Elections for 19 Rajya Sabha seats spread across eight states will be held on Friday with the contest in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan promising to be a close affair between the BJP and the Congress.
Three guys stood out at the swearing-in ceremony of Deve Gowda's son, says Sudhir Bisht.
Modi's NDA is good enough to give a psychological boost to the once 'untouchable' BJP and Modi but if the NDA doesn't get a majority on its own, then walking the last mile will be the greatest challenge of this election for Modi, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
'Forming cults around Lalus, Nitishes, Mulayams, Mayawatis and Mamatas will do as much harm to the Republic as the bhakti of the Hindus for Modi will do,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
The current crisis began Friday night when the Rajasthan Police sent a notice to Pilot, asking him to record his statement over an alleged attempt to bring down the government.
When the results for the Rae Bareli assembly seat came in on March 11, Aditi Singh (Congress) had won 128,319 votes, Mohammad Shabaz Khan of the BSP had won 39,156 votes and the BJP's Anit Srivastava had won 28,821 votes. It was a stunning victory for the US-educated rookie Congress candidate.
While the BJP has the numbers to send its eight candidates to the Upper House, its ally, Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, which has four MLAs in the 403-member UP assembly, holds key to the fate its ninth nominee.
Like Modi, Keshav Prasad Maurya worked at tea stalls. Dinesh Sharma, on the other hand, is a professor at Lucknow university.
The election in this seat is also important for Union minister and local MP Mahesh Sharma who has considerable influence the area.
"BJP leaders are playing the game at the behest of central leaders. MLAs were offered money... Rs 10 crore in advance and Rs 15 crore after the government is toppled," the chief minister alleged and added that the BJP wants to convert the state's politics into a goat market, 'bakra mandi'.
The economic muscle in the Mangalore region is generally sympathetic to the BJP, says Aditi Phadnis.
The 'secularists'are more adept at the politics of intense and alarmingly exaggerated fear-mongering, as this kind of politics provides easy votes of Muslims without making them answerable for the concrete issues of poverty, unemployment, lawlessness, and of basic needs like roads, electricity, etc, which is exactly how Nitish Kumar was defeated in the elections, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Yeddyurappa would take the oath alone as the chief minister and once the majority is proved on the floor of the assembly, cabinet members would be inducted.
The results for the bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tripura were announced on Tuesday.
'Nitish is now a helpless junior ally of Hindutva.' 'He just cannot think of reining in the hoodlums raging, marauding and killing in the mohallas,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
Lok Sabha elections result of 2019 tells us the Modi wave has only consolidated, instead of waning.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded his Cabinet and inducted 21 new ministers. Of these, 4 - Manohar Parrikar, JP Nadda, Suresh Prabhu and Birender Singh were appointed as Cabinet ministers. Other than this, Modi has inducted 17 other ministers of state. Here's a quick look at them:
He said the government had examined the video recording of the February 28 condolence meeting of slain Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Arun Mahaur, where Minister of State for Human Resource Development Ram Shankar Katheria had participated.
The final figure of polling could increase and it will be available on Tuesday, officials said.
A lot is riding on the Rajya sabha polls that are scheduled for Saturday. Major parties are whisking away candidates of other parties, while protecting their own, MLAs are being sent to 'camps' in the final countdown to the polls for 57 seats. Here is a state-by-state look:
Meets leaders from Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Jammu and Kashmir; party keen to form government in Delhi.
When it came to power, the BJP was a government with a difference: it had a majority in the Lok Sabha. Frequently the party itself forgets this
Incidents of arson, firing and vandalism were reported from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab as protesters agitated against the dilution of the SC/ST Act.
A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh man, Manohar Lal Khattar toiled on the ground to build the organisation for last four decades till he was handpicked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lead the first Bharatiya Janata Party government in Haryana.
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
Two technocrats, two hard-boiled politicians are India's new Cabinet ministers...
Very few old-style RSS workers-turned-leaders have survived Narendra Modi's political ambush in state politics. Harin Pathak's end closes the chapter for Modi who started his post-2002 riots journey with a new mix of profit-centric development and middle class-pleasing commerce, technology-driven communication with voters, and an unspoken Hindutva that speaks only through posturings and symbols. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt reveals the real reasons for the Modi-Pathak rupture.
The families that were affected by the communal violence in Muzaffarnagar district have no hope of their homes being restored to them. Is the government really unable to reassure them of a safe return?
In the dangal of UP politics, much as Muzaffarnagar wants to leave its past behind, the shadows are never be far behind.
Muslims constitute 20% of UP's electorate. Currently, Muslim voters are divided between Akhilesh's SP and Mayawati's BSP. What will tilt the balance? Can Muslims back the winning party? Mohammad Sajjad explains the mysteries of UP's Muslim politics.
'Even if Akhilesh Yadav opens up the entire state treasury for us we will not vote for the Samajwadi Party... ''...I don't want to return to my village, my head will be chopped off. They want me to press the button on the lotus.' Caught between an aggressive BSP cornering Dalit votes and the BJP cornering other Hindu votes, the Muslims of Muzaffarnagar have nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt presents the grim situation on the ground in western Uttar Pradesh.
