President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Monday fired Basil Rajapaksa from his post and invited the Opposition parties to join a unity Cabinet to tackle the raging public anger against the hardships caused by the economic crisis.
'Parties which supported me were all threatened. This could hardly have been called a fair election.' 'This is Modi's India.'
The BJP's relations with some alliance partners, including its oldest ally the Shiv Sena, Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United, Akali Dal and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party of Union minister Upendra Kushwaha, have been somewhat tense, and Shah's comments are being seen as an attempt to smooth their ruffled feathers.
To beat BJP, you either deny them a critical mass of Hindu vote or build a regional leader and party strong enough to protect their turf, observes Shekhar Gupta.
While critics and protestors have multifarious arguments to offer, the defence of CAA has been uni-dimensional and uni-focussed as has been the case with most policies of the Modi government and the political positions of his party. But to be drawn into an issue that has assumed more than local and national dimensions, Rajini has knowingly or otherwise, taken the plunge and in favour of the BJP -- or, so it has come to be seen, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
He said the Centre has 'decided that our lives must end in prison'.
'Tamil Nadu will never allow the Centre's three-language policy'
'To them, the day may not be far off when the state BJP starts claiming and propagating that Modi is next only to AIADMK's late boss Jayalalithaa,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'As an actor he was surrounded in stardom, but as a politician he is humble'
India said it will continue to extend its developmental assistance to the friendly people of Sri Lanka.
Expansion of the BJP's base in the South, will be the main focus of the party's two-day national executive meeting
Second-line AIADMK leaders and cadres alike say that by starting the talks first with the BJP and committing the party to an alliance without discussing seat-sharing, the leadership might have commenced the coalition discourse at the wrong end. According to them, even 20 seats for the BJP may be too many, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
His career as a bureaucrat has been somewhat colourless, which suggests his current elevation is simply a matter of being at the right place at the right time.
Stalin owes his victory this time, like in 2019, to the hate-campaign of the local Hindutva forces, which kept haranguing him, and even his dead father, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The DMK chief, recalling the origin of the recent differences, said Algiri had issued a statement that Congress was allocated lesser number of president and vice-president seats (in indirect polls) to head district panchayats and panchayat unions.
Elections will also be held in 35 assembly constituencies in Odisha.
More than 750 constituencies spread across four states and one union territory will go to the polls on Tuesday
The fight would become more interesting as both candidates hail from Bihar, where the assembly elections are to be held soon, making it effectively a JD-U versus RJD contest.
A high voter turnout was recorded in West Bengal, Assam Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry assembly elections on Tuesday. The massive polling exercise following COVID-19 health protocol and involving lakhs of personnel began at 7 am and the last hour from 6 pm to 7 pm was set aside for COVID-19 patients and those under isolation. The counting of votes in the states will be held on May 2.
For now, the BJP's strategy for Khushbu seems to be one of denial -- denying the rival Congress in the state and also at the national-level a Muslim voice acceptable to Hindu audiences and TV news-watchers. This is much less than the induction of DMK veterans like Duraiswamy and Selvam, who still have a greater chances of winning assembly seats,, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Mamata wanted the Congress in alliance with the BJP in Bengal against the Left Front government.' 'Pranab Mukherjee opposed it, stating it would amount to compromising on secularism.' 'In 2021, Mamata defeats the BJP and becomes a champion of secularism.'
The contemporary problem with the BJP in Tamil Nadu is that it has been trying hard to package the DMK especially as anti-god and anti-Hinduism, and seeking it to link to Periyar and M Karunanidhi, and by extension to Stalin, the latter's son and successor to the party mantle. Their hope was to consolidate the perceived 'pro-god, pro-religion votes', which they saw returning to the fold post-MGR, post-Jayalalithaa. But no such substantial vote-bank existed even in Periyar's time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Indications are that Modi will have words of encouragement for Stalin, and the meeting is likely to be much less acrimonious than critics of either would want it to be. notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Amid chaos, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general council meeting in Chennai on Thursday rejected all the 23 proposed resolutions and announced that the one and only demand of the GC members is to bring in a system of a single leadership for the party, favouring joint coordinator Edappadi K Palaniswami (EPS).
We should be ready beforehand and I agree that if we have to go for alliances then the formalities of those alliances should be completed as soon as possible
As results pour in for the four states -- West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam -- and one Union Territory -- Puducherry - here's a glimpse at the leaders who are trailing and those who are leading.
The excise duty cut will translate into a reduction of Rs 9.5 a litre on petrol and Rs 7 a litre in diesel after taking into account its impact on other levies.
When Mr Rangaswamy began making threatening noises (he could have swapped the BJP's six MLAs with the DMK's six and formed the government with the outside help of the Congress and Independents), the BJP immediately named nominated MLAs.
Modi said he was not bothered about threats and abuses against him and asserted that he would do whatever was needed to make India strong.
Stalin described his party-led coalition as the "Secular Progressive Alliance."
The Modi leadership could lose Election 2024 if a communal flare-up becomes cause for all-round catastrophe, warns N Sathiya Moorthy.
Is anyone in the BJP listening -- to what Nitin Gadkari had to say, but possibly left unsaid? asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
Stepping up pressure on the United Progressive Alliance government on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue, Tamil Nadu on Wednesday demanded that India move a resolution in the UN Security Council for a referendum for separate Tamil Eelam and stop calling Colombo a friendly nation.
There is nothing to suggest that the DMK stands to gain from the AIADMK split nor is there anything indicative of an extraordinary advantage for the BJP, independently or in the company of the AIADMK, explains N Sathiya Moorthy.
However, the tilting factor still remains: Can the rivalling 'Modi brand' of 'soft Hindutva' and 'hard-sell nationalism' garner more votes for the NDA in Tamil Nadu, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
It was batters who mostly lead their teams to victories and some into the knock-outs. While Mumbai trailblazer Sarfaraz Khan continues to find the big runs, Baba Indrajith's consistency wasn't enough for Tamil Nadu to make even the top two in Group H.
As the island heads for elections, two major factors worry Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. One is the division in the Sinhala vote and the other is the prospect of the Tamils and Muslims voting heavily against him.
'The AIADMK gets votes from all sections of the minorities.' 'By aligning with the BJP the AIADMK stands to lose that vote'
If Vijaykanth and his party stole the media thunder, which lingered in the viewers' mind even while watching Prime Minister Modi's thunderous campaign speech, the latter suffered also owing to visible 'disconnects', says N Sathiya Moorthy.
By aligning with the BJP, even if they were arm-twisted into doing so, the AIADMK leadership has yielded their political space in the state to the aunt-nephew duo of Sasikala-Dinakaran, and the parliamentary election to the DMK-Congress combine, says A Ganesh Nadar.
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