The parties which gave chief ministers and sent scores of MPs to Parliament, drew a blank this time.
Gandhi said he has "received tremendous love and affection from people of Tamil Nadu and it is my duty to stand with people of Tamil Nadu and protect their history, their culture and their language."
The BJP continuing to look at the Dravidian polity through the religious prism has not worked in Tamil Nadu whereas it has yielded political and electoral results across much of the rest of the country, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the leader of the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna's (JVP) broader front National People's Power (NPP), on Sunday consolidated his lead in the Sri Lanka's presidential election.
This negated the gain of more than a dozen seats in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala.
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.
Though electoral verdicts have historically been accepted, even though grudgingly, by all parties, there has been a sharper edge to the questions being raised by Opposition parties this time over the polling process, including the Election Commission.
'I want to ask the Congress only one question: What is more important than election management in politics?'
The LTTE said their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran bestowed the title of 'Mamanithar,' or great man, on Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Raviraj, 44, who was shot dead in Colombo on Friday.
There are states that could swing either way and change the results of the 2024 general election.
Sri Lanka's main Tamil party on Sunday secured a landslide win in the historic provincial council polls held after a gap of 25 years in the former Tamil Tigers-ruled northern province, an outcome expected to give limited autonomy to the Tamils after the end of decades of ethnic war.
Leaders of several Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties met on Saturday to take stock of the opposition's preparations leading up to the June 4 counting of votes polled in the Lok Sabha elections, and claimed they will get more than 295 seats, enough for them to form the next government.
The DMK feels its genuine gestures have had no bearing on the governor's politico-administrative conduct, which is 'more political and politicised than administrative and Constitutional', observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The BJP is focusing determinedly on the seats it lost in 2019, with the hope of winning these either independently or with the aid of its allies.
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.
With the Tamil Nadu electorate having given him an unprecedented mandate that had eluded his father the late M Karunanidhi, Stalin has to prove his worth, ensuring at the same time that the Dravidian drag on the AIADMK's side does not open up space for the BJP to make inroads in the state, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The DMK leader's reference made was to one of the INDIA bloc meetings in which Nitish Kumar reportedly stressed on use of Hindi.
The Tamil Nadu unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday announced that it would contest alone in the urban civic polls slated to be held on February 19, even while asserting that its alliance with the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in the state remained intact.
He will be remembered for mustering the courage to take on former chief ministers and the state's political heavyweights M Karunanidhi and J Jayalalithaa in the political arena on his own terms and also hold his own against them.
'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Tuesday poised to form the government for a third consecutive term with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance getting a majority in the Lok Sabha, notwithstanding crushing losses in three Hindi heartland states after a bitterly fought election that was projected as a referendum on his popularity.
The TMC also announced it would hold talks with other regional parties in their bid to take on the BJP in the crucial 2024 elections but at the same time denied that it was planning a third front, separate from the Congress-led front.
The BJP game-plan: Take the top slot, or a close second, either for the 'Lotus' or the larger NDA, if it can and push the AIADMK to the third place, explains N Sathiya Moorthy.
'All of these guys who are opposing the Supreme Court judgment are from dominant scheduled caste communities and none of them come from the scavenging community.' 'Not a single scavenging leader will oppose this Supreme Court judgment.'
The BJP, which rules the Centre, is in power in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and is all set to get Madhya Pradesh back and snatch Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress after today's vote count.
The Bharatiya Janata Party suffered stunning losses in three Hindi heartland states, partial poll results showed Tuesday, forcing the party to rely on allies to form the government after a bitter and divisive election that was projected as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity.
The results of the recent presidential elections in Sri Lanka are likely to have stunned groups in Tamil Nadu that have been giving moral and material support to Tamils in the north and east of the island for decades. Tamil Nadu-based groups had asked Sri Lanka Tamils to protest against the election and boycott voting.
The BJP, which has allied with a few smaller parties, has sought to upend the state's conventional politics, which has so far been indifferent to Hindutva politics, by taking the ruling DMK head-on for its alleged insult of Sanatan Dharma besides involvement in corruption.
'Rahul Gandhi is raising the issue of a caste census though his party has been doing injustice on this front from the 1950s.'
Making his first public appearance after claims of injuries he sustained surfaced over three months ago, Tamil Tiger leader V Prabhakaran paid homage to a slain pro-LTTE lawmaker in the rebel-held Wanni area in northern Sri Lanka. Attired in combat fatigues, Prabhakaran offered floral tributes to K Sivanesan, a Tamil National Alliance MP who was killed in the blast.
'Chandrababu is wiser and a very good administrator.' 'Jagan is the opposite. He is not very wise, not a good administrator.'
A G Perarivalan alias Arivu is now a free man following a legal battle, and that long fight provides scope for throwback moments of Tamil sentiment that propelled the struggle which was backed by most political parties and successive governments in Tamil Nadu.
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Annamalai has faced criticism for the breakup between the AIADMK and the BJP, but BJP leaders say 'he attracts youth, who needs change'.
'The BJP will be the ruling party.'
The Tirupati Laddu row intensified on Friday with the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), which is managing the super-rich temple, backing Chief Minister N Chandra Babu Naidu's claim that the famous 'prasadam' had animal fat and Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy dubbing the accusations as 'atrocious'.
In private, questions are being raised about the wisdom of a 'dual-SIM' leadership during the long run-up to the 2026 assembly polls where 'family rule' could become an election issue, reports N Sathiya Moorthy.
Alleging that Sanatana Dharma is against equality and social justice, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam youth wing secretary and Tamil Nadu Youth Welfare Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin has said it should be eradicated.
If the idea was to garner AIADMK votes with or without the three faction leaders after the party broke ties with the NDA, it may not work after all, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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