In a state where Hindu social identity continues to remain in the overarching Dravida umbrella, the 'Hindutva' political identity does not have the same, or even near-similar electoral purchase, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
He laid stress on workers' connection with the ground and cited his own example when he was party in-charge for various assembly elections in the past.
Though EPS has sworn peace for now, or so it seems, his camp is said to be considering the possibility of calling an early meeting of the party's general council, to get a mandate in his favour before things went out of control. Ground-level indications are that OPS had lost his limited base, which alone had forced him to patch up with the other, reportedly at the instance of the BJP ally at the Centre, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will declare its party line at its national executive, to be held on August 1 in Patna, days after announcing that the party would forge an alliance of secular parties on the grounds that its major ally, Congress, was not giving it adequate political space.
Stalin, whose party has a strength of 89 members in the 234-member house, claimed his efforts were not aimed at taking DMK to power nor was there any intention of enjoying posts.
With Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections, results for 51 assembly and two Lok Sabha bypolls spread across 18 states were declared on Thursday. Here are state-wise results of the bypolls.
"We would have nothing to do with a political party that is being run by a foreign power. I consider those who support such a party as anti-nationals because we won our freedom from foreign rule only sixty years ago," she charged.
On Saturday, the government had, by mistake, filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court supporting the Tamil Nadu government's application of POTA against Vaiko.
"We urge the government that the issue of security of our leaders has to be beyond partisan political considerations," said Anand Sharma in Rajya Sabha.
'That secularism in India is at risk is alarming for someone like me. I'm born secular,' Anjolie Ela Menon, the well-known painter, tells Pavan Lall.
Will Priyanka contest against Modi in Varanasi? Will Rahul also contest from Karnataka? Rasheed Kidwai -- Sonia Gandhi and the Congress party's biographer -- reveals what is churning in the Congress.
The Sri Lankan government had recently announced a 48-hour ceasefire solely due to the efforts of the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre, the Congress party said in the Tamil Nadu assembly on Tuesday.
Speaker Karu Jayasuriya questioned the president's decision to suspend parliament till November 16, saying it will have "serious and undesirable" consequences on the country.
'Despite the BJP's successes at the state-level, replicating their 282-seat majority in 2019 is going to be an uphill climb.'
Mamata Banerjee predicts the BJP-led NDA will not get more than 150 seats in the next Lok Sabha election.
'UP, Maharashtra, AP (including Telangana), Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, MP, Bihar, Karnataka and Kerala.' 'We chose these nine not only as being among the biggest, but also because in these states radical change is possible,' explains Shekhar Gupta.
Truth be acknowledged, Rajinikanth is not known for wanting to leave his comfort zone to take the politico-electoral plunge, even if it meant his becoming the chief minister of a state that has conferred Tamil cinema's superstardom on him over the past 25 years. Today, his fans belong to the younger generation all right, but their numbers are far fewer than their counterparts in the '90s. They are not devoid of personal ambitions and agendas, unlike what Rajinikanh wants them to be, if he and they were to enter politics, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The single-phase polling for 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu on Thursday will test the capabilities of ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, its rival, the Dravidra Munnetra Kazhagam and the Bharatiya Janata Party, who hopes to ride on the Modi wave after drawing a blank in the previous two polls.
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam led the strike against the Centre.
'The path to a resolution of the ethnic conflict is likely to be complicated and controversial with the majority Sinhalese community, and will become less likely if delayed.' 'It will certainly give Rajapaksa fresh political oxygen with which to revive himself and rally the opposition.'
The truce, even if it is not permanence peace, will come under stress and test during the pending polls to rural local bodies in nine revenue districts and urban polls across the state, including those for 16 municipal corporations, starting with Chennai, the oldest and largest, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Earlier, KCR had met West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee as part of efforts to build a non-Congress, non-BJP third front ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The notion that the BJP gained its increased tally by wiping out the Left parties and the Congress is completely misleading. Equally misleading is the belief that the TMC held its ground in all its existing seats. A little more than a fifth of the seats Mamata Banerjee's party had won in 2016 was lost to the BJP this time.
The mandate will help further the development agenda in these states, with good governance and policy reforms taking centrestage
Angry over Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray's comments to allegedly "demean" Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party unit on Sunday said its workers do not want any further seat-sharing talks between the two alliance partners for the next month's assembly polls.
Jeyanandh Dhivakaran, son of Sasikala's brother, V Dhivaharan, is making headlines in Tamil Nadu politics, reports Gireesh Babu.
'We cannot capture the mind space of today's youth by evoking past sacrifices. Politics is about hope; hope for the future. The Congress hankers about the past too much.'
The NPR data will be used for schemes such as Ayushman Bharat, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Ujjvala and Saubhagya for identifying the intended beneficiaries.
She left behind a note, saying that she dreamt of becoming a doctor but the questions in NEET were too difficult for her to even understand.
Fears of the Congress not having a credible face, after the death of its three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit last July, and ceding its vote bank to the Aam Aadmi Party came true with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party capturing the space once occupied by the grand old party.
Raja clarified that he had only watched clips of the movie on his mobile phone and said he did not have the patience to sit through a two-and-a-half hour film.
Aditi Phadnis and Archis Mohan take a state by state takedown of the party's chances in the poll-bound states.
Modi also said that presently a 'new trend' is being seen in the country where protests are based on creating doubts through misinformation while union ministers urged farmers not to have any misconceptions about the three agriculture reform legislations.
Congress's K R Ramesh Kumar will be the speaker of Karnataka's Vidhana Soudha (assembly), while the deputy speaker will be appointed from the JD-S.
Tamil superstar Rajinikanth may have been wooed by the Bharatiya Janata Party and G K Vasan, who broke away from the Congress, but newly appointed Congress chief in Tamil Nadu E V K S Elangovan feels he should not enter politics.
The Left has ideologically become irrelevant globally, says the finance minister.
Eying a prominent role in the next government at the Centre, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Tuesday promised to extend populist schemes like distribution of free mixies, grinders, fans, milch cows and goats across the country in its Lok Sabha manifesto.
With political parties in Tamil Nadu stepping up pressure on Centre for boycott of CHOGM at Colombo this month, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram met DMK chief M Karunanidhi in Chennai on Saturday and said no decision has been taken as yet on Prime Minister's visit to the meet.
The prime minister highlighted the gains made during his last four years vis-a-vis the previous governments to suggest that he has lived up to the promise of hope he had offered to the electorate in 2014.
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