Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue of tax cuts on petroleum products, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Thursday said people were aware of the fact behind the issue and pointed out at his government effecting a Rs 3 a litre cut on petrol earlier.
Though another 75 candidates are in the fray, the Elangovan-Thennaruasu fight has become a prestige battle for the DMK and AIADMK, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
If the Opposition has any chance at the prime minister's job, it can happen only if they all stop dropping names and work at the grassroots-level, state-wise, suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
According to sources, Gandhi himself is taking stock of poll preparedness by talking to leaders and listening to their views for poll strategy.
His likable boy-next-door face and casual approach to public speaking have a unique appeal for the younger generation, but it stops there, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of spreading fear, hatred and violence and said the country can not progress under these circumstances as he asked the government to be compassionate in handling farmers' problems to prevent suicides.
The prime minister said the opposition's hatred against him was reaching new levels daily and they have a competition over who abused him the most.
He said the NDA's work culture was different from that of the previous governments.
It does not stop here, though. According to field information, state ministers, AIADMK candidates and campaigners are asking BJP cadres accompanying them not to carry party flags at common rallies and also avoid their saffron shawl on those occasions. BJP cadres are also asked to stay out of the common campaign when it enters a minority-dominated areas, especially of Muslims, and re-join later, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'He just said that those who cannot control the violence should go. He did not name the BJP.'
Rahul Gandhi was stunned on hearing the senior leader's angry outburst, but soon relented and asked Mukul Wasnik to announce Karthi's name from Sivaganga.
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.
Elections 2024 is not as open and shut as has been presumed. There is some life left in it, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Parliamentarians and legislators across the country voted on Monday to elect India's 15th president, choosing between opposition pick Yashwant Sinha and National Democratic Alliance nominee Droupadi Murmu who is favoured to win the battle to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
He said the Centre has 'decided that our lives must end in prison'.
The going is not going to be easy for the DMK and its allies in Elections 2024. Despite the seats sweepstake in the 2021 assembly polls, the vote-share difference of 5.6% (DMK's 45.38% versus AIADMK-BJP's 39.72%) is not insurmountable on a bad day, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Expansion of the BJP's base in the South, will be the main focus of the party's two-day national executive meeting
It is increasingly clear that for the BJP to try and establish itself as an electoral force in Tamil Nadu, the party has to come out of the old Brahminical mould, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
India said it will continue to extend its developmental assistance to the friendly people of Sri Lanka.
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.
The real battle for NEET abolition can take much more time and energy, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Modi has the chance to break out of India's passive mode and firmly tell Russia that in this day and age, India will not support unilateral invasions, asserts Harishchandra Dighe.
'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.
'The Congress can exist without (someone from) the Nehru-Gandhi family being its president.'
'Tamil Nadu will never allow the Centre's three-language policy'
Elections will also be held in 35 assembly constituencies in Odisha.
For the Congress to be taken seriously, it has to convince those around it that it could actually double its Lok Sabha seat share from the existing 52, and vote-share by a third more from the stagnating 20 per cent in 2014 and 2019, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
A dominant force in the country's politics for decades, the grand old party's free fall continued as it lost Punjab to AAP and finished with just two seats out of 403 in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.
'In the course of my interactions with him, Modi insisted that he does not believe charisma alone can sustain people's trust for long.' 'That is why Modi consistently refers to Mahatma Gandhi to contextualise his politics.' 'He believes in taking his ideas to the masses and getting their acceptance as an index of approval.'
A revealing excerpt from Ajay Singh's The Architect of the New BJP: How Narendra Modi Transformed the Party.
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.
'As an actor he was surrounded in stardom, but as a politician he is humble'
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.
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.
'When you're in Tolkien, you have the feeling of being in a world that wasn't invented, but one that was discovered or one that was sort of excavated. It feels like a real place. Like if you had a time machine, you could actually travel to Middle Earth and because of that, you are immersed in it when you go there.'
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.
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.
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.
More than 750 constituencies spread across four states and one union territory will go to the polls on Tuesday
Kharge launched a sharp attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the Himachal Pradesh poll schedule was announced but not of Gujarat so that the PM can inaugurate many more bridges like the one that collapsed in Gujarat's Morbi.
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.
