In a first, BJP crossed the 10 per cent vote share-mark in Tamil Nadu and has so far registered a share of 10.21 per cent, though it could not emerge in lead positions anywhere.
The first phase of Election 2024 on Friday, April 19, 2024, covered 102 seats across 21 states and Union Territories.
Several leaders of the BJP and its allies are of the view that the NDA this time is unlikely to follow the instincts that made it pick Dhankhar and will be more conventional in its search for his successor.
'When you weigh anti-incumbency against the Centre against anti-incumbency against the state, anti-incumbency against the Centre will triumph as this is a parliamentary election.'
TVK cadres are worried, the leadership looks weak, and the party is not fully prepared for the 2026 elections, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
If the already demoralised Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam cadre, beaten worse by the shocking parliamentary poll debacle in May 2014 thought that the political set-back suffered by rival All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa Jayaram, in the light of a Bangalore court ordering a jail-term for her in September was a boon for their leadership, it's not to be.
'Tamil Nadu is a state of temples, it's a holy land. People don't seem to realise that.'
Thulasendrapuram, a small village in Tamil Nadu, is where the late Indian American scientist Shyamala Gopalan's parents were born. Dr Gopalan is, of course, Kamala Harris' mother and someone the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate often cites as the biggest influence on her life.
An air of excitement and expectancy pervades Thulasendrapuram village in Tiruvarur district of Tamil Nadu hoping that Democrat Kamala Harris, current vice president, wins the US presidential elections.
AIADMK leader Edappadi K Palaniswami is under pressure from his party as his unclear stand on the BJP alliance has brought back fears among party workers that the party may lose its identity, be forced into an unwanted coalition, and be taken over by the BJP later, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
There are states that could swing either way and change the results of the 2024 general election.
Here are some of the famous faces queued up to get ink mark on their fingers.
Medical seats for under-graduates and post-graduates remaining vacant in the NEET era, together with the Centre 'freezing' the number of medical colleges and seats in (Dravidian) Tamil Nadu and the launch of the PM's 'Vishwakarma Scheme' for the nation's craftsmen, are all seen as a bid to further reverse the state's progressive socio-economic agenda of and its achievements of the past hundred-plus years, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Madras high court on Thursday declared invalid the 2019 election of expelled All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kaahagam member O P Ravindhranath from Tamil Nadu's Theni constituency.
The BJP is now inventing new angles to keep its campaign relevant -- even if it's old wine in an old bottle, which is what the allegation on 'Katchatheevu' is, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Justice Krishna S Dixit, presiding over a single judge bench, issued notice to the parties concerned and paused the ongoing investigation.
A bench of justices Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta admitted the appeal filed by Ravindhranath against the high court order for hearing and issued notice to P Milany, who filed the petition challenging his election from the Theni constituency.
Over the medium and long term, the BJP hopes to devour the AIADMK, they having identified the party as 'ideologically not as sound as the DMK', predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Opposition parties allege the Modi government is attempting to turn India into a 'dictatorship' with the introduction of three Bills that seek to provide for removal of the prime minister, chief ministers and ministers arrested on serious charges, and vowed to oppose it 'tooth and nail'.
'The Dravidian movement was started for the Hindus who were rejected by the upper castes.'
Voting for the bypolls in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were held on Wednesday.
Vellore is one of the two seats that the DMK alliance won by the narrowest of margins in 2019. For the DMK's vote-score to be so low in a constituency with a substantial Muslim population has not missed the BJP strategists' eyes, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
He asked if DMK president and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, "who speaks of Tamil culture, such a serious allegation has been made--will DMK snap ties with Congress, for Tamil pride and the Tamil people."
Embroiled in a battle for survival, Left parties marginally improved their performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, leading in eight to 10 seats according to vote counting trends.
Voters include 8.4 crore men, 8.23 crore women and 11,371 from third gender. There are as many as 35.67 lakh first time voters, besides 3.51 crore young voters in the age group of 20-29 years.
Movie stars Kamal Haasan and Gautami campaign for candidates for the Lok Sabha elections 2024 in Tamil Nadu, which goes to the polls on Friday, April 19, 2024.
EPS has had its way on most things, alliance-wise. A week earlier, he reiterated that he would not re-admit OPS and Sasikala Natarajan back in the party. It was a message not just to detractors in the AIADMK. It was even more so for the BJP leadership in Delhi. Even more important for the AIADMK was their demand for accepting EPS as the chief ministerial candidate of any alliance that the party would form, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Prashant Kishor is a businessman before he is a politician, and given that the expected average turnout for JSP candidates is 5,000 to 6,000 votes and since Bihar has a significant number of seats where the margin between the winner and runner-up falls within that range he will capitalise on exactly that to showcase his presence.'
'Earlier, we used to talk about a deficit economy. There is a deficit in democracy' 'If you read superficially Gandhi and Ambedkar and Nehru, some misconceptions and misunderstanding come to mind, as if they were at loggerheads and they differed radically in their views' 'India is one nation. There is only one citizenship. No citizenship for South India and no citizenship for North India and another for the Northeast'
In the first phase of the Lok Sabha polls, there were 135 women candidates while in the second phase, there were 100 women candidates, bringing the combined total for the first two phases to 235 women candidates.
Bharatiya Janata Party nominee S Selvaganapathy was declared elected unopposed to the lone seat in Rajya Sabha from Puducherry, the first time the saffron party has got representation in the Upper House from the Union Territory, while Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's two nominees, Kanimozhi N V N Somu and K R N Rajeshkumar, were elected without contest from Tamil Nadu.
Reflecting the coalition-era politics, Uttar Pradesh witnessed a tight political race in which votes were split in many ways while Tamil Nadu saw a bi-polar situation with candidates getting a clear mandate in the last Lok Sabha elections.
Majority of these constituencies are in Uttar Pradesh and the party that is on the third slot even as the counting is still underway on several seats is the Bahujan Samaj Party, a party neither with the National Democratic Alliance nor the opposition INDIA bloc.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said she declined the offer of the Bharatiya Janata Party to contest elections pleading that she did not have the 'kind of funds' required for fighting the Lok Sabha polls.
Forty-two of the 102 Lok Sabha seats going to polls in the general election's first phase are constituencies that have three or more candidates facing criminal cases, according to a poll rights body.
P Chidambaram and Rajeev Shukla of the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party's Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar, former Congress leader Kapil Sibal, Rashtriya Janata Dal's Misa Bharti and Jayant Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal were among the 41 winners declared elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha.
Annamalai has faced criticism for the breakup between the AIADMK and the BJP, but BJP leaders say 'he attracts youth, who needs change'.
This negated the gain of more than a dozen seats in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala.
The Bahujan Samaj Party, which has decided to contest the Lok Sabha elections on its own, on Tuesday announced candidates for 12 out of 39 constituencies in Tamil Nadu. In the first phase, BSP president Mayawati cleared 12 names and the process was on to select candidates for the remaining constituencies. The party was in the process of identifying suitable candidates from each community to be fielded in all the Lok Sabha constituencies in Tamil Nadu, said a BSP leader.
The Election Commission of India has released detailed statistical data from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, revealing a record voter turnout of 64.64 crore, with women outnumbering men. The data also highlights the participation of women candidates and the use of postal ballots, along with insights into overseas Indian electors.
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