Tamil nadu Chief Minister and All India Dravida Munetra Kazhagam supremo J Jayalalithaa on Monday sacked three ministers and six district heads in the backdrop of her party's defeat in three Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
The Quad has come of age and its agenda covering areas like vaccines, climate change and emerging technologies makes it a force for global good, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the first summit of the coalition. In his opening remarks, he also talked about shared values and promoting a secure, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific.
The 31-year-old is seeking re-election from Raghopur in Vaishali district which he had wrested back for his party from the Bharatiya Janata Party's Satish Kumar in 2015. The BJP leader had defeated Yadav's mother Rabri Devi, a former chief minister, in 2010.
After facing a drubbing in four states, Congress on Monday got some good news in Mizoram where it powered to a two thirds majority in the assembly elections snapping up 27 of the 40 seats, while the opposition Mizo National Front secured four.
The TDP chief said he tried to speak to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a 'courtesy' to inform him about the decision to quit but he did not come on line.
All eyes are on the parties to see which of them can stake claim to power.
'UP, Maharashtra, AP (including Telangana), Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, MP, Bihar, Karnataka and Kerala.' 'We chose these nine not only as being among the biggest, but also because in these states radical change is possible,' explains Shekhar Gupta.
'The Congress will never change its ideology, but to fight this new kind of propaganda politics, we have to prepare ourselves.'
5 states that contribute just under a fifth of the Lok Sabha's seats will go to the polls early this year.
Kumar's comments at the party's national executive meeting came amid a strain in his ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party and appears to be a message to his ally, some of whose leaders have been linked to alleged communal tensions and violence in the state.
The party leadership also thanked the people of Assam and credited the victory there and increased vote share in other states to party workers, state leaders and PM Narendra Modi.
'Those who thought they are above law and above courts of the country are now approaching courts praying bail; some people have already gone inside (jail) which is their rightful place.'
Counting of votes is underway for four Lok Sabha and eight assembly Constituencies, spread across six states and one Union Territory where by-elections were held on Saturday.
'I thought that the days of firing between two police forces (belonging to states of the Union of India) were over.'
The artillery pounds targets and keeps the enemy's head down, preventing them from firing at attacking troops.
During the meeting that lasted one-and-a-half-hours, the prime minister asked his Cabinet colleagues to take up the "challenge" of reaching the message about the government's functioning to people through better connect with them.
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Rahul Gandhi's experiment of choosing Congress candidates for Lok Sabha polls through the 'primary' system appears to have suffered initial hiccups with two constituencies being dropped from the list of 16.
If New Delhi finds itself out in the cold in Afghanistan, both the Congress-led UPA and BJP-led NDA have only themselves to blame. Each has been in power for a full decade from 2001, without reaching out to the Taliban, points out Ajai Shukla.
'I would like to convey the message to your readers that the prime minister himself is directly seized of the situation on the ground. He periodically reviews the situation on the ground and how it is moving forward, taking inputs from economists, business leaders, chambers of commerce.'
The party is less forthcoming about who the chief minister will be if it stays in power.
Alleging that there had been politicisation and criminalisation of government officers in the state, the BJP leader, who was on a two-day visit, said the TMC government had stopped sending crime statistics to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) after 2018.
'If the Amendment Bill 2016 becomes law, the indigenous people of Assam will become a minority and the language, literature and culture of Assam will be lost.'
The party president also said that India's self-confidence, pride and scale of ambition have grown manifold in three years.
Neither Biden nor his successors can any longer ignore the threat China has come to pose to the US in both economic and military fields, observes Virendra Kapoor.
India has the ability in all respects to be a great power and address our security challenges in the best national interests, says Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
The Modi leadership could lose Election 2024 if a communal flare-up becomes cause for all-round catastrophe, warns N Sathiya Moorthy.
'There are reports that the Biden administration is contemplating imposing CAATSA sanctions against India, the largest democracy on Earth'
"Trust is something that has been missing from both sides (Delhi and Srinagar). Successive prime ministers -- Jawaharlal Nehru, Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee -- made promises but the trust deficit has persisted," he added.
Allegations of electronic voting machines malfunctioningreturned to haunt the Election Commission as four Lok Sabha seats and nine assembly constituencies went for bypolls on Monday across 10 states with moderate-to-heavy voting amid prestige at stake for the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as opposition parties ahead of the 2019 general elections.
When 17 million Indians seek their fortune abroad it only means people are losing faith in the government's ability to honour its promises, says Sunanda K Datta-Ray.
The Congress has been reduced to a C player in national politics thanks to its inability to read the pulse of the people, says Rashme Sehgal.
'I am quite optimistic that sooner or later, my wishful thinking would turn into a reality.' The only hitch is that the INC president's own career ambitions may be hurt if the Congress merges with the BJP,' says Sudhir Bisht.
An aggressive Pyongyang is likely to force Seoul and Tokyo to build nuclear deterrents and thus thwart Beijing's ambitions.
'Whatever the BJP tries to do, they will not be able to make a big mark in Kerala.'
Scripting history, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday stormed to power in Assam bagging a government in the north east for the first time dethroning the Congress which also lost Kerala while Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee retained power in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal with spectacular victories.
The United States working with its partners and allies is going to hold China accountable to follow the rules, US President Joe Biden has said, as he referred to his recent meeting with leaders from Quad countries involving Australia, India and Japan.
Clinton, who lost to President Donald Trump in the 2016 elections, claimed that both Russia and China are benefitting from his weak foreign policy.
The Congress chief said if his party is elected to power, its government would spend 6 per cent of the GDP on education.
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, vice president Rahul Gandhi, Left parties and CMs of various states congratulated Kovind.
IHS said low regulated gas prices have precipitated a supply shortfall in India, but proposed that reforms to the pricing formula could yield higher domestic production and boost India's economy.
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