He claimed that Tej Pratap kept egging on his henchmen while Ramraj was being humiliated and that he even got the entire episode videographed.
We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
'I have faced 18 hours of darkness daily all my life.'
The Congress won 77 seats or 42% of seats in the 2017 polls. How then can Gujarat be called a BJP bastion, asks Sanjeev Nayyar.
Commenting on the seat sharing in the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), Samajwadi Party president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday said in Ballia that a decision will be made as soon as Surya Uttarayan occurs.
"There are clearly two sides. On one side, there is an organisation of patriots in the form of BJP and on the other side, tukde-tukde gang have come together under the leadership of the Congress. It is for the people of Karnataka to decide now whether they are with the patriots or those who support people who want to divide this country," he added.
From Instagram to X, social media platforms, in the run-up to the polls have seen bitter poster wars and even bitter meme battles for political one-upmanship.
Rajya Sabha MP Subhash Chandra on Tuesday filed his nomination from Rajasthan for the elections to the Upper House of Parliament as an Independent backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
'I found it unbelievable that L&T said 45,000 jobs were waiting to be filled because of unavailability of suitable skillsets.' 'So, when the Opposition sweepingly says there are no jobs, I'm sorry... I'm not saying it's raining jobs, but there are jobs. The (skill) gap has to be bridged.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party is ahead in 20 seats in Manipur, with Chief Minister N Biren Singh leading by a handsome margin of more than 16,000 votes against his nearest Congress rival in Heingang constituency, Election Commission data showed.
While the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party hit out at the MLA and the Congress government, Shivakumar seeking to clarify, said no guarantee scheme will be stopped and it will be continued for five years.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi had fought the 2017 elections and defeated Aparna Yadav, the then SP candidate from Lucknow Cantonment.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party leaving its rivals comfortably behind in states like Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the initial rounds of vote counting, its leaders credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi's governance model for the expected win and said "new history" is being created in UP.
'Whether she is in power or not, she always makes it a point to visit us. This is her best quality as a leader.'
'The Congress government is on its way out in Himachal Pradesh.'
'Congress leaders who are making strategy for the Congress to win elections have not even won a class monitor elections.' 'When you have not contested school monitor elections, what will you know about the ground reality?'
'The BJP, already falling short of a strong OBC leader from Maharashtra, will be more than happy to welcome Chhagan Bhujbal in its fold.'
The BJP is not taking the AAP challenge lightly. Amit Shah has cautioned party insiders to ensure that AAP does not cross a vote share of 24%. He has always seen AAP as a much more significant challenge than the Congress, observes Ramesh Menon, author, Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister.
'Neither did I approach the BJP nor did they ask me to join them. It was a natural choice for both of us to make.' 'It was never for me to ask or for them to give.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday suggested that if the Congress comes to power, it would redistribute wealth of people to Muslims and cited former PM Manmohan Singh's remark that the minority community had the first claim on the country's resources.
According to DMK, the voters are already consolidated on ideological lines, hence the impact of anti-incumbency, whether against the BJP Centre or the DMK state may not be too much, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Pilot, who was the deputy chief minister in Rajasthan and was removed from the post after a fallout with Gehlot, said he and the former chief minister have discussed the issues that were there, and they did not affect the election.
It was a high-stakes three-cornered fight between the BJP, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party.
Later, Pratibha Singh said she and her son Vikramaditya Singh have received a joint invitation and she is yet to take a call on attending the consecration ceremony at Ayodhya on January 22.
The colourful rally galvanised the BRS workers who shouted slogans hailing the party-led regime's welfare schemes in Telangana and peppy political songs praised Rao's 'national' emergence.
'Who are these people on the streets?' 'They are youth and students who were hoodwinked, bluffed by Modi for the last seven years, with a promise of 2 crore jobs every year.' 'And Mamata sings the same tune.' 'But the youth can see that as long as there is Mamata or Modi, there is no hope.'
The Congress released a booklet 'Nau saal, Nau sawaal', asking nine questions from Modi. The BJP rejected the Congress' criticism as a 'bundle of lies and mountain of deception' and said the questions are born out of 'pathological hatred' of the PM.
"I will pay Rs 10 crore cash reward to anyone who beheads Stalin and brings his head to me. If no one dares to kill Stalin, I will myself find him and kill him," Paramhans Acharya, the chief priest of the Tapaswi Chawni temple of Ayodhya, said.
'Muslims know they cannot defeat the BJP, why then come in its firing range?' 'And they know, ultimately it is the BJP MLA who is going to get elected and only he or she can do their work.' 'The BJP may do a different kind of politics for Muslims, but when they sit in the chair they work for Muslims too.'
The development comes days ahead of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the state to inaugurate various projects.
'Rahul should have learnt so much in the last 20 years. But give him a mic and he begins to talk without thinking about its consequences.'
He also launched a strident attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he was 'globe-trotting', afraid of facing questions over the Manipur violence.
The youth were demanding right to quality education, provision of trained interpreters for deaf students and preventing fraudulent distribution of disability certificates to able-bodied individuals among others.
Violent clashes erupted between activists of the ruling BJP and the principal opposition, CPI-M, in different parts of Tripura.
The climate for 'doing business' remains forbidding, taxtortion is still rife, corruption at state and district levels has increased, oil prices remain extortive with high taxation, and the continued red tape has kept the enterprise system as stifled as before, points out Debashis Basu.
While the responses of the candidates were predictable, depending on which side they belonged to, an interesting point slipped through when Rahul Shewale cited the Dharavi Redevelopment Project as a scheme that would add to Mumbai's importance. No big infrastructural project in Mumbai, he said, could be successful without the Centre's nod.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath directed strict action in the case as Opposition leaders targeted his Bharatiya Janata Party government over the crime. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said the case should not be politicised.
Wednesday's Vikravandi by-election has become a referendum on the Stalin government, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday hailed the Union Budget as an "all-inclusive" document while the Opposition dismissed it as "anti-people" and mere rhetoric lacking the vision for creating jobs and taming inflation.
'Can you believe Ashok Chavan was with me in the senior leaders' meeting one day, and next day morning, he switched sides!'
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