While people voted in a fifth round that will set the tone as this election rounds into the straight, and while Modi on the stump chews the cud of personal grievances and hackneyed promises that have long since passed their use-by date, there is a rogue wave rising -- what damage it will do, we will know 16 days from today, observes Prem Panicker.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Interim Budget on February 1 ahead of the Lok Sabha elections likely to be held in April-May.
'They were as late as June 2023 and they did not follow it up with concrete measures immediately in terms of a secretariat or common minimum programme, working group or seat sharing etc.' 'They continued to have periodic meetings after a gap of weeks where they had tasty dinner and coffee, but beside that they did nothing else.'
On the eve of the meeting hosted by it, the Congress clarified that it will oppose the ordinance on Delhi services in Parliament, a key condition put by the AAP to attend the talks.
Marking a vertical split in the Nationalist Congress Party, its senior leader Ajit Pawar joined the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government as deputy chief minister on Sunday.
Harping on putting up a united front, the Congress alleged that democracy is being "mercilessly murdered" and MPs who raise people's issues are suspended from the House.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday cited Delhi's alleged 'liquor scam' to accuse Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao of being under 'remote control' of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Hingoli MP Hemant Patil submitted his resignation to the Lok Sabha secretariat in New Delhi on Monday, while Nashik MP Hemant Godse sent his resignation letter to CM Shinde.
The INDIA bloc has 95 MPs in Rajya Sabha of which 45 were suspended on Monday.
Koshyari made the remarks after conferring D.Litt degrees on Gadkari, a senior BJP leader, and NCP president Sharad Pawar at an event held in Aurangabad.
Speculation is rife in political circles over the past few days that he is likely to join the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Mumbai on Tuesday, a day after quitting the Congress.
As part of the efforts to bring several opposition parties together on a common platform to defeat the BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Pawar met Kharge on Thursday evening.
Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Friday slammed as "completely mischievous" and "baseless" a media report about his meeting with BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in New Delhi.
"Arvind Kejriwal spoke directly to Rahul Gandhi (on the ordinance matter) and said if there is any issue, they can resolve it over tea. In the opposition meeting on Friday, Kejriwal said there is a need to forget the differences and move forward together," a party source said.
Gandhi, then a newly appointed Congress chief, had staked claim to form the government at the Centre after the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had lost the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha on April 17, 1999.
'She showed courage at every turn in her political career.'
Addressing a rally at Nanded as a part of the BJP's outreach campaign to mark the completion of nine years of the Narendra Modi government, Shah said the BJP didn't bring down the Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government last year.
Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Most leaders agreed for early finalisation of poll plans for 2024 stressing that there was no time left with them and mere meetings would not help.
Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Saturday said he is not completely opposed to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the charges against the Adani group, but a Supreme Court committee will be more useful and effective.
Women politicians bring to politics and policy a sensitivity that most of their male counterparts, at least until a generation back, lacked.
On Friday, Shrikant Shinde had said some leaders were trying to create hurdles in the alliance in Dombivali area (under Kalyan Lok Sabha seat) for their own selfish politics and that he was ready to leave the seat since the aim was to ensure the Narendra Modi government returns with a thumping majority in the 2024 LS polls.
Ahead of the day-long Opposition meeting on Friday, Samvad Bhavan, Rajkiye Atithisala and Sadaquat Ashram have got a facelift.
Earlier this week, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi held a series of meetings, including with Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav and Janata Dal-United president Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lallan.
The upcoming Opposition meet in Patna scheduled for next week will not discuss a possible prime ministerial candidate and will focus on deciding the common agenda for the parties to work on in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.
Opposition parties on Sunday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party after Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar and eight others were inducted into the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, saying the ruling party's 'washing machine' has resumed its operation to clean tainted leaders and it was an 'ED-facilitated power grab'.
Leaders of several like-minded opposition parties are likely to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Karnataka chief minister-designate Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar on Saturday in Bengaluru.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan on Wednesday defended the proposal to name Mumbai's Bandra-Worli sealink after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Pawar pressed for forging alliances of anti-BJP parties at state level and favoured picking up the prime ministerial candidate after the election results, as happened after the 1977 and 2004 general polls.
Senior Congress leader M Mallikarjun Kharge is not averse to running for the AICC president's election if party chief Sonia Gandhi asks him to contest, sources close to the veteran leader said on Wednesday.
The opposition INDIA alliance on Friday finalised a 13-member committee.
The Delhi high court on Friday sought a response from the Centre, Election Commission of India, and 26 political parties on a petition seeking to restrain opposition parties from using the acronym INDIA for their alliance.
The veteran politician's desire to quit politics may just be a new entry into the long list of occasions where he has gone back on his word, notes Neeta Kolhatkar.
Mamata asserted that she has not spoken to anyone in the Congress on seat-sharing in the state for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
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).
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.
Yadav remained unapologetic for his comments on women's complexion in the RS.
In switching over, Nitish has sent out a message that if he could not now become the NDA's PM, then he would need to stay on as CM at the very least, which a third term for Modi would not let him have, N Sathiya Moorthy points out.
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Wednesday alleged that the words 'secular' and 'socialist' were missing from the Preamble in the copies of the Constitution given to lawmakers on the opening day of the new Parliament building.
