Congress gets into the opposition groove but still has miles to go, says Saroj Nagi.
While asserting that the growth of coronavirus cases in the country has been more or less linear and not exponential, it also said testing has been ramped up consistently.
Many BJP leaders are of the view that most key members of the previous Cabinet could be retained.
As Narendra Modi files his nomination in Varanasi, Praful Bidwai believes 'a straight contest against Priyanka would have put Modi on the defensive and forced him to concentrate on Varanasi.'
'The foundation of the 2014 triumph was Narendra Modi's appeal to voters in the Hindi belt. The Bihar Vidhan Sabha polls will demonstrate if he continues to appeal to them,' says T V R Shenoy.
Ram Nath Kovind is the first Bharatiya Janata Party leader and second Dalit in Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The results will be declared on July 20 in New Delhi.
'Modi has entered blunderland as he does not understand the army. He has actually meddled with the army, which is much more damaging than the ignorance of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.' 'People had an impression that the BJP was different. Now it has been made very, very, plain that it is not.' 'Look at the contrast in the behaviour of the prime minister. When they burnt buses in Gujarat for an unjust demand, the prime minister addressed them in Gujarati while the army veterans were on relay hunger strike for the 74th day on that day, but no word on this from the PM.'
Sunday's results may be a bitter pill that the Congress has to swallow -- that its future cannot be hitched to Rahul unless he can resonate with the people, feels Saroj Nagi.
Just in case the NDA is unable to reach 272 seats and is in the low range of 220 seats, then some novel ideas may spring up. Like a 'national government'. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com reports on the various scenarios that are being considered by the political parties, and by the President of India.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has called a meeting of chief ministers of 12 Congress-ruled states to figure out how to fill out the vacancies in the Rajya Sabha. Highly-placed sources have said that he wants to cajole Amethis's former feudal lord Sanjay Singh; by giving him an RS ticket, in view of his own weak position in Amethi. Renu Mittal reports.
Anil Shastri, one of the late prime minister's six children, recounts memories of his father.
The Congress will only be able to gain from the bill if its benefits percolate down to the people within the next eight months, says Anita Katyal
From the Aadhaar verdict to #MeToo's arrival in the country to the entry into the Sabarimala temple -- India had a newsworthy 2018. As we step into 2019, these are the top moments from the year gone by.
Amethi's member of Parliament failed to use his first formal television interview to reach out to the people in general and the electorate in particular ahead of the crucial elections in which the Congress has already been written off by opinion polls and surveys. He did little to change that impression by failing to exploit the platform provided to him.
APJ Abdul Kalam was passionate about everything he did. He was perfect, says Aditi Phadnis
With this phase, election will be over in 424 seats and polling in the remaining 118 seats will be held on May 12 and 19.
Three recent initiatives kicked off with renewed vigour to improve governance were actually started, perhaps in a different format by the UPA government.
Modi and Shah's next focus will be South India, and the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly elections. Shah is unlikely to abdicate control over the party even after he joins the government. Modi and Shah both know only too well that the party makes the government, and not the other way round.
The Marxists are heading for their worst debacle in many elections. How will May 16, 2014 affect India's Communists? T V R Shenoy surveys the landscape.
As fuel prices continue its northward march with petrol and diesel being sold at Rs 80.73 and Rs 72.83 per litre in the national capital, at least 21 opposition parties, led by the Congress have staged a Bharat Bandh protesting the rise in fuel prices and depreciation of the rupee.
In this May 2014 interview with Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com, the politically conscious Karnad spoke of why he is concerned about Modi coming to power.
Instead of being a facilitator, each political formation has only tried to be an ATM for freebies, feels Veena Sandhu
'Do you know there is a 500 page report prepared by an inquiry committee headed by myself? When I placed the report in Parliament, have you heard any single Opposition leader give a notice for discussion? Why are they not demanding a discussion in Parliament on the report? They could have established that there was a scam. Today, a Parliament Committee report is as good as a Parliament report and this report says the 2G scam is no scam. Our government is suffering because of the media hype on these scams,' Congress MP P C Chacko tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier.
Arun Jaitley and Janardan Dwivedi have rewritten the rules of politics in the Age of the Internet and its young and restless user base, reports Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
'It is still God's own country. Nobody needs to worry about coming here. Anybody can come to Kerala without worry because bad elements will be kicked out of the state mercilessly... These terrorists visited many places and not only Kerala,' says Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, reacting to the fears that Kerala has become a terror hub.
Who will make the most of the disruptions of 2016 this year? Mihir Sharma's list of probables.
'The new generation voter is hyper-nationalistic, but it isn't essentially illiberal.' 'They will find the rants of Adityanath as laughable as Irfan Habib's. They will also find the BJP's polarising approach to vote-gathering unacceptable if it fails to deliver jobs and growth,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Nitish Kumar will be the chief minister only till the time the BJP wishes, points out Ramesh Menon.
The Opposition said that the government was 'bull-dozing'.
One can understand that all MPs are equal in that sense and are endowed with varied talents but that does not automatically qualify them to run ministries. Some are adept at meeting challenges and some simply are not, and remain ornaments. By seeking pro-rata quotas, the very purpose of a forming a ministry of talent is lost, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
'Voters did not turn up in large numbers in Bangalore.' 'If more voters of Bangalore had come to vote, we would definitely have reached the magic figure.'
'I am quite optimistic that sooner or later, my wishful thinking would turn into a reality.' The only hitch is that the INC president's own career ambitions may be hurt if the Congress merges with the BJP,' says Sudhir Bisht.
Naidu was an ABVP activist during the Emergency and was arrested and jailed.
Opposition ranks united on Thursday to disrupt proceedings of Parliament over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dig at his predecessor Manmohan Singh in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, stating that the latter knew the art of taking bath wearing a raincoat as there were many scams during his government but he had remained untainted.
Arvind Kejriwal's party will need around 50 seats to make a pitch for the Left's space in national politics. For that, it will have to contest more than one third of the Lok Sabha seats, points out Saroj Nagi.
'Narendra Modi could be too old to change his personality. On the other hand, his attachment to the RSS could be mostly sentimental. So one must hope that if he becomes prime minister, he is able to detach himself from the RSS view of the world as completely as Narasimha Rao detached himself from the Congress's First Family.' 'India cannot be governed by the autocratic methods by which he has governed Gujarat. If he becomes prime minister he will have to learn to speak in a more civil language about his political opponents,' historian Ramachandra Guha tells Arthur J Pais/Rediff.com
Despite the recent electoral reverses, Rahul is getting ready to walk the fire once more. The question is whether he will get burned or burnished in the process, says Saroj Nagi.
At least eight MLAs of the opposition Congress in BJP-ruled Gujarat appeared to have voted for Kovind.
If the Opposition is bent upon shouting its own agenda on a deaf ruling dispensation, then it becomes binding upon the chair to ensure that the parliamentary affairs aren't reduced to a farce.
