The veteran socialist leader, who ended his long alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party last year, was responding to queries from journalists about the 'Hindu Rashtra' clamour, which was openly endorsed earlier this week by his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Yogi Adityanath.
This will be the first major electoral test after the political realignment that emerged in 2019.
Veteran Congress leader and former Defence Minister A K Antony said on Tuesday that his son, Anil K Antony, who is contesting as a Bharatiya Janata Party candidate in the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, should not win the election.
Both the BJP and the Congress have their share of challenges, with finding winning horses on top of this list.
Several prominent opposition leaders including Nationalist Congress Party's Sharad Pawar, Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar and National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah will share the dais at a rally being organised by Indian National Lok Dal in Haryana's Fatehabad on Sunday.
The prime minister, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Union ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh, and BJP president J P Nadda also visited Advani's residence to greet him.
The action followed a show-cause notice to the Shahpura MLA, who is a former Speaker of the state assembly, from the party's state unit president CP Joshi.
Modi credited Advani for "selflessly and diligently" building the BJP and "wonderfully" mentoring its workers.
Veteran Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Awadh Bihari Chaudhary was on Friday unanimously elected as speaker of the Bihar legislative assembly.
'Met him this morning and sought his blessings'
Siddaramaiah, who hails from the shepherd Kuruba caste, holds the record for presenting the highest number of Budgets in Karnataka -- 13 so far. He has often spoken about how he was mocked in 1994 before he presented his first Budget. 'Some people asked, "Can he count sheep?",' Siddaramaiah told a regional news channel.
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Singh met Congress president Rahul Gandhi before joining the party.
Several military veterans said that the "insulting" tweet reflected what civilian officials in the ministry of defence thought about the military.
Veteran Trinamool Congress MP Sisir Adhikari -- father of BJP heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari -- joined the party in Egra in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and other senior leaders of the party.
'Ex-Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor joined Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra. Kapoor was indicted in the Adarsh scam along with other senior Army officers'
The party also rejigged its Central Election Committee and included former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Union Minister Bhupender Yadav, Om Mathur and its women wing chief Vanathi Srinivasan.
On December 13, 2001, five heavily-armed gunmen stormed the Parliament complex and opened indiscriminate fire, killing nine persons.
The counting began at 8 am to decide the fate of the candidates contesting the polls, among whom all eyes will be on Dimple Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav's elder daughter-in-law and the wife of Akhilesh Yadav, who is contesting from the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, necessitated by the demise of Samajwadi Party veteran Mulayam Singh Yadav in October.
Out of the candidates announced so far, 65 are below the age of 50 years and 19 are women, he said.
Polling is scheduled in all 20 seats of Kerala, 14 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, eight seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, six seats in Madhya Pradesh, five seats each in Assam and Bihar, three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and one seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
Addressing the valedictory session of the BJP's national executive, Modi stressed that the BJP runs on the values of 'Sewa, Sanklap aur Samparan (service, resolution and commitment)' and 'does not revolve around a family', urging its members to work for people, Union Minister Bhupender Yadav said quoting the prime minister.
'Just because the NDA has a majority and the BJP is the single largest party does not mean that this Modi government enjoys a majority in the Lok Sabha.' 'It is always possible that some members (of the NDA and even the BJP) may defect, some members may not want him to be the prime minister and they might vote differently (against Modi) in the confidence vote.'
The list does not include Jagadish Shettar who met BJP president J P Nadda earlier in the day to stake his claim to contest from his Hubli-Dharwad Central constituency.
Political watchers are keen to see if the party will now opt for a more seasoned face from its ranks for the vice presidential candidate.
In the past five years, UP's Opposition remained passive and defensive against the BJP, a trend that does not augur well for the impending battle.
With this, the ruling BJP has so far declared candidates for 136 seats. Earlier, the BJP had announced 79 candidates, including two lists of 39 each, and another list of one nominee.
Modhwadia emphasised that he was not joining the BJP due to any coercion or allurement as claimed by the Congress.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's key ally in Tamil Nadu, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Wednesday slammed the saffron party alleging that it is anti-Tamil and claimed that the party could never grow in the state.
'The consecration of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya has demoralised them.' 'And, now it is reflecting in their individual reactions as they are losing hope to take on the BJP in 2024.'
After her controversial remarks that government officials are there only to 'pick up our (leaders') slippers', senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Uma Bharti has written a letter to Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh, saying she will improve her language and also urged him to do so.
Ajit Pawar was seen as an heir-apparent in the NCP, but his dalliances with the Bharatiya Janata Party, including an early morning swearing-in as Maharashtra deputy chief minister along with chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in 2019, had not been received well by the party.
Veteran actor and politician Shatrughan Sinha speaks to Subhash K Jha on his Lok Sabha win from Patna Saheb, his allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party and what minority communities can expect from Modi Sarkar.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
Various constituents of the INDIA bloc condemned Kejriwal's arrest and claimed that the BJP is scared of the outcome of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls and acting out of panic to create problems for the opposition.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Union minister Thaawarchand Gehlot on Sunday took oath as the 19th Governor of Karnataka succeeding Vajubhai Rudabhai Vala.
If Priyanka wins the Lok Sabha bypolls, it would be for the first time that three members of the Gandhi family will be in Parliament. Her mother Sonia Gandhi is a Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan.
India's new home needs all its family members to reside in it, he said. He said he believed in participatory democracy and hence call upon all opposition parties who have chosen to boycott the event to reconsider it.
The BJP has dropped C T Ravi, a leader from Karnataka, Dilip Saikia, a Lok Sabha MP from Assam, as its general secretaries, and Vinod Sonkar, Harish Dwivedi, both Lok Sabha MPs from Uttar Pradesh, and Sunil Deodhar as secretaries.
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