Silverline seems symptomatic of how Kerala -- its claimed education, awareness and all -- overlooks its real problems, notes Shyam G Menon.
Amid the bitter tussle with the Left Democratic Front-led government, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan on Tuesday said he will not interfere in the business of the government unless there was a total collapse of the constitutional machinery and "fortunately" that was not the case in Kerala.
According to BJP insiders, every Union minister has been given 3-4 seats to mentor and has been told to work hard on these constituencies in the next 20 months to ensure the party's victory.
Nadda enjoys warm relations with Modi, who was for a long time in charge of the party's affairs in Himachal Pradesh.
'This is India. We have allowed ourselves to be dictated by the narrative that the BJP has set for itself.'
rivals Congress, JMM and TMC and Samajwadi Party.
A number of high-profile electoral battles, starring veterans and debutants, formidable opponents and unlikely contestants, feature in Tuesday's outcome.
The country has seen that "people are God" in elections, the PM said.
The Supreme Court on Friday sought replies of the West Bengal and Tamil Nadu governments on a plea of the producers of The Kerala Story challenging the ban in the two states.
The Kerala unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party is unhappy with the Lok Sabha poll schedule for the state.P K Krishnadas, president of the BJP's state unit, told reporters that the last day of campaigning falls on April 14, which clashes with Vishu, the most popular Hindu festival in Kerala. BJP's state general secretary M T Ramesh informed reporters that the party has already petitioned the EC about changing the election dates in Kerala.
24 hours before campaigning ends in Thiruvanathapuram, Archana Masih/Rediff.com discovers Shashi Tharoor and his BJP rival Rajeev Chandrasekhar are busy getting their message across to voters.
In Odisha and Kerala, the BJP is being accused of engineering splits in the BJD and the Congress
The Thalassery archdiocese of the Catholic church has condemned the "misinterpretation" of its archbishop's statement on political martyrs and said the church has a history of respecting the martyrs.
According to the party sources, the preparations are in full swing and seasoned BJP workers are being deployed on more than 50 seats.
'This is the real purpose behind the arrest, and it is not about controlling corruption.' 'It is like taking Amit Shah into custody before the 2024 elections.' 'How will it affect the BJP's election machinery?'
The two women, who had earned their daily bread selling lottery tickets on the streets of Kochi, were allegedly sacrificed by the accused to settle their financial issues and bring prosperity in life, police said.
Ranjith has reportedly rejected Bengali actor Sreelekha Mitra's charge and said he was the "real victim" in the case.
The unexpected split in the Nationalist Congress Party set off a mini earthquake in not only Maharashtra politics but also sent aftershocks at a national level.
An official video showed the prime minister being welcomed at the church and him greeting priests and worshippers on the holy day.
Talking about the relationship with his father, Anil Antony said, "We all are different and our thinking is also different. Joining the BJP is my personal decision and my father has been associated with the Congress for many decades. He has a different attachment to the Congress."
BJP candidate Rajeev Chandrasekhar's wife and son who keep themselves far from the political limelight reveal what it is like to campaign for the first time.
Tamil Nadu and Kerala are voting in single-phase for 234 and 140 assembly constituencies respectively.
As part of the programme, 14 states have been identified in the first phase in which there are 64 districts.
Even as political pressure was building against Ranjith, actor Siddique quit as the general secretary of Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) amid voices from within his fraternity seeking his resignation.
The Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, where Rahul Gandhi won for the second time in a row, comprises three assembly constituencies each in the tribal district of Wayanad and the Muslim-dominated Malappuram, as well as one in Kozhikode district where Christians hold a significant vote base.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the NDA won 64 seats -- 62 bagged by the BJP and two by Apna Dal.
As many as six who hold law degrees include cabinet ministers Nitin Gadkari, J P Nadda, Piyush Goyal, Sarbananda Sonowal, Bhupender Yadav and Kiren Rijiju.
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.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar appear to have got the maximum representation in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new council of ministers, while assembly poll-bound Maharashtra also found a significant presence.
As pressure mounted, the CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front seemed to be supporting Mukesh, taking a cautious wait-and-watch stance.
'While the Congressmen were fighting, the LDF was quietly doing its job, perhaps bringing in results in the lives of the people.' 'Pinarayi Vijayan and several ministers in his cabinet believed that the government should do real business, which is not to fight with the UDF but govern.'
With Pinarayi Vijayan set to be chief minister, what will be the role for party patriarch V S Achuthanandan? And what are the key takeways from the election results in Kerala?
Malayalam film director and Sangh Parivar fellow traveller Ali Akbar has announced that he and his wife were giving up Islam in protest against a section of social media users allegedly indulging in jubilation over the tragic death of Chief Defence Staff Bipin Rawat and his wife in a helicopter crash.
He could have blazed a trail that few Indian judges had. It was a missed opportunity of a lifetime, notes Ramesh Menon.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that the BJP has emerged as the "third force" in Kerala that will replace the two fronts in the next year's assembly elections.
The CPI-M leader was fluent in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bangla, and also Malayalam. He was also well-versed in Hindu mythology, and often used those references in his speeches especially to attack the BJP.
As Modi takes guard for a third term with trusted and seasoned hands around him, the BJP is hopeful that he will prove his detractors wrong and continue to fuel the party's expansion horizontally and vertically with his inventive policies in government and new set of ideas in politics with the core of Hindutva, development and welfarism remaining intact.
Those joining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers for the first time include three former chief ministers -- Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana) and H D Kumaraswamy (Karnataka).
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance is planning to celebrate the Ram Temple consecration ceremony, being organised in Ayodhya, in a grand manner in Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, represented by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Early trends from counting of votes on Tuesday threw up disappointing results for the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha elections, which appears to be losing heavily in its strongholds of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan although it is expected to form the government with about 290 seats.
