'The time has come for all those believe in a democratic India to stand up and be counted and to make a choice.'
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has announced that 10 per cent reservation in jobs would be given to socially, educationally and economically backward Muslims.
'At this moment you cannot give her asylum because if you do, then you are directing public anger against India.'
'For the women of a community whose seclusion has been a byword of their lifestyle to take to the streets as a means of protest is an unprecedented event,' notes Amulya Ganguli.
Campaigning ended on Wednesday evening for 102 Lok Sabha seats across 21 states and Union territories which will go to polls in the first phase on April 19 with top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance and the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) making a last-gasp effort to woo voters.
Over two dozen Muslims have been elected to the Lok Sabha. This shows that all is not lost for India's Muslims, suggests Mohammad Sajjad.
'Some people came on motorcycles on Tuesday night, threatening us that if we do not leave, they would set fire to our slum'
Banerjee said the Border Security Force must work impartially as the BJP "may not be in power tomorrow".
Since much of the voting was on religious lines, Mamata's rural focus became irrelevant.
The Left Front in West Bengal has evidently failed to win back the confidence of Muslims since the 2008 civic and Panchayat elections, as they lost nearly 90 seats in the just concluded assembly polls in constituencies where the minority community has a strong presence. Muslims have a good presence in nearly 125 seats across ten border districts, of which over 90 have been won by the Trinamool Congress-Congress combine.
The BJP's panicky return to basic-instinct majoritarianism in Bihar has pushed Muslims back into the 'secular' basement, says Shekhar Gupta.
The BJP has dropped C T Ravi, a leader from Karnataka, Dilip Saikia, a Lok Sabha MP from Assam, as its general secretaries, and Vinod Sonkar, Harish Dwivedi, both Lok Sabha MPs from Uttar Pradesh, and Sunil Deodhar as secretaries.
The BJP doesn't want to focus entirely on an anti-Mamata campaign.
The Tamil Nadu government has told the Supreme Court it has not issued any order imposing a "shadow or implicit ban" on The Kerala Story, a multilingual film that has triggered a massive controversy over religious conversions.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday announced Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fight again from Varanasi in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as it named 34 Union ministers in the first list of 195 candidates.
The state government will help all those whose properties were vandalised in the clashes, she said.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
The Congress and Left Front on Thursday finalised sharing of 193 seats of the total 294 in West Bengal assembly with the Left parties getting the lion's share of 101 seats.
State party leaders admit that Hindu consolidation by itself was not good enough to unseat Didi.
While the TMC was able to maintain its hold on the southern and coastal parts of the state, the BJP is doing well in the northern and western parts of the state, all predominantly tribal areas.
'Laluji is like my father and I am like his son.'
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
The All India Matua Mahasangha has asked its members to apply for Indian citizenship only after the formation of a new government at the Centre.
According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Political commentators say the final outcome of the West Bengal assembly elections would depend on how some crucial factors play out this time. Mayank Mishra explains.
As Ae Watan Mere Watan and Swatantra Veer Savarkar release this week, Utkarsh Mishra takes us down history and reminds us about India's freedom struggle.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
'The Congress is trying to reinvent itself -- the caste census demand, OBC emphasis, the anti-corporate thrust, especially on Adani etc -- all this is not standard Congress strategy.'
"I am ready to fight the money power (of her political opponents), and (central) agencies (which her party alleges has been unleashed on TMC with a political motive), but I will not bow my head," she said.
If only the Congress could rebuild on its strengths and develop a modern enough ideology, we could again be moving towards a clearer two-party political landscape, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
The Congress should take the lead in resolving differences of opinion within the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) and show 'large-heartedness' in seat sharing to emerge as a viable alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party in upcoming elections, according to some opposition leaders.
Announcing sops for minorities ahead of the panchayat elections next year in the state, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said that her government has ordered a survey for ensuring job reservation for Muslims and would also bring a bill for 50 per cent reservation for women in panchayats.
'Thanks to Mamata's shameless way of wooing Muslims, Hindus in large numbers have started aligning with us,' says Bengal's BJP boss Dilip Ghosh.
'Muslims are depressed and disillusioned.' 'The safety valve is that we still have a multicultural mosaic in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.'
As the month-long fasting observed by the people of the Muslim community during Ramzan came to an end on Modnay, devotees across the country offered namaz on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr in large numbers on Tuesday.
Several states declared a holiday for schools, while government offices, other establishments and public sector banks remained closed for half a day.
As electoral sails shift in the dynamic political winds of West Bengal, two factors may still change the electoral equations are how the BJP fares this time and how Muslims are going to vote. Mayank Mishra reports.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders on Sunday paid homage to those who lost their lives during the Partition as the Congress accused the ruling party of using the traumatic events as a 'fodder' for its political battles.
The Kerala Story is among a long list of films that invited bans and censorship.
The submission was vehemently opposed by senior advocate C S Vaidyanathan, representing deity 'Ram Lalla', who said: "This is totally unwarranted".
