With the strain and anxiety of the longest Lok Sabha polls now behind the leaders, governance, with consensus, is the next step.
Several legislators in states on Monday said they have cross-voted in favour of National Democratic Alliance nominee Droupadi Murmu by not following their respective party lines in the presidential election.
'Leave aside the negative fallouts of phraseology like 'urban Naxals' and 'terrorists', both the BJP and the Congress have to re-discover themselves in the context of the 2024 election results, including those of the upcoming ones for Maharashtra and Jharkhand,' observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Rajasthan is all set to vote on Saturday to elect members of a new assembly with the Bharatiya Janata Party aiming to unseat the ruling Congress, which is fighting hard to change the trend of alternate governments in the state.
The Congress survey thinks that in the absence of a Congress-SP alliance, Mayawati will win more than 40 out of 80 seats in UP. The survey is an eye-opener for the Congress. It seems that inspite of the ongoing rhetoric and sometimes ugly exchanges between SP leader Amar Singh and Congress leaders, it is most likely the Congress and SP will sew up an alliance to defend their turf against Mayawati once elections are announced.
Lok Sabha constituencies that sprung a surprise in the 2024 polls.
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
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.
In a setback to the main opposition Samajwadi Party, the BJP wrested both Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.
The rapprochement could open the door to an anti-saffron alliance for the 2019 general elections, reports Archis Mohan.
On May 2, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will step into Bihar and challenge the Nitish-Lalu order in the state.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
'The BJP is racing against its opponents by putting a chain on their legs.'
The Rajya Sabha member was not keeping well for the past few days and was admitted to a private hospital in Lucknow, where he died around 7 pm.
Counting of votes for the bypolls in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand will be taken up on Sunday.
While the assembly elections are being seen as largely a contest between the NDA and the Grand Alliance, the state has been witness to mushrooming of "morchas" (fronts) which may queer the pitch for the lead players in a tight contest.
The seat sharing formula reached between the BSP and SP is not on the basis of who emerged stronger in the previous election.
Seen by political watchers as the favourite to retain power for a third straight term, the Bharatiya Janata Party has set itself an ambitious target of winning 370 Lok Sabha seats, a goal aimed as much at projecting its strength as at diminishing the opposition in popular imagination.
NCP supremo Sharad Pawar warned the BJP on Tuesday that it will have to pay a heavy price for the Lakhimpur Kheri incident and asserted that the entire opposition is with the farmers.
The second list has named 16 candidates from Uttar Pradesh and five from Maharashtra.
The party office in Lucknow buzzed with activity as enthusiastic Congress workers gathered outside the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee building, even before she returned from an overnight stay in Jaipur.
Loss of power in Bihar has upset the Bharatiya Janata Party's calculations for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls but a section of its leaders also see a chance for the party to break the dominance of regional parties in the state, like it has in Uttar Pradesh.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com does a deep dive into four elections when Narendra Modi resorted to anti-Muslim fervour and points out that Hindu-Muslim politics does not necessarily mean victory for the BJP.
The Samajwadi Party released its list of 40 star campaigners in which there was no mention of Mulayam Singh Yadav.
'It is not his doing, but Rahul Gandhi is forced by circumstances.' 'In taking political decisions, everything has to get his clearance.'
Statistics show the BSP has always gained from pre-poll alliances, reflecting in the party winning more seats in subsequent elections and largely retaining the vote share too. Virendra Singh Rawat reports.
The BJP's top leadership will drop its MPs found to be facing anti-incumbency, according to its internal surveys -- a pivotal tactic to ensure the party achieves its target of winning 370 seats.
Polling was by and large peaceful in the bypolls for three Lok Sabha and seven assembly seats spread across five states and Delhi on Thursday barring an incident of stabbing of a policeman in Tripura, where polling was the highest at 76.62 per cent.
'For the Congress, it has become necessary to make alliances, but this is not easy to deliver at the local level,' says Aakar Patel.
Cheteshwar Pujara's presence did not help Saurashtra as a gritty Tripura humbled the defending champions
'Our leader is Modi and everyone has been saying Modi hai to desh hai'
As the results pour in from the five states which have gone to polls, scenes of celebrations can be seen across the nation.
Vadra said that he will also be present with his mother-in-law Sonia Gandhi and brother-in-law Rahul Gandhi during their filing of nominations.
The Bharatiya Janata Party President said that it is difficult to make a guess who will win in Punjab.
Khera told reporters in Hyderabad that the views of the newly-elected MLAs have been elicited and the central leadership is seized of the matter.
Modi knows how to turn Gujarati pride into an emotive issue at election time and a Gujarati President would have its own electoral resonance and significance, note Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
'The people of Uttar Pradesh have already made up their mind to puncture the Samajwadi Party's cycle, kick away the Bahujan Samaj Party's elephant, and remove shadows of the already-vanished hand of the Congress.'
Notwithstanding a pre-poll alliance between Congress and Samajwadi Party, former state minister Ameeta Sinh on Thursday filed her nomination as a Congress candidate from Amethi seat which has been given to the ruling party for the high-stake Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
The Congress should take the lead in resolving differences of opinion within the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) and show 'large-heartedness' in seat sharing to emerge as a viable alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party in upcoming elections, according to some opposition leaders.
"We small parties, like the Apna Dal-S, want some respect to be shown to us. We, our leaders and workers feel hurt if due importance is not given to us," Ashish Patel told mediapersons
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