The 65-year-old Stalin's elevation comes about three weeks after the death of his father and party president M Karunanidhi.
The road for the Opposition is full of 'ifs' and 'buts', reports Sunil Gatade.
Why did Kamal Haasan name the leaders he did?
Shashank Manohar is all set to once again become the Board of Control for Cricket in India president with the ruling Anurag Thakur faction as well as Sharad Pawar group projecting him as the consensus candidate for the post left vacant by Jagmohan Dalmiya's demise.
Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar also said that an alliance similar to the one stitched up in Bihar is needed at the national level for the next Lok Sabha elections.
'Those in the BJP are more keen to make India Hindia!' says MDMK Chairman L.Ganesan.
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.
CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury was in Chennai on Saturday and AIADMK sources said Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa could be sounded as convenor for the proposed Third Front. Aditi Phadnis reports
'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.
Yechury has dropped enough hints that a fight is in the offing at the Hyderabad conclave in April, where any member may move an amendment to the draft on the party's electoral line. Archis Mohan reports.
Will the AIADMK acknowledge the role of CAA and the anti-CAA protests, both inside the state and outside, as among the causes for the current electoral reversal, as many in the party now want? It is unlikely to be so, but then the pressure will increase on the leadership to reassess the BJP alliance at one level and the 'blind support' for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's controversial policies on the other, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The chief minister may have Prime Minister Modi's backing.
Polling will be held in all 13 seats in Punjab and an equal number of seats in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, eight seats each in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, four in Himachal Pradesh, three in Jharkhand and the lone seat Chandigarh.
The tough question before the DMK and its leader MK Stalin now is, what should their response be if sounded out for an alliance by the BJP for or after the next parliamentary polls, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
Assembly elections are due in the summer of 2016 in five places: Assam, West Bengal in the east and Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry in the south
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.
United Progressive Alliance chairman and Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Sunday visited the injured in hospitals and kin of children who died in the tragedy.
The great Indian election is over and now the wait for the results is shrinking with every passing moment. Though exit polls hint at a cakewalk for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his National Democratic Alliance, there are some battles which will be keenly observed on the result day.
Cautioning the Peoples Democratic Party against forging an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in Jammu and Kashmir, the Congress party on Tuesday hoped that party patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed would take a decision that best suits the "current political consensus" that has evolved in the state.
With DMK's M K Stalin coming into his own, and the rival AIADMK too leaving no space for third parties, Tamil Nadu will remain a Dravidian stronghold for a long time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Now that Tamil Nadu's tallest politician is no more, it remains to be seen how new political re-alignments could shape up, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Having learnt her lesson in popular democracy, Jaya would become more populist than the DMK and more so than the imagery that mentor MGR had created in the Tamil voter's mind, both as an individual and as an elected ruler.'
The TDP supremo said he had not contacted any party yet but given the 'TDP's credibility' they were supporting the no-trust motion.
'The Bloc was supporting the Congress party-led government to keep the 'communal Bharatiya Janata Party' away from power and if it felt the UPA was not implementing the CMP the party would review its support'
There is no change in the Bharatiya Janata Party's decision to go it alone in the assembly polls in Tamil Nadu, a senior BJP leader said Monday.
'The Godse controversy may have helped Kamal Haasan reach out to a larger audience, both inside the state and outside, coming as it does when the main campaign for elections 19 is over and only those in the four assembly bypoll constituencies are drudging along,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.
In the 2009 election, P Chindambaram the Sivaganga seat by a narrow margin. Then the Congress was in alliance with the ruling DMK. This time his son Karti is battling the seat with the alliance. India abstention at the UNHRC on an anti-Lanka resolution will further fuel Tamil anger against the Congress party. This leaves the finance minster sulking and his son facing an uphill political debut, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Probably only Sonia-ji knows the extent of what he is doing.'
President Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Rajapaksa will transform Sri Lanka's political landscape after Thursday's electoral triumph, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran Colombo watcher.
Party leaders, sources said, maintained that Congress cannot afford to have a new leader at the helm for rebuilding the organisation at this juncture and that the responsibility for the defeat is collective and not individual.
'Silencing citizens has become a major institutional process under this regime.' 'The anti-Indian argument is a bogey -- meant to silence independent thinking people in India and turn us into goats and sheep.'
The country has a fiendishly complicated electoral system that is a combination of population-based proportional representation and party-based national lists, says Aditi Phadnis
'There is little doubt that his exertions are among the reasons why Narendra Damodardas Modi routinely lambastes the dynasty at nearly all his rallies, suggesting that he regards the Congress's First Family as a bigger threat than any other political formation,' argues Amulya Ganguli.
If the Congress lost in Tamil Nadu in 1967, never to return, or the DMK and the AIADMK have kept their place in power and electoral politics since then, it owes not to their love or hatred for gods or for one religion over another. Instead, they had always been linked to performance and incumbency/anti-incumbency factors. There may be something in such constructs for Rajini's strategic team to consider, especially if the superstar is to enter direct politics by around this time next year. But then, they would need to brush up their homework more than at present, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Not having launched a political party, Rajni now has his fans spread across various political parties in the state. They vote for different political parties and candidates, depending on issues and factors such as ideology, caste and community, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Besides the SAD, the SP, the AIADMK and the TRS supported the idea; while the AAP, the TDP, the JD-S, the AIFB, the DMK, the TMC, the GFP and Left parties opposed it.
'Like it or not, the Congress is still the only party with the potential to challenge the BJP at a pan-Indian level,' says T V R Shenoy.
The development came a day after the protesting farmers rejected the Centre's offer to start talks as soon as they move to Burari and continued to stay put Singhu and Tikri borders of the national capital.
