'Election funding needs a little more transparency.'
The BJP often forgets that in Dravidian Tamil Nadu, the voter does not mix religion, which is personal, and politics that is in the public sphere, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
Singh has questioned the reliability of the EVMs on more than one occasion following the Congress' defeat in the recent assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
On the Opposition's poll promise of statehood restoration, Shah said, "I want to ask Farooq Abdullah and Rahul Gandhi, who is going to restore the statehood. You cannot give it back. Why are you misleading the public?"
On the day of polling in the high-profile Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh on Friday, the city's mayor Vikram Ahake, who recently joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, urged people to vote for Congress' Nakul Nath.
'Everyone is unhappy with the lieutenant governor's administration, which is ignorant, high-handed, and inaccessible.'
He further informed that the highest voting of 71.6 per cent was reported from the Ballimaran constituency, while the lowest turnout was in Delhi cantonment, which reported 45.4 per cent polling.
24 hours before campaigning ends in Thiruvanathapuram, Archana Masih/Rediff.com discovers Shashi Tharoor and his BJP rival Rajeev Chandrasekhar are busy getting their message across to voters.
Once rolled out, theaterisation will be the biggest military reform in the country. It will see the creation of unified theatre commands within the 1.7 million-strong Indian armed forces.
'There are legions of unemployed degree holders across rural and semi-urban belts in Maharashtra. Now, they aren't finding brides.' 'This issue has now snowballed into a social crisis. In 2014 and 2019, they had voted for the BJP.'
Speaking at a rally in Madhya Pradesh's Harda on April 24, Modi praised Chouhan saying the two had served together in the party organisation and also as chief ministers.
The video in this regard was shared by Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Akhilesh Yadav and senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on their social media accounts.
The bench gave liberty to Sharad Pawar to move the poll panel for allocation of the party symbol and directed the poll panel to allot it in one week of the application.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) directed the removal of West Bengal DGP Rajeev Kumar and mandated the appointment of Vivek Sahay, once suspended by the poll panel, as the new state police chief, with the TMC accusing the BJP of controlling the constitutional body.
If Tamil Nadu voters preferred the DMK combine, it owed to the Modi-Annamalai combo's ideological battle which often crossed the line of political decency and also challenged 'Tamil pride', argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
There were allegations that voters are receiving robocalls, spreading disinformation and encouraging people to stay home on Election Day.
The only visible hint of the impending election is the hoardings put up by local election authorities, urging citizens to exercise their franchise.
This will be the first major electoral test after the political realignment that emerged in 2019.
Unfortunately, the best man does not always win, but I feel enriched by the experience of the campaign and getting to know Rajeev Chandrasekhar, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
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.
'Can you imagine that Surat's voters won't have any say now in exercising their fundamental right to choose a candidate of their own choice? This is what the BJP has reduced India's democracy to.' 'With this ugly act, in one stroke, the BJP has disenfranchised the voters of Surat.'
In India elections are never fought in a straight line. It's fought on many issues, at many levels, with multiple emotions and with a bit of good luck, too. Sheela Bhatt reports from Rajasthan.
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.
'Modi is not assuring the nation that if he gets back to power in 2024 and remains in power till 2029, he will not change the Constitution.'
Facing opposition fire for exit polls allegedly being used for stock market manipulation, Axis My India's chief Pradeep Gupta has said he is open to facing all kinds of investigations and it would help do business in a much better way if the government frames specific regulations for pollsters.
'If the Pawars are so powerful, then why are they scared of me?'
Voter turnout was 67.47 per cent in 2015 assembly election. The voting percentage was 57.04 till 6 pm deadline, and rose to 61.46 per cent as those in queues at polling stations were allowed to vote, poll officials said, adding it may increase further.
'The karyakartas who wanted to contest were disappointed and it took some time to explain to them why we needed an alliance.'
The Supreme Court said on Wednesday it cannot 'control the elections' or issue directions simply because doubts have been raised about the efficacy of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), as it reserved its judgment on a clutch of petitions claiming the polling devices can be tinkered with to manipulate the results.
A number of high-profile electoral battles, starring veterans and debutants, formidable opponents and unlikely contestants, feature in Tuesday's outcome.
Wouldn't it be better to join the celebrations with the vast Hindu majority while at the same time criticising Mr Modi/BJP/RSS for politicising it? notes Shekhar Gupta.
Guidelines have been issued by the Commission for safe conduct of the electoral exercise in the midst of the raging COVID-19 pandemic. These guidelines include lowering the maximum number of voters for a polling booth from 1,600 to 1,000, staggering the polling hours and extending postal ballot facility to those above 80.
Over 1.03 crore voters will decide the political fate of 306 candidates in this phase.
'When our daughters, wrestlers Sakshi Malik and Vignesh Phogat, were protesting at the Jantar Mantar, the police kicked them with their shoes.'
Former chancellor Rishi Sunak convincingly won over an audience of Conservative Party members in a head-to-head television debate with rival Foreign Secretary Liz Truss in the leadership contest to elect a new Tory party leader and British prime minister.
Many senior BJP leaders and outgoing Rajya Sabha MPs, including seven Union ministers such as Dharmendra Pradhan and Bhupender Yadav, have not been renominated by the party for the biennial Rajya Sabha polls amid strong indications that several of them may contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Struggling to gain political traction on issues of corruption, the West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party is shifting its focus to emotive topics such as the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in a bid to achieve its target of securing 35 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state.
The exercise will continue till 6 pm in all the polling stations except those in Maoist-affected areas of Balaghat, Mandla and Dindori districts where it ended at 3 pm, an official said.
'The inauguration of the Ram temple was the pinnacle of the BJP's religious politics.' 'Politics is dynamic. What goes up has to come down.'
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