Sonam Wangchuk, a key campaigner for constitutional safeguards for Ladakh, on Monday said they would launch a fast unto death from February 19 to press their demands and that details of participation of local residents in the agitation were being worked out.
If the BJP or even the regional parties delude themselves that they are going to win the 2019 Lok Sabha election, then they are over-interpreting the assembly election results, says Kumar Ketkar.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley on Monday stated that the ruling Congress in Assam was facing 'double anti-incumbency' this election and the poll results were bound to reflect the people's desperate wish for a change of guard.
Apprehending trouble in the state especially in violence-affected Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District Council areas in the aftermath of declaration of results of election in the state on Friday, the Assam government has requested the army to be in stand by for quick deployment, if the need arises while helicopter surveillance is being continued in vulnerable areas of the violence-affected BTC areas and along India-Bhutan border.
The Bharat Nyay Yatra will be mostly covered by bus along with short stretches of walking.
With 32 people being killed in Assam, the Centre on Sunday said it is determined to curb attacks on minorities as the violence there was aimed at starting a "full-fledged communal conflagration".
This is the first time that Nagaland is witnessing the victory of so many political parties in the state assembly elections. LJP (Ram Vilas) and RPI (Athawale) are newbies in the state politics.
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.
High voter turnout was recorded in the assembly polls in Assam and West Bengal where an estimated 82.02 per cent and 79.51 per cent of the voters cast their ballots till 5 pm.
Given the depleting mass base of the regional Asom Gana Parishad led by former chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, a section of senior leaders of the party are waiting in the wings to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is gaining ground in Assam.
Sarma, whose stock is high in Delhi had earlier captured eyeballs as the BJP's first star campaigner from the region in far away Gujarat and Delhi.
Here's what leaders from different political parties had to say as results were being announced from Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry.
A section within the RSS feels Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani should be projected as the BJP's CM candidate in UP, says Rajeev Sharma.
'The temple's construction is the result of collective wisdom of some of the best brains in the country. Water and sacred soil from almost all pilgrimage sites in India, including Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kailash Mansarovar, Prayags (there are seven Prayags) and all 'puris' (seven holy towns in India, besides Ayodhya) have been used in the making of the temple'
Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma were on Friday called to New Delhi by the Bharatiya Janata Party central leadership, apparently to discuss about the leadership issue of the next government, five days after the saffron party-led alliance emerged victorious in the assembly elections, sources said.
In an address at an election rally in this southern-most part of Mizoram bordering Myanmar, Singh said violence is no solution to any problem and the two communities in Manipur must talk to each other to improve the situation in the troubled state.
Attacking the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said the country has suffered due to 'backseat driving' and 'remote control' and warned people of Assam against an unstable government in the state.
'They will continue to keep pricking at places where both of us are sensitive and keep the LAC alive.'
It may well be possible to defeat Modi. But nobody seems to know how, points out Vir Sanghvi.
Claiming that at least 14 Bharatiya Janata Party workers were killed and nearly one lakh people fled their homes in post-poll violence in West Bengal, party president J P Nadda on Wednesday alleged that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's silence speaks of her involvement.
The results of the assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal are hours away and Dominic Xavier wonders if a fresh government battleplan to fight the COVID-19 pandemic will only materialise after the electoral outcome is known.
The 'Angh' of Oting, Tahwang, is contesting the February 27 assembly polls on a Naga People's Front (NPF) ticket against the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party MLA P Paiwang Konyak, who is a cabinet minister in the outgoing government.
Counting of votes is underway for four Lok Sabha and eight assembly Constituencies, spread across six states and one Union Territory where by-elections were held on Saturday.
While the BJP and the Congress have always supported the bill, opposition by other parties and demands from some for quota for backward classes within the women's quota have been key sticking points.
While the term of 288-member Maharashtra assembly ends on November 9, that of the 90-member Haryana assembly expires on November 2.
Khera told reporters in Hyderabad that the views of the newly-elected MLAs have been elicited and the central leadership is seized of the matter.
'Earlier, a lot of fear was in the minds of people that the BJP is anti-Christian and anti-minority, but over the years people have learnt to accept that the BJP is just another national party.'
So worried is Shiv Sena rebel leader Eknath Shinde of desertions that he is asking rebel MLAs in Guwahati to sign affidavits affirming that they won't go back on supporting the 'cause of Hindutva' after reaching Mumbai.
For the BJP, Telangana is a sunrise state in the South, while Karnataka is a southern success despite the ups and downs.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's comprehensive defeat to the Congress in Karnataka where the two parties ran a campaign of contrasts has left the ruling party much to ponder as the two rivals are facing a direct contest in three more state polls this year in the run-up to the all-important 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Several Assamese-origin students studying in American universities met with Indian embassy officials to deliver a letter to President Pranab Mukherjee on the killing of over 32 Muslims in Assam as a result of election-related violence there. Aziz Haniffa reports
The Congress on Monday deferred the election to the post of party president till the COVID-19 situation improves and decided to set up a group to assess losses in the recent assembly polls, with party chief Sonia Gandhi saying it has to put its house in order by facing reality and drawing lessons from the 'serious setbacks'.
'...despite not being ideologically aligned with a vast section of the people of the north east.' 'But the results in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya show that no party, including the BJP, can say that it has really done well.'
'In Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan, he is far more popular than the defeated chief ministers,' notes Karan Thapar.
The recent bouts of violence by suspected Bodo militias that killed over 30 hapless 'Muslims, mostly children and women, and rendered several thousands homeless in lower Assam recently, once again offers a shocking glimpse of the horrendous game of violent communalism being played by the Congress government of Assam in furtherance of its cynical power politics for the last several years.' 'The result is, the state is a simmering communal cauldron that sporadically erupts at the slightest real or imagined provocation,' says R N Ravi.
The Bharatiya Janata Party appeared to cede ground in Uttar Pradesh where Samajwadi Party was leading on six of the 11 Assembly seats where bypolls were held while it was neck and neck with Congress in Gujarat and behind in Rajasthan, exactly four months after it swept the three states in Lok Sabha elections.
It said that Congress' strategy to pursue 'fringe and disruptive politics' in Parliament was only for political reasons and opposition to the development agenda of the BJP government, which has been rejected by the people in the four large states of Assam, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala.
'The violence that shook Assam was a direct outcome of the state's ethnic problem... The tension that created a rift between the Bodos and the non-Bodos for years found a blood-spattered expression.' Former NSG chief Ranjit Shekhar Mooshahary, the Trinamool Congress candidate from Kokrajhar, speaks to Indrani Roy/Rediff.com about last week's carnage in Assam.
Unless the anarchy in Manipur is brought under control quickly, we are sowing the seeds of a flare up in the entire North East and the end of our dream of checking China in South East Asia, warns Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has written to the party's central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry seeking the publication of electoral rolls for the upcoming election to the post of All India Congress Committee president, sources said.
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