Vijay, with his chief ministerial ambitions, is a one-man army, at least as of now, and his campaign team considers him omnipresent. He has to be present in all districts, if not all constituencies at the same time, as there is no second-line leader or platform speaker in the party, who can draw crowds, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
With its age-old fascination for education, southern states have done better than the North. Start-ups, IT hubs, and industry majors setting up shop have changed the face of the South. Nearly 79% of global offices set up by international conglomerates in India are in the South. Almost 46% of tech unicorns are from the South. The GDP per person in the South is 4.2 times higher than the North. None of these indicators can be ignored by any central government, whatever the political compulsions, notes Ramesh Menon.
'We were not protesting for a wage hike or provident fund. We were protesting for the safety of the larger population. There is no personal gain.'
The Madras high court on Wednesday directed the Tamil Nadu government to remove at once, all the posters put up by political parties in furtherance of the local body elections, scheduled for February 19, throughout Chennai.
Venugopal told the court that he had given legal opinion to the AIADMK faction led by Panneerselvam.
Dr V Dekal, who heads the department of forensic sciences at the Madras Medical College, said he had put in his papers on March 3, over a fortnight before Batcha's suicide, to contest the Tamil Nadu assembly elections.
Digital canvassing is expected to benefit from political money looking for alternative blow horns.
If the BJP has to work as a junior partner of Vijay's TVK, then either the party will have to change the state leader, or the latter should change himself. Incidentally, ever since Vijay started talking politics and elections, the pro-BJP/Hindutva social media had stopped dragging his name into any non-existing issue.' In particular, they have stopped referring to him by his Christian name, 'Joseph Vijay', observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
After Shah said Hindi is the most spoken language which can unite the nation as a common language, Tamil Nadu parties rallied against it.
'Strategy is to divide and polarise electorate on communal lines.'
"The DMK is not worried a wee bit," he said on the ED searches. Such an action by the ED was 'usual, ordinary and a drama' enacted to divert attention.
Vijayakanth was unwell for quite some time and his wife Premalatha took over the reins of the party days ago.
Promising to positively consider several representations of Christians including site for cemetries, Palaniswami, in an apparent reference to his party's alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party for assembly polls likely in April, said electoral tie-ups were different from ideology.
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.
The issue of corruption will be tested when the results of Tamil Nadu assembly elections would be declared on May 13.
Stalin, in an interview to a daily, has refuted the FM's allegations, saying "everyone present in the Assembly knew it was a drama enacted by herself," referring to the late Jayalalithaa.
Surprisingly, the BJP's nearest rival in ad spend was not the Congress, but the Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
For the BJP, Telangana is a sunrise state in the South, while Karnataka is a southern success despite the ups and downs.
The BJP promised revival of the legislative council in Tamil Nadu, which was abolished decades ago by its ally, the ruling AIADMK, if their combine was voted to power in the coming assembly elections.
'There was a time when a movie star could win an election just by stepping into politics. That era is over.'
A farmer's son with no political lineage, K T Benny was in for a surprise when his name came up as a candidate in the Kerala assembly election. Many in the state Congress also had not heard of the Youth Congress worker who turns 37 on April 13, the day of polling in Kerala.
The 70-year-old actor was admitted to the hospital on December 25 with severe hypertension and exhaustion.
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.
Kanugolu had also made forays in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh following a directive from the party's central leadership but regional satraps Ashok Gehlot and Kamal Nath reportedly were not on the same page as the poll strategist.
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.
A new entrant, whether a popular actor or not, has not been able to sweep the polls, as their fans had hoped for. Given a proven pattern, it should hold true for Vijay as well. Or, something drastically has to happen between now and 2026, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
On his first visit to Tamil Nadu after retaining power in this year's Lok Sabha polls, the prime minister reiterated his campaign against single-use plastic.
"The voting percentage is likely to go upwards when reports from all polling stations are obtained as polling is scheduled till 6 pm in many constituencies. Final figures will be known on Saturday after the scrutiny of form 17A," the EC said.
The other three crore -- nearly 40 percent -- will have to provide one of the 11 listed documents to establish their place or date of birth.
Ace Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin is now in a wave of a storm for what appeared to be criticising the government of Tamil Nadu.
New Union minister L Murugan's declaration of Kongu Nadu as his native place, instead of Tamil Nadu, may be part of a grand BJP strategy to create new states out of existing ones, particularly those that have anti-BJP governments, mulls N Sathiya Moorthy.
'I am contesting elections to encourage and start a nationwide debate on the present nuclear policy.'
'It's a natural alliance and this alliance has been has been formed without compromising the core ideology of the AIADMK.'
Kumar, who played a key role in implementing decisions following the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir during his stint in the Union home ministry, took charge as an election commissioner on March 15, 2024.
After maintaining that the National Democratic Alliance leadership would announce the chief ministerial candidate, following poll notification, the Saffron party appeared to have made a climbdown.
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.
Constituency-wise verdict of the five-state aasembly elections.
The BCCI's much-awaited elections have been rescheduled by a day to October 23 in the wake of assembly elections in Haryana and Maharashtra.
Annamalai has faced criticism for the breakup between the AIADMK and the BJP, but BJP leaders say 'he attracts youth, who needs change'.
'We must encourage ambitious leaders and not stifle them.'
