityanath and police forces.' 'The kind of hate statements that are being made to which there is silence from the prime minister's side.'
Congress candidate Ashok Chavan, BJP's Gopinath Munde, NCP's Padmasinh Patil and All India Youth Congress chief Rajeev Satav cash in on their charisma and image. Sanjay Jog
Confident of giving a tough fight to Congress and BJP, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party, which surprised many by ranking third in 2008 Assembly elections with a vote share of 14 per cent, is all to set announce its candidates for all the 70 seats in Delhi.
Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday night released the first list of 43 candidates for the high-stakes Bihar polls, giving about 60 per cent representation to those from SC and backward castes in an apparent attempt to target the base of rival Janata Dal-United-Rashtriya Janata Dal combine.
A report by IndiaSpend shows that 97 per cent (68 of 70) of such incidents were reported after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government came to power in May 2014.
Government's reforms are too half-hearted. But Rahul Gandhi's Congress is too amateurish and inept to hold it to account.
At its heart, the furore over 'love jihad' reveals an anxiety over the increase in inter-religious marriages and women's freedom, says Charu Gupta, associate professor of history at Delhi University, whose areas of research include the colonial history of Uttar Pradesh and issues of gender and sexuality.
Nowhere else has caste, power politics, and generational change come together to form a combination so potent that it is combustible.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah and chief ministers of National Democratic Alliance-ruled States are at the ceremony.
'Hindu voters in coastal Karnataka lean more towards Hindutva than Hinduism which explains why the Siddaramaiah government's perception as anti-Hindu worked wonders for the BJP in coastal Karnataka.'
Later addressing a public meeting in Varana, Gandhi asked Modi to respond to allegations of manipulative share trading by a firm linked to Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.
Faced with one of the worst showing in the Lok Sabha polls, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati on Tuesday dissolved all the committees of the party.
HRD Minister Smriti Irani was again in the line of fire in the Lok Sabha with opposition members forcing Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to allow them to speak on their notice for the privilege motion against the minister.
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