In a setback to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, ruling Janata Dal-United candidate from the Muslim-dominated Kishanganj parliamentary constituency, Akhtarul Iman, on Tuesday announced that he would not be contesting the Lok Sabha polls.
Will Akhilesh ask Azam Khan to lead the SP legislature party?
Political parties in Mizoram have been using social media and mobile phones to woo voters, especially the youths, for the coming election to the 40-member state assembly to be held on November 25.
'Narendra Modi is single-handedly changing the formula to win elections. With money, human resources, mobile technology, the Internet, advance planning and tremendous confidence, he has spread his image more in UP villages than in urban areas.' Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt reports from Lucknow on how Team Modi is changing the rules of the election game.
Black will be the youngest MP since 13-year-old Christopher Monckton won in 1667 when she takes her seat at Westminster later this month.
'The BJP has not moved on since its 2014 victory. There is nothing new to offer. There is far too much negativity about the other side and far too little about what has been achieved by its government.' 'That may have worked when the BJP was in the Opposition but if they believe that the people of India will continue to hold them to such a low standard of expectations, they are really taking the voter for granted or misreading his pulse.'
The man who could well have been a high-level corporate may have to content himself being deputy chief minister. But other challenges await.
Despite receiving so much love from Gujarat, Modi didn't bother to visit the bereaved parents of those 22 children who lost their lives in Surat, points out Jyoti Punwani.
'Our honourable CM is so shameless that she will say the state is among the safest for women.'
Both the parties had been banking heavily on the internal feud in the first family of the state
'The government can do many things to improve the situation in Kashmir.'
Stalin has given due respect to seniority in the pecking order, but has also taken into consideration the demands of individual ministries and the suitability of individuals, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
It's impossible to get the actual number of people dying and not getting compensation but the number is obviously much more than stingy official estimates. In any case, nowhere in the world are people sent inside gas chambers without oxygen cylinders and masks. Unofficial estimates suggest that on an average, one sanitation worker dies every five days all over the country, writes Shyamal Majumdar.
'The BJP should know that simple caste arithmetic may have ceased to follow the basic law of addition.' 'Adding up seemingly distinct vote banks can even cause overall reduction in numbers,' says Sudhir Bisht.
The BSP is planning to bring the second line of leadership from among the cadres.
Addressing a press conference at the AAP headquarters, senior party leader Manish Sisodia, who was the deputy chief minister in the outgoing government, said the cabinet ministers will also take oath along with Kejriwal.
Shashi Tharoor also said that it was too premature to write the obituary for the Congress party and that as an organisation it had no time to sit and lick its wounds as it must immediately pick itself up for the upcoming state elections.
Indicators are that there has been little enthusiasm for Rajinikanth's entry into politics, owing possibly to his 'hide-and-seek' game over the subject since the early to mid-nineties. That was when Rajinikanth was already a superstar, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Amit Shah requested Adityanath to tighten the reins of the HYV's activities, now that he was CM. But Adityanath is not prepared to let go so easily.
Fulfilling the promises made in the manifesto, a resurgent Opposition in the state assembly, impending local body polls... Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa may have made history by winning two assembly elections in a row, but the real test begins now, says N Sathiyamoorthy.
In this moment there has to be honest acknowledgement of how so many in our community willingly voted for another four years of Trump, based on the morally flimsiest of reasons, points out Suleman Din.
'Look at Kejriwal. With his work, he's made a place in our hearts. But the BJP leaders have only abuses for us," protesters at Shaheen Bagh tell Jyoti Punwani.
An interesting contest is on in Malkajgiri, the biggest Lok Sabha constituency in the country.
A total of 851 candidates are in the fray for 93 seats spread across 14 districts in north and central Gujarat, in the final phase of the polls, where 2.22 crore people are eligible to exercise their franchise.
Modi: Journey of a Common Man is blatant propaganda, feels Utkarsh Mishra.
Clinton's defeat in Michigan is an indication of the challenges she might face in the rest of her presidential campaign.
Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's address on the eve of 70th Republic Day of India.
As the counting begins on Friday the public focus in Assam will be mainly on how helpful the 'Modi Wave' has been for the Bharatiya Janata Party to challenge a confident Congress in Assam. Both the parties have contested in 13 out of 14 parliamentary seats.
'Sounds familiar? Barring inflation, much else looks, sounds, and feels more than a bit like 1974.' 'A phenomenally popular leader, with a party of unquestioning followers, a broken Opposition, a nationalist high and an economy in free fall, crippling joblessness,' recalls Shekhar Gupta.
'But in 2024, the people of India will throw him out of power as the contradictions in him will be apparent.'
'For a country that has successfully maintained its democracy for more than seventy years now, this sudden storm of hate is highly surprising.' 'My worry is that if the debate continues like that for some more time you will have an entire generation of Indians permanently inoculated with this germ of hatred.'
'For the BJP, development is nothing more than a jumla,' says Tejaswi Yadav.
During campaigning, P Chidambaram has been addressing villagers, explaining his efforts to improve life in the constituency and blaming the state government for not supporting him. He has also been introducing his son in the 10 villages across 250 km.
'The poor manner in which the RJD stitched its alliance and mismanaged its electioneering, now reveals that Tejashwi was more interested in enhancing his political stature by cutting down many senior leaders, by downsizing and shrinking RJD allies, by displaying arrogance and inaccessibility and by committing silly mistakes in candidate selection,' points out Mohammad Sajjad.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Wednesday called upon the people in Madhya Pradesh to rout out the Congress as it was "untrustworthy" and has always failed to fulfil its promises.
Union Agriculture Minister Pawar, a former president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and also the International Cricket Council, has shown interest in contesting the election, according to incumbent MCA president Ravi Savant.
If the Congress lost in Tamil Nadu in 1967, never to return, or the DMK and the AIADMK have kept their place in power and electoral politics since then, it owes not to their love or hatred for gods or for one religion over another. Instead, they had always been linked to performance and incumbency/anti-incumbency factors. There may be something in such constructs for Rajini's strategic team to consider, especially if the superstar is to enter direct politics by around this time next year. But then, they would need to brush up their homework more than at present, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Ajit Balakrishnan decodes the angst-ridden discourse of the day.
Has Owaisi's MIM become an albatross for Imtiaz Jaleel, former journalist and the party's candidate in Aurangabad?
Modi-Shah BJP has resurrected dangers and the enemy from the past and built a scary jingoism. It's a great diversionary tactic but history shows it never ends well, points out Shekhar Gupta.
