With her various overtures and right noises at the right time, Mamata is once again trying to reshape her image from being a regional leader to one with national appeal and acceptability. After all, the charge of building a Federal Front may also bring to the fore Mamata's chances to become prime minister in 2019.
BJP may get up to a maximum of 115 of the total 182 seats and the Congress 65.
The prime minister said the Congress has run away from the battlefield conceding defeat in the 68-member assembly.
'The similarities between the blockbusting Avengers: Endgame and Election 2019 cannot be starker. So who plays who?' asks Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
China sees India and Japan's 'North East Road Network Connectivity Improvement Project' as a challenge to its OBOR, says Rajaram Panda.
What is required from government is intellectual framework.
If one were to go by the degree of clout, Jaitley was the undoubted No. 2 in the Modi government.
'I bow to the 125 crore citizens of this great nation and promise to stay true to the trust they have bestowed on me.'
By annoying potential allies ahead of the polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate is playing a dangerous game but if he wins, he gets it all, says Aditi Phadnis
'The BJP has replaced huge portraits of the two BJP leaders from Gujarat with very small portraits of many leaders from Bihar. Much is being read into this changed tactic of hoardings and banners,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The government is using the Intelligence Bureau to go after NGOs.' 'It is not only the NDA, the UPA also didn't like NGOs.' 'NGOs predominantly work with the poor. So, when you cancel an NGO, the affected are the poor, the Dalits, the tribals, the street children and the marginalised.'
'It was a mission undertaken in darkness in every sense -- literally, because Afghanistan had no electricity at that time; and, metaphorically because Delhi historically dealt only with the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and the foreign ministry's vast archives had nothing to offer on the culture and politics of the northern tribes in the Hindu Kush.'
'The present government's greatest weakness is its intolerance. Tolerance is the key tenet of democracy. How can any government stop someone from speaking one's mind?'
Faceless Ambedkarite groups from across the country are running BSP's election war rooms, writes Archis Mohan.
Maithripala Sirisena was considered so meek and self-effacing that he appeared no threat to anyone. What a mistake his rivals made!
The least the Opposition can do, for India's sake, is try to offer one, says Mitali Saran.
"(Former PM) Atal Bihari Vajpayee said 'raj dharma' was not followed in Gujarat (during the 2002 riots). Now, 'raj dharma' is not being followed in case of Andhra Pradesh. We have been denied what was rightfully ours," he claimed.
KCR will continue as caretaker chief minister until the new government is formed.
Close to 20 regional stock exchanges, including the big exchanges of Delhi, Chennai, and Bengaluru, have voluntarily exited in the face of SEBI's stringent regulations. Namrata Acharya finds out what makes CSE continue to fight its lone battle.
Only on Wednesday, in his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Modi said he wants to resolve the Kashmir issue through Vajpayee's doctrine of "Insaniyat, Kashmiriyat, Jamhooriyat" - a testimony to the former PM's lasting legacy.
'Everything was sacrosanct when the BJP was led by Vajpayee and Advani.' 'That was a different culture. But with Modi and Amit Shah nothing is sacrosanct.'
Modi laid the foundation stone of a four-lane cable-stayed bridge between Okha and Beyt Dwarka.
Over 20 political parties, except the Biju Janata Dal and the Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Front, took part in the massive rally.
'The smartest businessmen are shopkeepers as their return on investment is better than anyone else.'
In the light of the efforts being made to forge electoral unity between scheduled castes and Muslims, Mohammad Sajjad examines what the architect of our Constitution, B R Ambedkar, had to say about the Muslim community.
Following is the full text of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech at the Central Party School in Beijing on Thursday:
A full majority might be difficult, but Mayawati is in a commanding position this time.
He accused the Congress of hatching a conspiracy to destabilise the country and 'demoralise' its soldiers.
'Little about this regime, given its vindictive credo, is a complete surprise. But we were still taken aback by the CBI raid as it was a complete abuse of due process.' 'These are not legal inquiries, but abusive use of State power. They are not legitimate investigations, but a witch-hunt.' 'Ours is a typical, classic case of the State and its organs being used as an outlet for motivated vendetta of the vilest kind.'
'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.
"Every action we take will be designed to ensure our military is ready to fight today and in the future," Mattis said on Friday in a message to department of defense soon after he was being sworn in as head of the Pentagon by Vice President Mike Pence at the White House.
Modi isn't going to voters on his track record but on the fear of the terrorist across the border and the Muslims within. It's a battle on his terms, says Shekhar Gupta.
2,470 BJP workers from across the country would spend a year visiting polling booths, while another 1,441 workers would spend six months and 378,000 workers will spend 15 days to reach out to party cadres and ensure better polling management in areas outside their home districts.
The readouts by the Indian and Chinese sides on the meeting on Monday between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow bring out that divergences are crowding into the centrestage of their relationship, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'We are witnessing a spectacle of breathtakingly creative diplomacy at work, riveted on the firm foundations of the country's strategic autonomy,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'When it comes to national politics, the Modi-Shah BJP has successfully redefined secularism.' 'If a party like the Congress has to have a future, it has to move closer to the secular centre from the far Left where its Left infatuation during the UPA years dragged it,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
"Governance, governance, governance," was what Nitish Kumar said were his three priorities when he took the helm of Bihar in 2005.
Was the defence minister kept in the dark with the PMO directly dealing with the then defence secretary in the matter of General V K Singh's birth date? Was the trust deficit between the government and the then army chief so wide that instead of communicating directly with General Singh and the defence minister, the PMO and other arms of the government were depending on half-baked inputs from the Intelligence Bureau?
Contentious issues such as the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, abrogation of Art 370 giving special status to Jammu and Kashmir and enactment of Uniform Civil Code have been included in the Bharatiya Janata Party's election manifesto with the party making promises on them.
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