'It does not understand economics. The entire focus of this government is skewed.'
On Monday, a new chapter will be written in Ayodhya's and the country's history with the consecration ceremony at the newly-built Ram temple which will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and over 7,000 guests.
Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday linked Congress leaders' protest in black clothes over the issues of price rise and unemployment to the party's "appeasement" politics to convey its opposition to the Ram temple foundation laying by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on this day in 2020.
The premises are alleged to be of the domestic help of Jharkhand Rural Development Minister Alamgir Alam's personal secretary Sanjiv Lal.
Invitees to the 'pran pratishtha' consecration ceremony at the Ram temple started arriving Sunday in Ayodhya -- once a sleepy town now resplendent with new infrastructure and gripped by heightened religious fervour on the eve of a seminal event in India's political and religious history.
Besides Defence Minister Singh (Lucknow), Minister of Women and Child Development Irani (Amethi), those in the fray are Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishor (Mohanlalganj) and Minister of State of Consumer Affairs Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur).
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
'Rahul Gandhi is going to turn 54 and in India political leaders peak when they are around 60.' 'This 'bhai-behen ki jodi' has done a wonderful job for the Congress.' 'Priyanka Gandhi was a very effective campaigner.'
He claimed that out of 90 secretaries of the government of India, only three are from the Other Backward Classes and control only five per cent of the Budget, which he said was an "insult" to the backward classes.
Historically, the Mandi constituency has favoured scions of erstwhile princely states, electing royals in 13 out of 19 elections, including two bypolls since 1952.
Gourav Vallabh joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday hours after he quit the Congress, saying he can neither raise anti-Sanatan slogans nor abuse "wealth creators" day in and day out and was joining the ruling party due to his support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's agenda of "Viksit Bharat".
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.
This is the first meeting between Gandhi and Kumar since the latter walked out of the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar and formed a 'Mahagathbandhan' government with the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Congress and outside support of the Left.
The party was reacting to Kumar's decision to resign as Bihar chief minister and leaving the Mahagathbandhan alliance in the state and also dealing a body blow to the opposition bloc INDIA.
The Congress accused the BJP of spreading mischief through its "hate factory".
'Congress leaders are ready to lose the election and not form the government, but are never ready to share seats with others.'
Snubbed by his party leader Rahul Gandhi and panned by the Bharatiya Janata Party for questioning surgical strikes, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh swung into damage control mode on Tuesday and said his questions were to the government and not the armed forces.
Five people were killed and about 50 missing following several incidents of cloudburst in Himachal Pradesh where rains washed away many houses, bridges and roads, officials said on Thursday.
Political observers lauded the SP's choices in fielding several non-Yadav and Scheduled Caste candidates, the party's alliance with the Congress, and Rahul Gandhi's campaign around the danger to the Constitution if the BJP won a big majority.
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.
on Thursday adjourned sine die, ending the four-week-long second leg of the Budget session, during which treasury and opposition members locked horns over Rahul Gandhi's 'democracy' remark and the Adani issue.
Lok Sabha constituencies that sprung a surprise in the 2024 polls.
A first information report (FIR) was registered in Jaipur on Saturday night against a TV news anchor, Bharatiya Janata Party national spokesperson Rajyavardhan Rathore and others for allegedly spreading falsehood by doctoring Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's comment in Kerala to appear as if it was a remark on the Udaipur tailor's murder.
This is for the second time in the last three months that Sinha has come out with praising words for Rahul Gandhi and his 'Bharat Jodo Yatra'.
There is a view that heavyweight portfolios like home, finance, defence and external affairs besides education and culture, two ministries with strong ideological hues, will be kept by the BJP, while its allies can get anywhere between five to eight cabinet berths.
The best-case scenario is that the BJP will top out at around 50 seats in UP -- a drop of 12 from the 62 it had won in 2019. Taken in tandem with Maharashtra and Karnataka, this is what is likely to put paid to the BJP's ambitions of a third term for Modi, argues Prem Panicker.
In a ghastly incident that has sent shock waves across Bihar, former state minister Mukesh Sahni's 70-year-old father was found stabbed to death at his native home in Darbhanga district, a top police officer said.
The BJP had registered a one-sided victory on all the 17 SC-reserved seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But in 2019, out of these 17 seats, it lost Nagina and Lalganj seats to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
"For me, it is like homecoming," said the 93-year-old who returned for the second time to the Congress which he had last left ahead of the 2017 assembly elections to join the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The suspense over whether Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will contest the polls from Amethi and Raebareli respectively continued.
'Unlike in the sporting arena, where sports federations moved from partisan to impartial referees, in Indian democracy's biggest festival, it appears we are moving backward from unbiased and objective to one-sided and partisan,' observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Jitin Prasada was once considered as among Rahul Gandhi's 'young Turks' and was a minister in successive Manmohan Singh governments but defected from the Congress to the BJP in 2021, where he has again established himself as a prominent Brahmin face of Uttar Pradesh.
Gandhi had on Saturday said that the Congress reached out to the BSP leader, offering her the chief minister's post for contesting the assembly polls together, but she did not respond.
Rangeela's presence in the fray could have been trifle uncomfortable for Modi. He may not have posed an electoral challenge to the prime minister, but Rangeela's public meetings could have seen people flocking, if only to hear him mimic Modi. In a completely Modi-centric election, the presence of a 'rival' -- if only for a smattering of audience at his meetings -- would not have been particularly appreciated by Modi, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
With Atishi at the helm it will not be easy for the BJP to continue using the LG's office and the bureaucracy as political instruments to hinder governance and thereby provoke the electorate's ire against the AAP, expects Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Amid opposition charges that the Bharatiya Janata Party was out to destroy the Constitution, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that his government revered it and even Babasaheb Ambedkar would not be able to abolish it now.
'Nobody is speaking up for Muslims today.' 'Secular parties too have calmed down because they feel this will hurt the Hindu vote (bank).' 'In this scenario, where does a Muslim go?'
The strong message from the prime minister is of continuity of policies he considers right with strong emphasis on execution, points out T N C Rajagopalan.
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