'If we get 399 seats and you say we have not crossed 400, then it is your wisdom. But the '400 paar' slogan is based on calculation and considered opinion'
The biggest significance of Friday night's statement from Chief Minister Karunanidhi is that this is the first time in many months that the DMK has spoken openly about the alliance and negotiations in public.
Where do Vijay and his TVK expect to get their votes from? Vijay has a huge fan following among women, but will they automatically become his voters like they had done for MGR's AIADMK, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
Gujarat has witnessed the steepest decline in the number of contestants in the fray for its 26 seats, from 371 five years ago to 266 in 2024.
After they met in New Delhi on Wednesday, June 5, 2024, INDIA bloc leaders decided to sit in the Opposition for now...
Even as the actor-turned-politician said that it was just 'a courtesy call', speculation about a future alliance between them has been doing the rounds in the national capital, says R Rajagopalan.
More than ever before, women voters can make or mar a political party's electoral fortunes.
The result was also a shot in the arm for Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam patriarch M Karunanidhi's elder son and its pointsman in the southern districts, M K Azhagiri, who spearheaded the campaign for Rajendran.
Wednesday's Vikravandi by-election has become a referendum on the Stalin government, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The BJP seems wanting to return to a 'Tamil Hindutva' agenda for elections in Tamil Nadu, explains N Sathiya Moorthy.
While Governor Ravi's speeches have put the local BJP supporters on the defensive in matters of religion and social justice, his add-on 'attack on the constitutional scheme' in the 'Senthil Balaji case', has been condemned squarely by many legal experts and editorial writers across the country, thus adding weight to CM Stalin's position -- at least until the courts come up with their binding views, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'It's a natural alliance and this alliance has been has been formed without compromising the core ideology of the AIADMK.'
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.
For the Congress to be taken seriously, it has to convince those around it that it could actually double its Lok Sabha seat share from the existing 52, and vote-share by a third more from the stagnating 20 per cent in 2014 and 2019, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Only one in four workers in Karnataka receive a salary, the lowest among the four industrialised states of India, a Business Standard analysis of the latest annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data shows. While 31.6 per cent workers in Gujarat receive regular wages (or salaries), followed by Tamil Nadu (30.3 per cent) and Maharashtra (29.4 per cent), only 25.7 per cent workers in Karnataka receive the same. The figure stands at 21.5 per cent at the national level, according to the 2021-22 PLFS data.
Suresh Gopi registered a historic win for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Kerala by winning the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat
Just eight months after its good showing in the Lok Sabha polls, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) seems to be running out of steam with internal bickering and conflicting ambitions resulting in diminishing electoral returns that have once again put the Bharatiya Janata Party in the driver's seat in national politics.
'They are all the time asking people not to do this, not to do that.' 'Their version of society and Hinduism is very warped; not an inclusive one.'
With Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections, results for 51 assembly and two Lok Sabha bypolls spread across 18 states were declared on Thursday. Here are state-wise results of the bypolls.
The Congress's loss in the three states in the North-East, a region it had dominated for decades, shows there is a lot left to do to reclaim its political turf despite the Bharat Jodo Yatra which it had touted as a successful experiment in mass public outreach.
24 hours was all it took for the Congress to overturn its decision to boycott the TV debates on the exit poll results. Sudhir Bisht offers an explanation.
The Congress is now at its most vulnerable. For the moment, it has weathered the storm caused by the DMK, but not without some loss of credibility and appeal, says Praful Bidwai.
All 13 candidates in the fray in Indore against Lalwani, who won by a potentially record margin votes, lost their security deposit, indicating they were clearly rejected by the voters. If a candidate gets fewer than one-sixth of the total valid votes cast in a constituency, his/her security deposit is seized by the EC.
'The others have been looting the people all these years. If you don't do that, you can do a lot for the people,' says Tamil star politician Vijayakanth.
With the dates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls announced, election fever has gripped Tamil Nadu with the two main political parties holding parleys with their allies on seat-sharing.
First-time MLA Rekha Gupta will be the new chief minister of Delhi, capping 11 days of suspense over who will get the top post after the Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power after over 26 years ending the 10-year rule of the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party.
Is it is necessary to play divisive politics to succeed in the next general elections? asks Dr Sudhir Bisht.
Stalin called on Ravi at the Raj Bhavan here and urged him to expeditiously send the Bill to exempt Tamil Nadu from the purview of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for getting Presidential assent, an official release said.
Ironically, rival Tamil Nadu governments expend the most on social welfare schemes, especially targeting women and youth and children, but that money comes only by selling more liquor. There is always the specious plea, which has been peddled very many times in the past, that without licensed liquor, drinkers would go after hooch and there could be more hooch tragedies and hooch deaths. No one is convinced, but no one can dispute it either, comments N Sathiya Moorthy.
The June 23 meeting of opposition parties, called by Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar, will see anti-BJP players chalk out a strategy for the Lok Sabha polls.
The bypoll was necessitated following the death of Congress veteran H Vasantha Kumar last year due to COVID-19.
Had someone done a deliberate mischief, security officials would file FIR and deboard the passenger.
"Objectively, it is only the Congress that has a footprint, shall we say, in eight to 12 states. So to have healthy democracy in which one party does not steamroll the Opposition, the kind that India experienced from the late 1970s till 2014, to revive that, to restore it, which I believe would be very good for all of us, it would depend a lot on the Congress becoming more competitive," he claimed.
Elections are due in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal that year. Early indications show Bengal holds promise for the BJP, but the party may have to recast itself to win Tamil Nadu.
It said that Congress' strategy to pursue 'fringe and disruptive politics' in Parliament was only for political reasons and opposition to the development agenda of the BJP government, which has been rejected by the people in the four large states of Assam, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala.
By aligning with the BJP, even if they were arm-twisted into doing so, the AIADMK leadership has yielded their political space in the state to the aunt-nephew duo of Sasikala-Dinakaran, and the parliamentary election to the DMK-Congress combine, says A Ganesh Nadar.
'The honourable prime minister virtually handpicked me for the Amritsar East seat.' 'Amit Shahji announced that if I am elected, the whole of Punjab will be drugs free.'
'The BJP has become a reasonably larger force in Tamil Nadu in the last two years.'
