A Ganesh Nadar and Saisuresh Sivaswamy, on the campaign trail with H Vasanthakumar, the Congress's businessman candidate in Tamil Nadu.
'They are fighting it out, but they have deeply traumatised; they are alive and they are carrying on in life.'
Even if the BJP gets 60, 70, or even 100 per cent of the votes in the seats where it scored more than 50 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, these will still add up to only 224 seats, argues Shekhar Gupta.
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.
Sibal, a prominent Opposition voice and a former Congress leader, also said that instead of a common minimum programme, the Opposition parties should talk about a 'new vision for India'.
If only the Congress could rebuild on its strengths and develop a modern enough ideology, we could again be moving towards a clearer two-party political landscape, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Sri Lanka's Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday imposed emergency giving him sweeping powers ahead of the key election on July 20 to pick a new President as he urged the political parties to put aside differences and form an all-party government, with the Opposition dubbing his decision as an 'undemocratic draconian act'.
Pattali Makkal Katchi founder S Ramadoss said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should meet the expectations of the people that prices will go down if he took over and 'it is the duty of the new government to do that.'
The Hindutva social media continues to present the DMK especially as anti-god, anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin. The strategy did not work in the past, it has not worked in the present, and would not work in the future, as a massive vote-getter, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Congress's loss in the three states in the North-East, a region it had dominated for decades, shows there is a lot left to do to reclaim its political turf despite the Bharat Jodo Yatra which it had touted as a successful experiment in mass public outreach.
A formal decision would be made on the Chief Ministerial candidate of the NDA once the Election Commission issues the notification for the assembly elections, expected in April-May, he said, adding the strategy was part of the ongoing exercise to strengthen the BJP in the state.
In Tamil Nadu politics J Jayalalithaa is the queen of all she surveys today, But there are some ground realities that may still dent her high ambition. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt's fascinating new column where she reveals the ground realities in the Battle for India.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday said the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam would decide on accommodating V K Sasikala, confidante of late chief minister of Tamil Nadu J Jayalalithaa, in the ruling party-led alliance for the April 6 assembly polls.
The BJP has to endorse chief minister K Palaniswami's candidature for the CM's post for the polls and agree to its other terms -- like non-participation in government -- and if not, should rethink of its 2021 electoral options, the AIADMK indicated at its meet.
The project was announced in September 2019 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the new Parliament building on December 10, 2020.
Governors must be impartial, fair, and above narrow politics to uphold the values and spirit of the Constitution. But in a rapidly changing political culture where the unstated rule is to crush the Opposition, such values have no meaning. At stake are Constitutional values, federalism and governance, asserts Ramesh Menon.
Dr Vasudevan Maitreyan, was virtually the face of the AIADMK in New Delhi since February 2002, finds himself ignored by the current leadership.
AIADMK coordinator O Panneerselvam is said to be upset at his son Raveendranath Kumar, a Lok Sabha MP, being denied a ministerial chance for a second time in a row, beginning with the formation of Modi 2.0 in 2019, reveals N Sathiya Moorthy.
The party that shall head the alliance would be made known only during the elections and polls were not round the corner now, Chief Minister Palaniswami said when asked if the BJP or AIADMK would steward the combine in Tamil Nadu to fight the polls next year.
Since the US and India broadly share similar interests in Sri Lanka, they should coordinate closely to ensure that the country preserves its democratic institutions, says Lisa Curtis
The new chief minister, if from the Congress, will have little or no time for political administration, to ensure that he does not lose the voter's goodwill even before the Lok Sabha polls. He can count only on one thing. That the BJP may not want to upset him too early lest an early failure should become an added problem for the party in all the polls to follow, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Senior Janata Dal-United leader Dhananjay Singh pitched for Opposition unity ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and said party workers in Uttar Pradesh want Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to contest the elections from the state's Phulpur constituency.
Neither the ruling DMK nor the fractured AIADMK Opposition anticipated that an assembly by-election would put them both to test, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
It appears that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being very responsive to Jayalalithaa's demands, be it on the secure release of the abducted Tamil Nadu priest to the fishermen's issue with Sri Lanka, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
As political rivals clamour to retain their pan-Tamil credentials, the BJP may use the 'nationalist' card to even the odds in its favour, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien said the situation in Bihar is one of the reasons behind the Parliament session being cut short by the government.
Lashing out at both the opposition and ruling fronts led by the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen MP Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday said that neither dukandar nor chowkidar opens their mouths when Muslims are oppressed.
'Wisdom demands Modi moves to restore the critical institutions of the State and dial back on the cult building around his persona,' say Sonali Ranade and Shealja Sharma.
But not for too long, as TTV Dinakaran can still play spoilsport, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
However, speculation remained rife that the meeting was part of Banerjee's plan to form an opposition front with regional players minus the Congress.
The inauguration new parliament building will take place in two phases.
The Bharatiya Janata Party rejected this was any sort of demonetisation and instead reminded the Congress that even during the rule of Manmohan Singh, old currency notes were taken off circulation.
The Trinamool Congress registered a decisive victory in West Bengal on Sunday, contrary to results of most exit polls which predicted a tight race between the BJP and the TMC with an edge to the Mamata Banerjee-led party.
Sonia Gandhi spends just 30 minutes in Kanyakumari to promote 39 candidates in Tamil Nadu. A Ganesh Nadar listens in.
'It is up to New Delhi to take quick advantage of the turn of events in Sri Lanka. Otherwise, Beijing's economic clout and the deep roots it has grown in the island nation may well tempt the new President to play the India versus China game,' says Nitin A Gokhale.
ndependent of the political fallout, which Stalin has sought to arrest through the withdrawal of the measures as fast as they were introduced, there are concerns about the way those decisions came to be taken, without adequate application of mind, not in official terms but in political and electoral contexts, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The SLPP, led by prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, has won in 145 constituencies, bagging a total of 150 seats with its allies, a two-thirds majority in the 225-member Parliament, according to the results announced by the election commission.
Replying to a question on reports of the BJP demanding 50 seats from the ruling AIADMK, Murugan said a statement on the continuation of the alliance was made by the party's top leaders O Panneerselvam and Edappadi K Palaniswami two days ago.
'Tamil Nadu is a paradox. We have more places of Hindu worship per square kilometres than any other place in the world. 'We break more coconuts for religious reasons everyday than any other place in the world.' 'At the same time, we also have a very strong Periyar-infused movement of rationalism.'
With Tamil Nadu's electoral fate decided, all eyes would now veer round to the pending 'disproportionate assets case' against Jayalalithaa in the Supreme Court, and Stalin's own future within the DMK, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
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