'The BJP suddenly seems vulnerable. This is not entirely surprising. In the past too, governments and leaders who won a thumping Lok Sabha majority lost popularity in a matter of months... The by-polls results shows that a degree of disenchantment with the Modi government is setting in,' says Praful Bidwai.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and Information and Broadcasting Minister Venkaiah Naidu were among those who attended the meeting, sources said.
The kisan is as integral a part of the BJP's master plan for the 2019 polls as the Dalit because it surmised that the farmers and Dalits were as restive in UP as in much of the country, and if it had to cut its losses, its reflexes must kick in fast. Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
'Karti Chidambaram may be the beginning of a larger can of worms that the government has waited thus far to pop open,' says Vikram Johri.
The MLAs, who are seemingly unhappy with their leadership, arrived in Surat on Monday night and are camping at the Le Meridian Hotel, they said.
A year after storming to power in Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to have suffered a considerable erosion of support base in Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' home turf Vidarbha, losing to Congress-Nationalist Congress Party in the municipal council polls in the region.
In a fresh setback to Bharatiya Janata Party, its national secretary and former Arunachal Pradesh Member of Parliament Kiren Rijiju, has resigned from the party to join the Congress ahead of the assembly polls in the state in October.
'No BJP leader trusts him. His bid for the position will sharpen inner-party rivalries. The RSS is wary of him because he is too much of an individualistic autocrat and has destroyed the Sangh in Gujarat,' says Praful Bidwai.
The GST's significance for the BJP's politics is as important as its implications for the Indian economy, says A K Bhattacharya.
The development comes as a major setback to the Thackeray faction comprising 16 MLAs who will be bound by the whip to be issued by Gogawale for the trust vote.
Without taking any name, Prasada hit out at the regional parties in the wake of Akhilesh Yadav, the chief of Uttar Pradesh's main regional party, of late making consistent attacks on the ruling BJP.
'Bommai is everybody's man and nobody's man'
AICC general secretary KC Venugopal said eight former MLAs joined the party in Haryana two days ago, and lamented that such fresh developments were not getting prominence.
The joint statement was issued by senior leaders of 13 opposition parties, including interim president of Congress Sonia Gandhi, the Nationalist Congress Party patriarch Sharad Pawar, and the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
'It will impact the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.'
A handsome victory for the BJP in UP would act as confirmation of its recent political choices. The UP chief minister would be cemented in the popular mind as Mr Modi's chosen heir within the Hindutva fold, and presumably as his successor in New Delhi, observes Mihir S Sharma.
In a setback to the Bharatiya Janata Party which dominated the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the party managed to win only from three seats while the Aam Aadmi Party made its debut by winning five seats and the Congress wrested four seats in the bypolls to 13 wards.
The outcome in UP is far more significant than in the other states going to the polls next year. An unlikely setback in UP can cramp the Modi government, virtually making it a lame-duck two years ahead of the 2024 parliamentary poll, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Like Nitish, Mamata and KCR have prime ministerial ambitions, but, unlike Nitish who has established a rapport with Sonia, both Mamata and KCR are cold towards the Congress president, points out Virendra Kapoor.
Maharashtra is the BRS' first target.
The BJP, which has emerged as the main opposition party in West Bengal after winning 77 seats in the assembly polls last year, failed to win even a single civic body.
The visits come against the backdrop of complaints from the Khan camp that Akhilesh Yadav has been 'ignoring' the party veteran and the Muslim community, though it backed the SP in the recent assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
In a jolt to the Congress ahead of Himachal Pradesh polls, senior leader Anand Sharma on Sunday resigned from the chairmanship of the party's steering committee for the state, saying he was left with no choice after the 'continuing exclusion and insults'.
'Akhilesh did politics like Rabi and Kharif crop which come once a year. Politics is not seasonal, you have to harvest your field all through the year and only then you get a good crop' Political analyst lists 12 reasons why Akhilesh Yadav lost the UP elections.
BJP won 100 wards out of 198, as the results were declared on Tuesday by the State Election Commission for the polls held on August 22.
Jaitley said the geographical expansion of the BJP in Kerala, after Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in the South, and the 11 per cent vote share in West Bengal were 'important milestones'.
Holding the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress responsible for the fall of Arvind Kejriwal government, Aam Aadmi Party leader Prashant Bhushan today said the party was left with no option but to quit as implementing Jan Lokpal was their top priority.
A day after he cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha polls, Bishnoi also said that he listened to his soul and acted on his conscience.
Informing about his decision, Maurya said in a tweet in Hindi, 'Due to the attitude of gross neglect towards Dalits, backwards, farmers, unemployed youth and small and medium-sized traders, I am resigning from the council of ministers of Yogi (Adityanath) of UP.'
'Since the general election is only two years away, the BJP will need a surefire plan of action -- and it cannot be either the Ram temple or ultra-nationalism,' says Amulya Ganguli.
Critics who cannot stop gloating, pronouncing Modi to be a lame-duck prime minister, may be making a huge mistake, predicts Virendra Kapoor.
'This kind of poisonous and anti-national activities happening in the country and the economic failure of the Modi government may boomerang in the form of a Congress revival.'
The stocks could tank more than what it did after the United Progressive Alliance-1 came to power in 2004, as the market has not yet priced in a Bharatiya Janata Party defeat, says Raj Bhatt.
AAP wins 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi assembly.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday held deliberations with Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda amid speculation about a reshuffle in the Union cabinet, an exercise Modi has not undertaken since forming the government for a second time in May 2019.
The bypolls are termed as a 'rehearsal' for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by CM Yogi Adityanath.
Having failed its litmus test, the Bengal's ruling party is back to square one, trying to draw up a fresh strategy ahead of the polls in Meghalaya and Tripura.
The Sena-BJP combine was tipped to capture three other cities while Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party may bag four towns.
'For Muslims it is time to understand what sense of fears are in the minds of Hindus.' 'I think the conversation somewhere is not taking place.'
Barclays, the global brokerage firm, also stated that the election verdict could lead to a weakness in the stock market.
