More than ever before, women voters can make or mar a political party's electoral fortunes.
The Maharashtra legislative assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a bill which makes Marathi a compulsory subject across all schools in the state. The development came on `Marathi Bhasha Din' (Marathi language day) which is celebrated on February 27, the birth anniversary of poet and Jnanpith award winner late V V Shirwadkar. The state legislative council had passed the legislation, titled `Maharashtra Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Marathi Language in Schools Bill, 2020', on Wednesday.
While 67 per cent of India's population is 39 years old or younger, states are governed by chief ministers who are 70 or older.
The BJP continuing to look at the Dravidian polity through the religious prism has not worked in Tamil Nadu whereas it has yielded political and electoral results across much of the rest of the country, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
He made an announcement in this regard at an election rally in Chennai on Saturday.
The Madras high court on Wednesday directed the Tamil Nadu government to remove at once, all the posters put up by political parties in furtherance of the local body elections, scheduled for February 19, throughout Chennai.
The Tamil Nadu assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution urging the Centre to extend the benefits accorded to Scheduled Castes also to those among the SCs embracing Christianity.
Creating a positive reform that does away with an official who constitutes a flawed aspect of Indian democracy will allow the BJP to rightfully claim this as one of its positive legacies, suggests Karan P Shah.
The BJP is focusing determinedly on the seats it lost in 2019, with the hope of winning these either independently or with the aid of its allies.
The bill to amend the law governing Waqf boards proposes far-reaching changes in the Wakf Act, 1995, including ensuring the representation of Muslim women and non-Muslims in such bodies.
Stalin's personal intervention in the Adheenam row may have contained the avoidable political damage and social tensions at least for now, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
About 140 people out of 193 who were admitted to various government medical facilities after they consumed the spurious liquor on Tuesday night were currently stable, Kallakurichi district collector M S Prasanth said.
The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Saturday adopted a resolution urging the Centre to withdraw three contentious farm laws, against which farmers have been holding protests outside Delhi for months.
While EC Secretary General Umesh Sinha would be visiting Tamil Nadu next week, Deputy Election Commissioner Sudip Jain would be in West Bengal in the coming days, sources said.
The Madras high court had said in its 2021 judgment that a new law to ban online gambling may be enacted by the government and this made it clear that the state legislature is competent to pass a Bill to ban online rummy, Tamil Nadu Law Minister S Regupathy said in Chennai on Thursday.
Allowing 12-hour shifts for all and night-time work for women was meant to benefit software firms, but is said to have clinched Foxconn's Rs 80 billion investment.
The counting of votes for the assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry would be held on Thursday morning with trends expected early.
Wednesday's Vikravandi by-election has become a referendum on the Stalin government, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The union territory of Puducherry has the dubious distinction of having the laziest legislators in India. A report shows that in comparison to the other four poll-bound states -- Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Assam -- the legislative assembly in Puducherry had the lowest number of sittings in the past 5 years.
While the BJP and the Congress have always supported the bill, opposition by other parties and demands from some for quota for backward classes within the women's quota have been key sticking points.
The party, to be called the Tamil Maanila Kamaraj Congress, is headed by D Komaradoss.
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
If Tamil Nadu voters preferred the DMK combine, it owed to the Modi-Annamalai combo's ideological battle which often crossed the line of political decency and also challenged 'Tamil pride', argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress on Sunday were set to share the honours in the Lok Sabha and assembly bye-elections in 13 states.
New Union minister L Murugan's declaration of Kongu Nadu as his native place, instead of Tamil Nadu, may be part of a grand BJP strategy to create new states out of existing ones, particularly those that have anti-BJP governments, mulls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Bedlam erupted in the House for a few minutes and continued till all BJP members staged a walkout in protest.
The Tamil Nadu assembly on Wednesday adopted a resolution urging the Centre to repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 to protect and ensure unity and communal harmony and uphold the secular principles enshrined in the Constitution.
A substantial number of castes and groups are already placed in the reserved category, getting about 52 per cent of reservations altogether. It would be completely inequitable to place the Maratha community in the Other Backward Class (OBC) category, it said.
The Kerala government has moved the Supreme Court claiming that Governor Arif Mohammed Khan was delaying giving his assent to bills passed by the state assembly, which was "defeating the rights of the people".
In a statement in the House, the chief minister said air ambulance service would be started at a cost of Rs 10 crore to transport critical patients to hospitals.
The Election Commission is confident of holding the five assembly polls due early next year, including in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, on time as the poll panel has gained a lot of experience from the electoral exercise in Bihar, West Bengal and four other assemblies amid the coronavirus pandemic, Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra has asserted.
In a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister M K Stalin on Thursday, the Tamil Nadu government decided to pass again a bill in the assembly to ban online gambling and send it to Governor R N Ravi once more for his assent.
Putting up a spirited performance in the assembly by-polls despite its Lok Sabha debacle, the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu has won nine of the 22 segments where elections were held in two phases in April and May.
The DMK feels its genuine gestures have had no bearing on the governor's politico-administrative conduct, which is 'more political and politicised than administrative and Constitutional', observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Madras high court on Tuesday observed that the continuance of V Senthil Balaji as a minister without portfolio in the MK Stalin-led Tamil Nadu cabinet will serve no purpose and it does not augur well with the principles of good governance and purity in administration.
The Raj Bhavan has returned a bill banning online rummy to the Tamil Nadu assembly for its reconsideration, official sources said in Chennai on Wednesday.
However, in the event of the Bharatiya Janata Party deciding to contest, his candidate would withdraw from the race, he said.
The Supreme Court on Friday termed the deadlock between the Punjab government and its governor over assent to bills passed by the assembly a matter of "serious concern" and said it is not happy with what is happening in the state.
The EVMs are based on a technology where they work as aggregator of votes in direct elections such as the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
Ramachandran, an OPS loyalist who took part in the meeting, said the former chief minister would soon meet VK Sasikala, the confidante of former party supremo J Jayalalithaa.
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