Besides the national capital, polling for the sixth round of the marathon seven-phase elections will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir.
This election will be remembered for being the first election where the Election Commission failed to take action on gross violations involving the ruling party that repeatedly used religion, communal slurs, lies and undocumented allegations, observes Ramesh Menon.
Congress wants to change the Constitution and rob Dalits, OBCs of quota benefits for religion-based reservation, Modi said.
Leaders hope the Ayodhya temple ceremony would pave way for harmony.
'Are we so ready to believe that in this country whose virtues we constantly shout from the rooftops, there is no single person -- other than Modi -- in a minimum of 272 elected MPs with the talent and ability to lead this country?' asks Prem Panicker.
The plan to relieve NSG from VIP security tasks has been in the making since 2012 when NSG commanders foresaw an event where simultaneous terror attacks could be witnessed at one time on multiple centres in the country and the commandos will have to be rushed in different directions.
'Whether somebody else can take up (Narendra Modi's position) the answer to it is yes but for that (to happen) some kind of crisis must come and in that crisis Modi must lose the (trust) vote.' 'Only then another candidate from the BJP can come and most likely it could be Nitin Gadkari because he enjoys the confidence (of the RSS as well as that of BJP MPs).'
Commenting that running a country is not a play for those born with a golden spoon, Modi said, "They have gone from Amethi and will go even from Rae Bareli."
The Congress leader said he believes that democracy is derailed and "we are becoming too authoritarian". "It's all about one-man show," he said.
'Modi 3.0 will have more balanced policies like one saw in Modi's first term.'
Long queues were seen at outpatient department ticket counters in government hospitals, where senior doctors joined their junior colleagues in the protest.
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.
Leaders, including the President and Vice President, react to the bhoomi pujan of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.
BJP heavyweights Smriti Irani, Arjun Munda, Ajay Mishra Teni and Kailash Chaudhary were among the 13 Union ministers who tasted defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, as stunning losses in three Hindi heartland states forced the BJP to rely on allies to form the government.
Separately, the poll panel also issued a notice to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, asking him to respond to the complaints filed by the BJP against him and the main opposition party's senior leader Rahul Gandhi regarding their remarks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday vowed to thwart alleged attempts to rob Dalits and backward classes of reservations by the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) which he accused of 'enslavement' and performing 'mujra' for Muslim vote bank.
How would Jyothi Surekha Vennam and Ojas Deotale, India's Asian Games archery stars, rate these leaders' bow and arrow skills?
Akhilesh's fielding candidates from a broad spectrum of castes, not just Yadavs, and with the BJP losing in several seats in Purvanchal, suggests that smaller OBC communities shifted from the BJP to the SP in the region.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
Aiming to retain power at the Centre for the third time in a row, the Bharatiya Janata Party while banking heavily on its sitting MPs on Saturday released the first list of 51 candidates from Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha elections.
A banner came up outside Purey Alpi Tiwari hamlet in Sarmeny village under Jamo block on Monday warning to boycott the coming elections with the locals raising slogans.
Akhilesh Yadav's stock rose dramatically on Tuesday with his Samajwadi Party cutting the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party down to size in Uttar Pradesh.
Calling the Congress's Bharat Jodo Yatra a "unique and historic" movement, Rajasthan Health Minister Parsadi Lal Meena said Rahul Gandhi's march is much bigger than Lord Rama's padyatra from Ayodhya to Sri Lanka.
Campaigning ended on Wednesday evening for 102 Lok Sabha seats across 21 states and Union territories which will go to polls in the first phase on April 19 with top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance and the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) making a last-gasp effort to woo voters.
For the first time in his political career, he failed to carry his party to even a working majority -- and again, for the first time in his career, he finds himself in a situation where he cannot rule by dictatorial fiat, points out Prem Panicker.
The police identified the driver and the vehicle through the CCTV footage of the area.
While Lok Sabha members across party lines demanded an inquiry, hundreds of students continued their protests near Rau's IAS Study Circle in the west Delhi locality where the horror unfolded Saturday night, killing the three students trapped in the basement illegally used as a library as floodwaters rose outside.
Some have been cherry-picked to assert the BJP's supremacy over its allies or, significantly, its leaders who charted an independent course in the recent past.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have got a tough fight in Varanasi had Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra contested against him as Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) candidate, feel party workers from the temple town.
With the reality of coalition politics staring the BJP in its face, this was inevitable, points out Ramesh Menon.
The event brings to fruition the Bharatiya Janata Party's 'mandir' movement that defined its politics for three decades and took it to the heights of power.
Here are the 10 key issues likely to be the centre of discussion in the seven-phase general elections that begin on April 19.
'Besides Ayodhya, the BJP lost in nine other constituencies with a Ramayana imprint; it tasted success only in Thrissur.' 'In Rameswaram, K Navaskani of the Indian Union Muslim League won with a 44% voteshare in a 84% Hindu constituency.' 'In the 21 seats in the Ayodhya and Varanasi regions, both crucial to the Hindutva project, the BJP won just 7.' 'It won just 3 out of 12 seats around Modi's constituency,' points out Krishna Prasad.
'If we get 399 seats and you say we have not crossed 400, then it is your wisdom. But the '400 paar' slogan is based on calculation and considered opinion'
Gandhi said he has respect for BSP patriarch Kanshi Ram for articulating the Dalit voice of Uttar Pradesh, even though the Congress had suffered during that phase.
Nakul Nath's move has added fuel to rumours swirling for the last few days that he, along with his father, are defecting to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
While the Aam Aadmi Party is contesting on four seats, the Congress has fielded candidates for the remaining three seats.
Modi wants the BJP to gets an additional 10% of the vote share from what it won in 2019. Plans are afoot to get new faces to replace MPs with poor chances of winning. Sources say more than 100 MPs are like to be axed, notes Modi biographer Ramesh Menon.
The lack of clarity on who is next in line, when the time comes, as indeed it will one day some day, reflects poorly on the management of the world's largest political party. It scarcely need be said that a squabble between the contenders, Shah and Yogi, is exactly what the doctor ordered for the Opposition, notes Krishna Prasad.
'They were very vocal on the defence of the Constitution, reservation, SC/ST Act and democratic rights.'
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