As the 240-seater prime minister attempts to moderate his image of hardline hero, he has made room for others to elbow in and that is what is happening. And that it what will continue to happen from inside the BJP, notes Aakar Patel.
On Friday, former ministers Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini, five BJP MLAs and one from the Apna Dal-Sonelal had crossed over to the Samajwadi Party.
The BJP lost 15 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. Union ministers have been deployed in all 15, tasked with turning the result around.
Gandhi, who is seeking a second-straight term from Wayanad in Kerala, in a video appeal said this election is to save democracy and the Constitution.
Reacting to his win, Sharma expressed his gratitude to the people of Amethi and the Congress party, saying the 18th Lok Sabha election in Amethi will be the biggest example of a strong and empowered democratic country.
As the race for Maharashtra chief minister enters the last lap, Hemant Waje looks at several scenarios which can play out.
BJP president J P Nadda on Wednesday announced an alliance with Apna Dal and Nishad Party, two parties that draw their support primarily from sections of backward castes, for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
A video had surfaced on social media which purportedly showed SP leader Mukesh Siddharth making the controversial statement.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat were among the early voters to exercise their franchise as polling was underway on Wednesday for the state assembly elections.
Polling for the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha election will be held on Saturday, May 25, 2024.
'The BJP would like to build a 'rainbow' coalition of different castes and communities buttressed by the appeal of nationalism and Hindutva.'
Gearing up for the upcoming state assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Partyon Wednesday named its organisational spearheads for the elections, putting Union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan, Pralhad Joshi, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Bhupender Yadav in charge for the contest in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur respectively.
Former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh pleaded not guilty.
BJP's central leadership has thrown its weight behind Yogi Adityanath, putting a stop to murmurs against the state government months ahead of the assembly polls.
Allegedly charging patients Rs 2 instead of the stipulated fee of Re 1 at a Community Health Centre (CHC) has cost a contractual employee his job in Maharajganj in eastern Uttar Pradesh, officials said.
'In Independent India's politics you will not find any leader of a political party who has not contested elections or not held a powerful post.' 'It was only Balasaheb who never contested elections or held a post.' On the occasion of Balasaheb Thackeray's 99th birth anniversary, close aide Subhash Desai recalls vignettes about the Shiv Sena founder.
The EC said polling percentage in the Anantnag-Rajouri seat in Jammu and Kashmir is the highest in 40 years.
Uttar Pradesh BJP president Ramapati Ram Tripathi, who announced the list of the state party office bearers late on Monday night, appointed six vice-presidents, four general secretaries and six secretaries.
'If all we do is keep on celebrating, then next time you might find that the BJP government is out of Maharashtra'
Boxer-cum-politician Vijender Singh has said he has no qualms about admitting that he has paid an emotional price for the decision to make a political switch from the Congress to the BJP, but insisted that he had his reasons to do so.
The Supreme Court on Monday imposed an interim stay on directives passed by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments that eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route must display names of owners.
Facing opposition fire for exit polls allegedly being used for stock market manipulation, Axis My India's chief Pradeep Gupta has said he is open to facing all kinds of investigations and it would help do business in a much better way if the government frames specific regulations for pollsters.
'The southern states will have no voice.' 'Political parties in future need to focus only on one region, the northern region, to win the general election.'
Yadav asserted that he has always maintained that seat distribution should be decided considering which alliance partner is the strongest in a particular state.
Yadav took to social media and shared video clips and pictures of the deployment of security personnel, including police and rapid action force, with barricades near his house here, a stone's throw away from the Samajwadi Party headquarters.
Amid speculation over Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal-United's next move in the wake of vote counting trends, senior party leader K C Tyagi on Tuesday said they are in the National Democratic Alliance and 'we will be in the NDA'.
While the Congress top brass has declined the invitation to the January 22 consecration ceremony at Ayodhya's Ram temple, the party's Uttar Pradesh unit plans to go ahead with its own event a week earlier in the holy town.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party president J P Nadda, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and a strong team of Union ministers figure in the list of the party's 40 star campaigners for Karnataka assembly elections next month.
BJP candidate Akash Saxena defeated his Samajwadi Party rival Asim Raja by 33,702 votes.
Three Lok Sabha MPs, including its former Telangana president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, figured on Sunday in the BJP's first list of 52 candidates.
'The allegations of government involvement in targeted assassinations abroad are likely to help, not hurt, the ruling party.' 'True or false, they convey a sense of muscularity and, in some quarters, are celebrated as a harbinger of 'great power' status.'
The BJP holds 28 of the 59 Rajya Sabha seats that will soon face election.
'The BJP will never act against the minister because it stands with criminals.'
This appears to be a common refrain in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri Lok Sabha constituency where farmers want better prices for their produce and respite from the stray cattle menace and others want political leaders to talk about job creation instead of issues like the Ram temple and Article 370.
The BJP, which rules the Centre, is in power in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and is all set to get Madhya Pradesh back and snatch Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress after today's vote count.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
As the new year arrives, what is clear is that the BJP's stars continue to shine the brightest while its rivals' search for a way to dim their glow go on.
Congress district president Pradeep Singhal alleged that the incident was the result of state police's indifference.
When the Bharatiya Janata Party's Mukesh Dalal was declared elected unopposed to the Lok Sabha from Surat on Monday, he became the first candidate to achieve the feat from Gujarat since its formation 64 years ago though the erstwhile state of Saurashtra saw a similar instance in 1951.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath directed the district administration officials to ensure proper treatment of the injured. He also wished a speedy recovery to the injured.
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