'If he has not achieved 'Congress mukt Bharat' even now, the question of his creating a 'DMK mukt Tamil Nadu' does not arise,' points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Our civil society here is vibrant, and courageous, although it is beaten up and beaten down, repeatedly.'
Congress president Sonia Gandhi led the delegation. She said Modi government was 'shutting down' people's voices and bringing legislations which are not acceptable to them.
'If you go by the essence of the Constitution of India, I don't see any problem in having a separate PM for J-K.'
The prime minister took no names but made an apparent reference to reports about "rate card" for different government jobs in the Trinamool Congress-ruled West Bengal and prevalence of "cut money" in the state.
'The performance of any government is benchmarked on five parameters -- India's external security, the state of the economy, social cohesion, internal security, and India's relations with the world or its foreign policy. On each of the benchmarks in the past nine years, the NDA-BJP government has come up completely short'
A 'White Paper' versus 'Black Paper' battle erupted on Thursday as the Centre and the Congress unveiled documents and crossed swords over the handling of the Indian economy during the nearly 10 years of the BJP-led NDA rule and the previous 10-year tenure of the Congress-led UPA government.
Inarguably the biggest gainer in the Grand Alliance, the CPI-ML, often working in the margins of mainstream politics, had 19 candidates in the fray, most of them students and youth leaders.
The Summit for Democracy seems to have done more harm than good, notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
As the Opposition held its first meeting on the Presidential polls and names of Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi also cropped up, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice with senior party leader and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress), Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal).
A day before her scheduled appearance before the Enforcement Directorate in the Delhi excise policy case, Bharat Rashtra Samiti leader K Kavitha led a hunger strike here on Friday seeking the passage of the long-pending Women's Reservation Bill in this Budget session of Parliament.
Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said attempts were being made to tell the world that the Indian judiciary and the democracy were in crisis.
As opposition leaders like the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Janata Dal-United supremo and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar expressed solidarity with Kejriwal on Saturday and renewed calls to speed up opposition unity efforts to take on the BJP, officials said the CBI may ask the AAP chief about the policy formulation process, especially of the "untraceable" file which was earlier slated to be put before the Delhi Council of Ministers.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, 11 parties on Tuesday got together with a vow to defeat Congress-led United Progressive Alliances and prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party from coming to power by presenting themselves as an alternative to them.
The cross-country foot march stayed in the news almost right through, mostly for the barbs between the BJP and the Congress and occasionally for other reasons, including infighting in the opposition party.
After the 18-member 'Assam Advisory Committee' suggested the two organisations to form a political party, a source close to the development said the new outfit will be launched within the next 10 days.
What would an Indian American president of the US look like, sound like and act like, especially on issues and policies pertaining to his or her 'mother-land'?, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
The BJP seems wanting to return to a 'Tamil Hindutva' agenda for elections in Tamil Nadu, explains N Sathiya Moorthy.
Kharge said the BJP made all efforts to get him disqualified as he was speaking the truth.
The Congress released a booklet 'Nau saal, Nau sawaal', asking nine questions from Modi. The BJP rejected the Congress' criticism as a 'bundle of lies and mountain of deception' and said the questions are born out of 'pathological hatred' of the PM.
'I would like to see Kharge include Shashi in the Congress Working Committee.' 'The other alternative is that the Congress will marginalise him.'
Pinarayi is exploring the potentials of 'socialism with Indian characteristics'. The next five years under Pinarayi's watch will be a transformative period for Kerala's development, observes M K Bhadrakumar.
For the most battle-hardened, specialised and successful counter-insurgency army in the world, this is an unfamiliar, first-time experience of dealing with the north east's deepest complexities, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Most, save Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu, were silent on Bihar polls; it was business as usual for the PM.
Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal, Odisha and Sikkim will also be held simultaneously, the Election Commission said.
'Rahul Gandhi wants a group under the name 'new generation'. But look at the people who surround him.'
"'So ja bete nahi to Gabbar Singh aa jayega'. Mothers, who have seen the jungle raj days in Bihar, please do tell your children, especially youth, on the polling day to cast their votes carefully, otherwise they (the RJD) may return to power... those who ran a regime of terror and fear," he told a press conference.
It is not unlikely that ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP government comes up with more imaginative schemes aimed at constituency-building. The party under Modi's leadership has a more modern thinking in such matters unlike its rivals, which are still steeped only in ideology, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The party has always advocated abrogation of Article 370 and has also been speaking against Article 35A, but its renewed pitch during elections assumes significance.
Party leaders list three clear positive outcomes -- an activated Congress which has hit the ground running leaving the past inertia behind, an interactive top brass which is directly engaging the people, and a mobilised organisation which was dormant for many years.
Our political history tells us this has never worked. A united Opposition does work in some specific, limited situations, especially in the states. But never as some brilliant pan-national collection of diverse interests with no ideological or political core, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Most exit polls on Sunday forecast another term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with some of them projecting that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance will get more than 300 seats to comfortably cross the majority mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha.
Jairam Ramesh said the Congress has to be the "fulcrum" of any Opposition alliance to take on the BJP in the 2024 general elections as it is the only political force with a pan-India presence.
A video clip of the students allegedly offering namaz in the classroom of a government primary school in Dakshina Kannada has gone viral.
An emotional Naidu said that destiny had stored something else for him, due to which he has to withdraw from the party. "I had told my colleagues that I want to see Prime Minister Modi come back again in 2019 and then I will call it off and join social service. But destiny decided otherwise. Finally after discussion, I have agreed. I have withdrawn myself from party, do not belong to BJP now," Naidu said.
'The politicians waiting to grab the space left behind by Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti do not have any credentials,' says Athar Parvaiz.
The former Union minister joined the UPA after holding talks with the Congress leadership.
Vellore is one of the two seats that the DMK alliance won by the narrowest of margins in 2019. For the DMK's vote-score to be so low in a constituency with a substantial Muslim population has not missed the BJP strategists' eyes, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Hoping to make its mark in Kerala, the BJP sewed up an alliance with the BDJS, the new party formed by SNDP, a powerful organisation of the backward Ezhava community.
The hijab-row triggered protests in Karnataka spread across the state on Tuesday, with campuses witnessing 'conflict-like' situations marked by stone-pelting incidents, use of force by police and the Muslim girls standing their ground for wearing the headscarves, prompting calls for peace and calm both by the government and the high court, which is now looking into the students' plea for their right to their hijab.
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