The party's national executive meeting chaired by its president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar flagged price rise and unemployment as "burning issues"
A fierce competition among parties to offer freebies and guarantees, a scramble for tribal, OBC, women votes and a touch of Hindutva -- all have combined to make the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls a high-stakes battle with main rivals BJP and the Congress pulling out all the stops to gain power.
The ruling Congress is seeking to retain power in Chhattisgarh by banking on the welfare schemes of the Bhupesh Baghel government, while the Bharatiya Janata Party is hoping to corner it on the issues of alleged corruption, religious conversions and unfulfilled poll promises.
'The Opposition parties will continue to woo Chandrababu Naidu even though he has said he will support the BJP.'
Either this affidavit was prepared a long time back, or, Ambedkar has not been following the Commission's hearings.
Thakur, popularly known as 'jannayak', served as chief minister from December 1970 to June 1971 and from December 1977 to April 1979.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who released BJP's manifesto for the legislative assembly polls, said a committee would be constituted on UCC.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday attacked the Congress, saying it skipped the meeting convened to select the new Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) as he is a Dalit and this reflected the anti-Scheduled Castes mindset of the main opposition party.
Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said all the commissions were functioning and the process of filling up the vacancies was on.
The demand was raised during a debate on the Constitution (123rd Amendment) Bill 2017 in the Upper House, which was passed by the Lok Sabha on August 2 superseding the amendments earlier carried out by the Rajya Sabha.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Wednesday said the all-party meeting held earlier in the day decided that reservation should be given to the Maratha community without tampering with the existing quotas of other communities in the state.
According to the Election Commission data, 30 out of the state's 40 Lok Sabha seats went to the BJP-led coalition in the latest elections, a sharp drop compared with 39 in 2019 and lower than the tallies of 2014 (31) and 2009 (32).
The political fight for the Dalits' cause escalated on Thursday with Congress president Rahul Gandhi accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having an "anti-Dalit" mindset and the Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah alleging the opposition party had a legacy of insulting the community.
Shinde announced that his government is committed to providing reservation to the Maratha community.
Right to apprenticeship, legal guarantee for MSP, passing a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs, a nation-wide caste census and scrapping of Agnipath scheme are among the promises made by the Congress in its Lok Sabha polls manifesto released on Friday.
Here is a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of the ruling Congress in Chhattisgarh.
Rohith Vemula's suicide exposes all of us as a nation, argues Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Kharge accused PM Modi of inciting people over the issues "that the Congress will never do".
A Kerala court on Tuesday sentenced to death 15 persons associated with the now-banned Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) in connection with the murder of Bharatiya Janata Party OBC wing leader Ranjith Sreenivasan in this district in 2021, the special prosecutor of the case said in Alappuzha.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday assured the country that the beginning of building a "new and developed Kashmir" that will be free from terrorism has been made under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said that full statehood would be restored to Jammu and Kashmir at an appropriate time.
In the coming days, unless Modi tones down the communal spiel, it will be clear that anxiety continues to drive his mind and clouds his judgment, observes Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Shah said the people of Gujarat would seek an answer from Congress in December, when the state goes to polls.
In total, 17 people, including Telangana Chief Minister and Congress leader Revanth Reddy, have been issued notices to appear before the Delhi police's investigation officer (in connection with the case. Sources, however, said Reddy is "unlikely" to join the probe and may send his representative.
Here is a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of the ruling Congress in Chhattisgarh.
Following the party's sweep of assembly elections in three Hindi heartland states against the odds, the BJP's brain trust is now busy game-planning as to how it can improve on its 2019 Lok Sabha election tally of 303 seats.
If Modi wants to leave a real legacy, breaking India's strategic triangulation would be the real gift, notes Shekhar Gupta.
The Congress has so far announced 82 candidates for the seven-phase Lok Sabha polls beginning April 19.
Once more women assume leadership roles and join the nation-building process, he said, adding they will become a guarantee of the country's bright future.
'Can we force somebody to contest and fight an election when they don't want to contest an election?'
No PM ever dared to take the decision. It was Modi with his 56-inch chest who made the move, said Shah.
President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday conferred Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian honour, on former prime ministers P V Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh, agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan and two-time former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur, posthumously at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
In the five years in politics Priyanka Gandhi has undeniably emerged as a thorn in the BJP flesh, notes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. It is time that this thorn is twisted a wee bit more when the elections have become far more uncertain than what it was when the Election Commission announced the poll schedule.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea filed by the Maharashtra government seeking a direction to the Centre and other authorities to disclose to the state the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 raw caste data of the Other Backward Classes.
'As soon as the BJP feels they are going to lose power, they will publish the caste census data of 2011 and conduct the caste census of 2021.'
Any move of the present government to appease the Marathas may boomerang. Eknath Shinde is a worried man with the agitation not having an easy solution, notes Ramesh Menon.
'How come the BJP won even in the Muslim belt? I am 100% sure that the BJP would not win in the Muslim belt.'
The BJP expelled Vinod Arya and his son from the party, a day after the leader's another son was arrested in the murder case of a woman receptionist at a resort in Uttarakhand's Pauri.
The productivity of the Budget session was abysmal. The Lok Sabha functioned for 33% of its scheduled time (46 hours); the Rajya Sabha 24% (32 hours).
2019 was the Bharatiya Janata Party's breakout year, when it stretched the boundaries of what was thought possible and ended up with 303 seats on its own steam. Now it is forced to play defence, on a pitch queered by too many variables, asserts Prem Panicker.
The Opposition's stand on the Ayodhya consecration is puzzling. Their only objection seems to be that the BJP has hijacked a religious event for political benefit. In saying this, the Opposition is either being naive or hypocritical, argues Jyoti Punwani.
