With many of his close associates leaving his side, it is virtually a lone battle for Congress stalwart Kamal Nath to help his parliamentarian son Nakul Nath win from Chhindwara for a second time amid the Bharatiya Janata Party's aggressive push to wrest the seat.
A handsome victory for the BJP in UP would act as confirmation of its recent political choices. The UP chief minister would be cemented in the popular mind as Mr Modi's chosen heir within the Hindutva fold, and presumably as his successor in New Delhi, observes Mihir S Sharma.
'Unlike in the sporting arena, where sports federations moved from partisan to impartial referees, in Indian democracy's biggest festival, it appears we are moving backward from unbiased and objective to one-sided and partisan,' observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Meet IAF Veteran Bhopinder Singh Saini from the Viro ke Vir Indian Party.
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.
A high-level committee on Thursday recommended simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha and state assemblies as the first step followed by synchronised local body polls within 100 days.
When it comes to the Congress and Wayanad, the only way the scepticism in the minds of some in Kerala may be addressed is by the Gandhi family proving that they are more than a passing caravan in town, reports Shyam G Menon.
The credibility of the examination system has also come under question, they said.
Adityanath said the BJP government has done whatever the party promised in the run-up to the last assembly polls in 2017.
The senior BJP leader said voters have always rejected coalition politics as the political parties forming such an alliance don't have any policy or leadership.
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
Gandhi, then a newly appointed Congress chief, had staked claim to form the government at the Centre after the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had lost the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha on April 17, 1999.
The BJP and its allies won all assembly seats in Modi's Varanasi and Adityanath's Gorakhpur, and the SP bagged all 10 segments in Yadav's Azamgarh Lok Sabha constituency.
'Someone who cannot even take his cabinet into confidence, how will he take the NDA alliance into confidence?'
His disqualification as Wayanad MP is effective from March 23, the day of his conviction
With the CAA rules being issued, the Modi government will now start granting Indian nationality to persecuted non-Muslim migrants -- Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians -- from the three countries.
The SP has offered 11 seats to the Congress and seven seats to the RLD for the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Sources said senior leaders of the party have been told to reach out to other leaders of the alliance and talks with some parties have begun.
The BJP took into consideration caste and regional aspirations while picking ministers in a bid to further consolidate its hold over the politically crucial state which sends the maximum of 80 members to Lok Sabha.
MP-MLA court magistrate Shobit Bansal awarded the three the maximum seven-year sentence.
In the five years in politics Priyanka Gandhi has undeniably emerged as a thorn in the BJP flesh, notes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. It is time that this thorn is twisted a wee bit more when the elections have become far more uncertain than what it was when the Election Commission announced the poll schedule.
The BJP announced names of 107 candidates for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
The BJP is focusing on 160 seats 'we have never won, seats where we have reasonable support, and those we lost narrowly.'
'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.
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.
Anupriya Patel, Pankaj Chaudhary and B L Verma are from the Other Backward Classes, which BJP leader in UP say make up 50 per cent of voters in the state. Three others -- Kaushal Kishore, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma and S P Singh Baghel -- are from the Scheduled Castes category. Ajay Kumar is the lone Brahmin in this batch of ministers from the state.
'We are going to need more technical people in government.' 'You can't expect a generalist to understand the complicated world of financial engineering.' 'I regret to say that most of our politicians have no competence to deal with these things. Nor is there a willingness to learn.'
The Congress continues to decline and BJP's regional rivals are making their presence felt, even in Uttar Pradesh where Samajwadi Party consolidated anti-BJP votes to a large extent.
Nadda's three-year term will end in January next year, and the BJP parliamentary board, its apex body, is expected to endorse an extension for him before that, sources said.
He was arrested for criminal intimidation and promoting enmity between groups, police said, following remarks allegedly referring to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the state's hospitals.
Giving a free run to Samajwadi Party nominee Dimple Yadav, wife of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, the Bahujan Samajwadi Party on Wednesday announced that it will not contest the by-elections to Kannauj parliamentary constituency
Mayawati made it amply clear that her party will not enter into any alliance with the Congress.
For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
Considered a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Arvind Kumar Sharma kicked off his political innings after taking voluntary retirement from the Indian Administrative Service and became a member of the UP legislative council.
The party finds Uttar Pradesh members of Parliament unaware of govt schemes.
Leader of Opposition in the Uttarakhand Assembly Indira Hridayesh passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest in New Delhi on Sunday.
Consolidating its position, the Bharatiya Janata Party wrested high-profile Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh from the Samajwadi Party and won three assembly seats, including that of Chief Minister Manik Saha, in Tripura in by-election results announced on Sunday.
BKU leader Rakesh Tikait said they planned to meet President Droupadi Murmu and will hold another mahapanchayat in Haryana's Kurukshetra on Friday to discuss the next steps in the agitation.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances