However, the saffron party's hold of the landmark may be tenuous as polls to around 52 more seats will be held soon, and it is expected to suffer reverses in states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Jharkhand.
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.
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.
Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) chief Shivpal Yadav on Monday said that his party's priority is to form an alliance with the Samajwadi Party for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections and that it should be allotted 100 seats.
The SP has offered 11 seats to the Congress and seven seats to the RLD for the upcoming parliamentary elections.
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.
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.
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.
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.
MP-MLA court magistrate Shobit Bansal awarded the three the maximum seven-year sentence.
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.
His disqualification as Wayanad MP is effective from March 23, the day of his conviction
Adityanath said the BJP government has done whatever the party promised in the run-up to the last assembly polls in 2017.
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 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.
Kharge claimed that though the BJP says the corrupt must be put in jails, when leaders facing corruption charges join the saffron party, they are "put on the lap" and sent to Rajya Sabha or assembly.
Some have been cherry-picked to assert the BJP's supremacy over its allies or, significantly, its leaders who charted an independent course in the recent past.
'The Congress government is on its way out in Himachal Pradesh.'
The BJP is focusing on 160 seats 'we have never won, seats where we have reasonable support, and those we lost narrowly.'
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.
In the event that like in the 17th Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi again gets locked out of the House, the Congress needs a second-in-command who will keep the momentum going inside Parliament, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
The Congress president during his year at the helm of the party has repaired the citadel for far more challenging years ahead, and played a crucial role in shaping the Opposition alliance.
Without making two-thirds of the country's population a development partner, India's prosperity is impossible, the Congress leader added.
The BJP announced names of 107 candidates for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
'Is the Agniveer scheme or their post-retirement re-employment in paramilitary forces or in the state governments the BJP's answer to the crying need on the job front?' 'Or, even Finance Minister Sitharaman's one-year internship scheme in the public and private sector, is it a permanent solution, either?', asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
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.
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.
'The 2024 election results will lead to much intense targeting of Modi, more intense debates, many more breakdowns in Parliament and many more movements on the streets.' 'The results have hit Modi's standing, and the politics of the Opposition parties will be sharply focused to ensure that Modi doesn't get back his charisma of being 'invincible' with help of State power.' Sheela Bhatt looks at the political situation through the prism of 2024 Lok Sabha election results.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The former Congress president was asked to vacate the premises by April 22 following his disqualification after the conviction and two-year sentence by a Surat court for his 'Modi surname' remark.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Additionally, the Haryana police and home guard personnel will be deployed for security during the elections, he said.
Leader of Opposition in the Uttarakhand Assembly Indira Hridayesh passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest in New Delhi on Sunday.
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