The Shiv Sena-UBT is openly questioning the Congress party's leadership within the INDIA bloc.
The O Panneerselvam-led AIADMK Cadres Rights Retrieval Committee has withdrawn from the BJP-led NDA coalition, a year after joining. The move follows meetings between Panneerselvam and DMK Chief Minister M K Stalin, fueling speculation about future alliances.
Several opposition parties on Wednesday decided to jointly oppose the delimitation provisions in the Constitution amendment bill in Parliament, even as they reiterated support for women's reservation, with Mallikarjun Kharge alleging the move is politically motivated.
A profile of C.P. Radhakrishnan, the Maharashtra Governor and former MP, who is being considered as a potential Vice President candidate. His political journey, association with RSS and Jan Sangh, and his influence in Tamil Nadu politics are highlighted.
In apparent signs of thaw after years of bickering stemming out of internal feud in the AIADMK in the past, party chief Edappadi K Palaniswami welcomed Dhinakaran back in to the National Democratic Alliance. The AMMK founder reciprocated with a "heartfelt thanks," yet admitting there was "sibling rivalry" with AIADMK, the party he was once associated with.
Voters in Kerala, Assam, and Puducherry are voting in crucial assembly elections.
The ruling NDA alliance has secured a majority in the Rajya Sabha elections, winning key seats in Bihar, Odisha, and Haryana, while other candidates were elected unopposed across multiple states. The elections were marked by cross-voting allegations and political maneuvering.
AICC leader Pawan Khera has accused the CPI(M) and BJP of having a tacit understanding in the Kerala Assembly elections, alleging that both parties are deliberately fielding weak candidates to help each other. Khera expressed confidence in the Congress-led UDF's victory due to strong anti-incumbency sentiment.
'Why are IPKF martyrs not being officially recognised and appropriately honoured? And is the government really changing its mind on this now?', asks Aditi Phadnis.
Kerala BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar criticizes the state government for the water crisis in Thiruvananthapuram ahead of the Attukal Pongala festival, alleging negligence and failure to utilize funds. He also addressed the Gulf conflict and political alliances in the state.
'The EPS camp feels assertiveness will help the AIADMK keep the BJP's seat-share ambitions to the minimum,' observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
In the fourth such instance, Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi on Tuesday walked out of the state assembly without reading his customary address after alleging that the national anthem was insulted, evoking a sharp response from Chief Minister M K Stalin, who dubbed his action as an 'insult' to the House and the people of the state.
The BJP state unit hailed Vasan and said his advice will be used in the coming days to guide the alliance.
''Women are coming into public spaces in larger numbers than ever before. They are educated, capable, opinionated, and determined.' 'But the more women push for access to public space, the harder they are pushed back -- through attacks like this, through discrimination, through the glass ceiling, through the deliberate denial of recognition.'
NDA constituents AIADMK and BJP have started preliminary discussions for the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. Key leaders from both parties met to discuss strategies to defeat the DMK government and strengthen their alliance.
'If movement remains stalled for three to four months, more than 300,000 recruitments from India could be affected.'
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said that the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Bharatiya Janata Party and all the alliance parties will contest the upcoming Vidhan Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu together under the National Democratic Alliance. The significant political development comes ahead of the TN Assembly election to be held in 2026,
Gehlot had on Wednesday refused to deliver the address to the Karnataka legislature, leading to a stalemate over the fate of the customary speech that outlines the government's policies.
While the DMK depends on a 'silver sieve' of welfare schemes to stay in power, its support is slowly draining away under the weight of poor governance, corruption, and voters who are no longer satisfied with benefits alone and now want basic administration to work, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin on Friday called Sanskrit 'a dead language', drawing a sharp response from the Bharatiya Janata Party, which said leaders must be more responsible while making remarks.
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.
'Stalin's intention is plain and simple.' 'The DMK wants to convert what is an 'incumbency-centred' election for the party-led alliance into one more 'Modi/BJP election' after Stalin's successive success in 2019 and 2021, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The prime minister didn't come to Parliament.' 'But the BJP MP is charging that you wanted to assault the prime minister.' 'Only a person who has the intellect and ideology of the BJP can come up with such bizarre charges.'
Among major engagements in 2026 is the visit of the European Union leadership, chief guests at the Republic Day parade.
8 Member of Parliaments were suspended from Lok Sabha for tearing & throwing papers at the Chair till April 2. Uproar started when Rahul Gandhi was barred from citing former Army Chief, General M M Naravane's memoir on 2020 India-China clash. Rediff.com brings you the details of these MPs who were suspended.
The DMK may consider a two-tier campaign, where they keep the focus on Chief Minister Stalin, as a senior statesman with 50-plus years of political experience, and let EPS and the BJP shout in the wilderness. In such a case, the second-tier may project Udhayanidhi as the contender and chosen obstructionist in Vijay's path. The attempt, if any, would be to reduce Vijay to Udhayanidhi's level when the former is aiming at Stalin and Stalin alone in the state's political horizon, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
After big win in Bihar, the BJP is likely to push harder in Tamil Nadu, where the DMK government and the uneasy BJP-AIADMK alliance are preparing for a tense election filled with seat-sharing fights, changing alliances, and the unpredictable entry of Vijay's TVK party, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
BJP legislator Nainar Nagendran will become the next state chief of the BJP in Tamil Nadu, succeeding K Annamalai, who is set for a national role. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is in the city to review the party's functioning, praised Annamalai's work. Nagendran, the lone contestant, is the current state vice president and was formerly with the AIADMK. He is expected to be officially announced as the new state president soon.
A pro-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam parliamentarian has underlined his party's resolve for an 'autonomous rule' for Tamils in Sri Lanka, claiming that Tamil National Alliance's support for opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka was extended only after getting him to agree to those conditions.
The BJP's MoSha leadership are past masters in encouraging defections from their allies if it helped their party capture the chief minister's chair. In Bihar, they are not sure if JD-U MPs and MLAs would be willing to cross over to the BJP if the Nitish leadership came on top -- and the NDA crossed the halfway mark together, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Nitish Kumar previously held tight control over key ministries, but this concession (giving the home portfolio to the BJP) reflects either his weakened political position or a pragmatic acknowledgment of the BJP's growing dominance.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance appeared to register a landslide victory in Bihar, opening up impressive leads in more than 180 of the state's 243 assembly seats, with early trends also indicating that the saffron party was on track to post its biggest tally.
The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to accept the preliminary objections raised by opposition-ruled states like Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala to maintainability of Presidential Reference, saying the issues raised in it pertain to the very core and foundational modalities of the constitutional machinery.
The Deepa Thoon controversy, if not allowed to die a natural death, could take the election focus away from the anti-incumbency impacting the DMK and into the secular space. Stalin would love to have it that way, all over again, after the three past elections, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
If the DMK is able to sustain the momentum until the assembly polls, the AIADMK especially and the PMK and possibly the infant TVK too would find it hard to sign up with the BJP, explains N Sathiya Moorthy.
'He knows people in a small town like Karur would give anything for a glimpse of the superstar.'
Mumbai sealed a bonus-point victory with a nine-wicket thrashing of Hyderabad in their Group D Ranji Trophy match, in Hyderabad, on Sunday.
Like his father Karunanidhi and AIADMK rivals MGR and Jayalalithaa, Stalin would like to confine his real political work to Tamil Nadu, and not want to take after the late Congress leader K Kamaraj and take up a national role, even if to create greater political space for son Udhayanidhi, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
If the TVK joins the NDA, there is every likelihood of the AIADMK winning an absolute majority in the 234 seat assembly and wanting to form a stand-alone government. In turn, it could mean that the BJP especially and the TVK equally so, will want to restrict the AIADMK's seat share closer to the cut-off figure, if only to ensure that EPS won't get the absolute majority that he desires (if the NDA won, that is) and will have to settle for a coalition government, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Rahul Gandhi's problem is that he doesn't think big.' 'He looks more like an activist, while politics is like a game of chess. You attack and then defend and have a game-plan.'
