'Commentators have said that dealing with allies as equals will make Modi more sensitive.' 'Remember that the people Modi is dealing with are equally autocratic in their own lairs.' 'Further, Modi always has handy the threat of dissolving Parliament and calling for fresh polls.' 'Most of his own party, and certainly his allies and opponents having blown their budgets of efforts and resources in the just concluded elections, have no stomach for this.' 'They are all greatly looking forward to the loaves and fishes of office on offer.' 'That gives Modi an unbeatable advantage in any push-comes-to-shove situation,' explains Shreekant Sambrani.
Claiming that the ruling party is using the country's premier investigating agency to fulfill its "political agenda", senior BJP leaders LK Advani, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley skipped a lunch hosted by the prime minister on Friday
The Cyberabad police that investigated the case informed the court that Rohith Vemula did not belong to Scheduled Caste and that he was aware of it.
The inaugural Sangamam turned out to be a political Hindutva function than a gathering on the Hindu religion, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Amidst suspense about his whereabouts, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren has reached his official residence in Ranchi, a source in the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) said on Tuesday.
If Kerala wants to sustain its room for independent thinking and talk back to Delhi when needed, it should put its finances in order. Or - if one takes the North East example - Kerala's political posturing may end up commensurate with its financial dependence on others, suggests Shyam G Menon.
'Modi's charisma and appeal is unparalleled.' 'Yogi has his own appeal and people connect.' 'He is seen as trustworthy, hardworking and honest.' 'People feel that these qualities are both common to Yogi and Modi.'
Venugopal shared the screenshot of a message purportedly from Apple which said that "you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID".
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.
The party is looking at Amit Shah's visit to Tamil Nadu and the PM's to Sri Lanka to boost its expansions efforts in the state for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, reports Archis Mohan.
'Rahul Gandhi should have prevented Nitish Kumar from going.' 'He must pacify Mamata Banerjee if he has a cause of Mohabbat Ki Dukaan.' 'He should bring this Mohabbat Ki Dukaan on the political canvas.'
Another issue on the party's agenda is the expansion of the ruling NDA, which has seen steady depletion in the recent years with traditional BJP allies like the Janata Dal-United and Akali Dal leaving the grouping.
Besides representatives of Facebook, the committee has asked representatives of the ministry of electronics and information technology to remain present on September 2 to discuss on the subject of "safeguarding citizens' rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms including special emphasis on women security in the digital space".
The political slugfest has been going on between the two, which started after Tharoor's announcement that the panel would like to hear from Facebook about the report published in Wall Street Journal claiming that the social media platform ignored applying its hate-speech rules to politicians of the ruling party in India.
Sunday's denial of Rajya Sabha ticket to Union minister indicates that an end game to the JD-U-BJP rift may be in sight.
Senior state leaders of the two parties pointed to propping up of the "new set of leaders not having much political stature" and lack of communication for the failure to reconcile differences.
'The 4th meeting of the leaders of INDIA parties will be held on Tuesday December 19th, 2023 in New Delhi at 3 pm,' Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X on Sunday.
'There was a strong undercurrent of deprivation, and also frustration against misuse of power and authority.' 'This election was an opportunity for the manifestation of this discontentment.'
"The results show popular support for our battle against corruption," he told a crowd of cheering supporters at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, adding that they have served a lesson to the Congress and the opposition's INDIA bloc that mere collecting some dynasts on dais may make for a good photograph but cannot win people's confidence.
Banerjee fended off a spirited challenge by the BJP in West Bengal with a landslide victory for her party on Sunday, bagging a third consecutive term.
If Tamil Nadu voters preferred the DMK combine, it owed to the Modi-Annamalai combo's ideological battle which often crossed the line of political decency and also challenged 'Tamil pride', argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
On his condition of resolving farmers' issues, the BJP leader said Singh did not talk about ending the farmers' agitation.
'Elections in Madhya Pradesh have so far largely avoided freebies.' 'But this time both the Congress and BJP are making such announcements.'
Modi said laws which divide the country on communal lines and become a reason for inequality have no place in a modern society.
Banerjee claimed that some people will try to "engineer riots" during elections and urged everyone "not to fall prey to the plot".
'Is the Agniveer scheme or their post-retirement re-employment in paramilitary forces or in the state governments the BJP's answer to the crying need on the job front?' 'Or, even Finance Minister Sitharaman's one-year internship scheme in the public and private sector, is it a permanent solution, either?', asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
While Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has made his national ambitions amply clear, even rechristening his party to aid the process, his Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin insists he is already in the national scene and used his birthday rally on March 1 to not only strongly pitch for the Congress as a force to reckon with in the efforts to dislodge the Narendra Modi-led dispensation at the Centre, but also sought to shoot down the prospects of a Third Front.
He will be around for another crack at the elections, and a clear majority, predicts Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'The Congress should have played a more active role to take care of the needs of regional parties. It failed.' 'Taking this into account, Nitishji took the final decision with the full support of the JD-U.'
The BJP has been inducting leaders from the NCP and the Congress since the last few months to expand its footprint in the regions where the party lacks organisational base.
'This is the first time in Goa politics that a communal leadership is being foisted on Goa's people.'
Addressing a big rally in Kolkata to launch the Bharatiya Janata Party's Lok Sabha campaign, Shah launched a blistering attack on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the issues of appeasement, infiltration, corruption and political violence, alleging she has "destroyed" the state.
Pandey, who stepped down as the state police chief less than a week ago, however, insisted that he had walked down to the state headquarters of the Janata Dal-United, headed by the chief minister, to "thank" Kumar for the trust reposed in him by the latter.
The controversial issue of Muslim girls wearing 'hijab' in educational institutions, which had hit national headlines last year with a government pre-university college in Udupi banning it inside classrooms, does not appear to be a serious campaign issue for the May 10 elections to the Karnataka assembly.
It is hard to escape the feeling that solving the problems of 2020 and 2021 will require something special which at the moment is not on view, observes Aakar Patel.
The pressure on Delhi mellowed Lucknow's ruling dispensation's initial enthusiasm to try and draw electoral mileage from the developments in Afghanistan.
During the meeting, it was decided to hold consultations on a wider scale so as to arrive at a common political agenda with other groups, it said.
When asked about the Uniform Civil Code, Gandhi said he would comment on it only after he knows what is BJP's proposal.
Participating in the eighth edition of Deepotsav in Ayodhya - the first since the consecration of Ram temple on January 22, Adityanath said, "This is a historic first as after 500 years, Lord Ram is now in his abode in Ayodhya for Diwali."
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.