The ceremony, held at the famous St Peter's Basilica and attended by clergy and dignitaries from around the world, witnessed the induction of 21 new cardinals from various countries.
The Bharatiya Janata Party lined up several promises, including a legislation to protect traditions of the Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala and a law against "love jihad", while assuring employment for at least one person from each family and free laptops to high school students, in its manifesto for the assembly polls unveiled in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday.
While Raj Bhavan issued the statement, dramatic scenes were witnessed at Calicut University where the Governor lashed out at the police for not removing the offending banner.
The 67-year-old gave the example of two neighbouring states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, to buttress his point on why seat-sharing pattern of the INDIA bloc will vary from state to state.
If Pitroda's blunder cost him his office, what should the BJP's unrepentant attitude cost it?, asks Shyam G Menon.
The saffron party will use Lord Ayyappa the same way it made use of Lord Ram in the north to take away the Nair vote and make electoral inroads in the state.
The Congress continued its losing spree on Saturday posting its worst-ever show in Maharashtra and ending up a distant junior partner to the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand, further diminishing its role in the opposition bloc as other allies perform better.
'The southern states will have no voice.' 'Political parties in future need to focus only on one region, the northern region, to win the general election.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday appointed election in-charges and co-in-charges for 23 states and Union territories in view of the Lok Sabha polls this year.
The Kerala assembly on Tuesday unanimously adopted a resolution urging the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government to refrain from implementing the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the country.
Asked how many seats INDIA bloc will get, Gandhi said, "Have you heard Sidhu Moose Wala's song '295'? So 295 (seats)."
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi on Saturday cruised to her maiden electoral victory, from the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, with a margin of over 4.1 lakh votes against Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Democratic Front's Sathyan Mokeri, according to figures released by the Election Commission.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had moved the resolution at a special session on Thursday which was unanimously passed by the House with the ruling Left Democratic Front, Opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front and the BJP supporting it.
Asserting that the JD-S does not practice opportunistic politics, Gowda while defending the decision to ally with the BJP said, "This party has to be saved, which has been his pain and struggle for decades, and there is no selfishness in this....I took the decision."
The 'Overseas Friends of BJP' in the United States has made an elaborate plan to make more than 25 lakh calls to people across India urging them to vote and re-elect Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Directed by Sudipto Sen, The Kerala Story depicts how women from Kerala were forced to convert to Islam and recruited by the terror group Islamic State.
'The BJP think they are running an ideology machine in this country, and they have to convert everyone, from people to parties to party leaders.'
The film, which was released on May 5, has kicked up a political storm.
On Thursday, the opening day of the movie itself, the Sangh Parivar came out with vehement criticism against the film on social media, while the Congress and a section of the Left platforms celebrated the film for portraying the right-wing politics as "villainous".
Senior advocate Harish Salve mentioned the matter for urgent listing before a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice P S Narasimha.
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Local residents have stressed that land acquisition for rehabilitation must be completed promptly, as it has been delayed after estate owners challenged it in the Kerala high court.
Students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) defied an advisory from the university administration and screened a banned BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The screening, organized by the Left-backed All India Students' Federation (AISF), was initially planned to be displayed on a projector but was moved to a laptop after security personnel allegedly damaged the projector. The university had warned of disciplinary measures for violating the advisory, which stated that the documentary could "disrupt communal harmony" on campus. The AISF and the JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) condemned the advisory, calling it an attack on students' fundamental rights and alleging that the administration was attempting to stifle dissent and curb freedom of expression.
A purported video in which veteran Congress leader A K Antony's wife Elizabeth was seen justifying their elder son's recent entry into the Bharatiya Janata Party has gone viral on social media platforms, putting the Congress party in a fix in Kerala.
Priyanka's victory seems assured, but the broader implications for Kerala's political landscape and South Indian politics remain to be seen.
'We should see to it that not even one woman gets radicalised.' 'We should not let even one young man become a jihadi.'
Hoping to make its mark in Kerala, the BJP sewed up an alliance with the BDJS, the new party formed by SNDP, a powerful organisation of the backward Ezhava community.
'What matters is policies, not personalities like Priyanka, Rahul or Modi.'
Barring a few, such as Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu (74), Union Minister C R Patil (69) and Uttar Pradesh Finance Minister Suresh Khanna (71), most other ministers attending the WEF represent the next generation of India's politicians.
'This can eventually start the end of the current market frenzy, which has lasted for a full year.'
'If you want to really grow, it has to be geometric progression like it happened at the Centre or Haryana or Tripura, where you made a quantum jump.' 'This is possible in Kerala provided we present a better alternative with a great leadership, but the current leadership is busy fixing each other.'
Much drama is likely to continue in the coming year, within the Sangh Parivar as well as involving the Opposition parties and, of course the BJP's allies, predicts Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Singh targeted the Congress using a 'snakes and ladders' analogy, saying the party will fall to zero from 99 after being bitten by a snake -- referring to the grand old party winning 99 seats in the Lok Sabha polls.
An average voter turnout of 20 per cent was recorded in the first four hours of voting in the bypolls to 15 assembly seats spread across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala and Uttarakhand on Wednesday amid an incident of stone pelting in a village in UP's Meerapur and allegations of police personnel deterring voters from casting their ballot.
'The idea of aligning with different political parties -- parties that are relevant at a particular period -- is opportunistic and unacceptable.'
Nitin Gadkari led BJP delegation on Sunday met President Pranab Mukherjee over Kerala violence issue.
On April 3, Gandhi's roadshow, on the way to filing his nomination in Wayanad was visibly different from that of 2019 in the hill constituency when the green flags of ally IUML outnumbered the Congress's in the crowd. There were no flags of any party or affiliated organisations.
The Left rewrote history in Kerala on Sunday by becoming the first government to get a second term in four decades but its fortunes fell to a historic low in West Bengal where it failed to bag even one seat, resulting in its complete decimation in a state it once ruled for over three decades.
Leaders of several Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties met on Saturday to take stock of the opposition's preparations leading up to the June 4 counting of votes polled in the Lok Sabha elections, and claimed they will get more than 295 seats, enough for them to form the next government.
