Ruling the Bhartiya Janata Party suffered a fresh setback in poll-bound Karnataka with two more ministers quitting the Jagadish Shettar cabinet on Thursday, amid indications that they would join the Congress.
It will be the first assembly byelection after the collapse of the Uddhav Thackeray-led government in Maharashtra in June, making it a litmus test of his faction's hold over the Sena's vote bank in Mumbai.
Sanjay Raut said Shinde is not in Mumbai, but a communication has been established with him.
With organisations like the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, which is a front of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, telling Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman they want OPS back, the government is in a bind, report Shiva Rajora and Aditi Phadnis.
The party desperate to retain power in the state will also prepare dossiers on opposition MLAs to assess the winability of prospective party nominees.
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'.
BSP chief's hard blows meet with timid retort from India's Grand Old Party.
Led by the leader of the Opposition Kameng Dolo, the eight of the nine BJP MLAs resigned from the party and sought Speaker Setong Sena's recognition, which he quickly gave.
The resignation of Balwantsinh Rajput (who was also the chief whip), Tejashreeben Patel and Prahlad Patel reduced the Congress's tally to 54 in the 182-seat assembly.
The Congress wants the 28 seats it won in 2012 plus 20 seats where the party was runner-up plus 57 seats where it was ahead of the SP in 2012.
Outgoing Mayor and chief of the Paschimbanga Unnayan Congress Mancha Subrata Mukherjee has won in ward 87.
After recent poll defeats, Sonia asks party to focus on development.
'We have to be fully prepared and ready ourselves for the coming challenge,' she said.
Sonia Gandhi was on Saturday re-elected chairperson of Congress Parliamentary Party and asked party men not to bicker in public amid a fierce blame game in the party over its worst electoral defeat which has seen Team Rahul Gandhi coming under attack from a number of leaders.
Party general secretary Digvijay Singh said inflation was definitely a matter of concern for the party and sought to put the onus of bringing down prices on the state governments as well.
There is no sign of it losing popularity with a significant section of the voting population, which appears to be attracted to the party for identity reasons, observes Aakar Patel.
The Left has ideologically become irrelevant globally, says the finance minister.
The BJP hopes that any vote AAP gets should only be from the Congress. At the same time, it does not want AAP to get too much of it. Because, a declining old opponent is a blessing as much as a rising new rival is a threat, points out Shekhar Gupta.
TDP Telangana unit president Ramana said they favoured a 'grand alliance' for the elections in the interest of Telangana people.
The resignation of Kandolkar and two other leaders, who had contested on the TMC symbol, came as another setback for the Mamata Banerjee-led party which is struggling to retain its flock in Goa since the poll debacle.
In one state, the BJP sweeps in Modi's name -- and only because of Modi's name. In the other state, Modi's name did not work. Himachal underlines the limitations of Modi's magic, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Mevani claimed that Patidar community leader Hardik Patel's resignation from the Congress did not create much impact for the party.
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.
In a major setback to ruling National Conference-Congress coalition in Jammu and Kashmir, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday shared the six Lok Sabha seats in the state as two Union ministers, including Farooq Abdullah, bit the dust.
Barring a brief lull in 2008 triggered by her standoff with Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the issue of family entitlement in ticket distribution, the suave and soft-spoken Alva's career has largely been a dream run.
The Congress said the alliance between the BSP and Jogi's Janta Congress Chhattisgarh has the support of the BJP, which is ruling the state since 2003.
Sources within the BJP said that party ministers in the Nitish-led government are likely to resign on Tuesday.
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 protesting wrestlers on Friday formed two committees to advice them on the future course of action
Based on repeated appeals from Choksi, who is wanted in the Rs 13,000 crore bank fraud in Punjab National Bank and is holed in Antigua and Barbuda after fleeing from India in 2018, the CCF removed his name from the Red Notice list in November 2022, the CBI said in a statement.
After Bihar elections, Rahul Gandhi's go-it-alone strategy seems to have taken a back seat.
The development is a major boost for West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, who has been trying to expand her party's footprint beyond her native state.
'There is a conscious move by the BJP to distance itself from the current state leadership.'
While guests who had arrived earlier are leaving one by one, sources revealed that the hotel, situated on Dumas Road of the diamond city, has stopped accepting new bookings for an indefinite period.
Anil Singh, the Unnao MLA, said, "I am with Maharaj-ji (Adityanath)."
Siddaramaiah seems overwhelmed by problems coming at him from every direction, reports Aditi Phadnis.
Gujarat BJP leaders on Friday said if the physician-turned-politician, once a member of the powerful Narendra Modi ministry in the state and rising star in politics, wants to return to active politics, the saffron party will definitely assign work to her.
The BJP registered a victory in the Rajouri Garden assembly bypoll, handing a humiliating defeat to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, which finished a distant third and even lost its deposit.
According to a senior Election Commission official in Chandigarh, Panwar got 36 votes, while Sharma got 23 first preference votes and six transferred from the BJP, taking his tally to 29.
