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 victory of the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front in 12 of the 20 Lok Sabha seats in the state has made Chief Minister Oommen Chandy stronger as Kerala is one of the few states that bucked the anti-Congress trend in the country.
Launching a fresh attack on Defence Minister A K Antony, Narendra Modi on Tuesday charged that the country's defence had suffered seriously during his stewardship and said he owed an explanation to the people for this.
The Supreme Court on Monday reserved its verdict on whether to refer the matters pertaining to the ban on entry of women aged between 10 to 50 years at Kerala's Sabrimala temple to its constitution bench.
"I congratulate the people of Kochi on the proud moment," the PM said.
The exit poll results were released at the end of the polling in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, marking the closure of voting in four states and Puducherry.
She said there were attempts to communalise the guru's teachings and this amounts to 'betraying' him.
Kerala Finance Minister K M Mani resigned on Tuesday night after pressure mounted on him from the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front to quit.
Scripting history, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday stormed to power in Assam bagging a government in the north east for the first time dethroning the Congress which also lost Kerala while Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee retained power in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal with spectacular victories.
The last leg of poll campaign saw many national leaders canvassing for their parties.
Modi said this time 'a third decisive strength is emerging in Kerala and I am seeing this', thanking the thousands of people who stood braving the scorching heat.
'It is wrong to assume that it is only after 1991 that we started following this ritual.' 'Ayyappan himself instructed where the temple had to be built, the rituals that had to followed and the route that had to be taken by devotees to the temple.'
In a boost to the United Democratic Front ahead of assembly polls in Kerala next year, the Congress candidate K S Sabarinadhan on Tuesday won the Aruvikkara assembly by-poll by a margin of 10,128 votes defeating his nearest rival M Vijayakumar of the Opposition Left Democratic Front.
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?
The Congress has been reduced to a C player in national politics thanks to its inability to read the pulse of the people, says Rashme Sehgal.
The year 2015 was a mixed bag for the Grand Old party --with the performance in Bihar being a consolation while the the National Herald case came back to haunt its leadership.
Buffalo meat was on Wednesday back on the menu of the Kerala House in New Delhi and was lapped up by the lunch-time crowd as the items that were briefly discontinued following a row that saw police carry out a raid at the canteen were sold out within "45 minutes".
Voters are disillusioned with the two rival fronts in the state and there are no effective alternatives either. G Sreedathan explains
Unlike the LDF and NDA nominees who are at ground zero and campaigning hard every day, the Congress candidate's campaign is undertaken in absentia, dependent on an army of local and imported from the rest of Kerala Congresswomen and men.
'Why do they talk about Narendra Modi insulting Oommen Chandy when he himself informed the PMO that he would not be available? Why did he write to Delhi that he was preoccupied on the 15th? After that, he should not make such noise about the function.'
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.
Kisan Baburao Hazare is supporting Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and attempts are afoot to form an alternative Third Front. Will these alliances really work, asks Bharat Bhushan.
'Amit Shah was, briefly, a stockbroker before devoting himself to politics. By instinct or training, he knows the value of keeping blue chips in one's portfolio.'
Even if they score administratively, state governments ruled by the party suffer from an inability to communicate positively, say observers.
'Congress is on the defensive about scams and corruption charges... The media is against the UPA.... The Nehru family is not just another family; it is a national wealth,'Kerala Chief Minister Oomen Chandy tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier.
'Nowhere in the country, except perhaps Jammu and Kashmir, do extremist groups enjoy political patronage as they do in Kerala. Terrorists are exported from Kerala to Afghanistan, Syria.'
'In the long term, the party that is going to be irrelevant is the Left.' 'It seems absurd that the people of Kerala are the last ones to wake up to the reality that this kind of discredited dogmatic ideological politics has no place in the modern world.'
'The BJP can kill two birds with one stone by wresting back control of the message; and the steps are fairly obvious. Once the media is neutral, there is a level playing field,' argues Rajeev Srinivasan.
'Slightly more than 50 per cent of all Keralites are Hindus. If we can unite as many as we can, we can create a huge difference in the political scene in Kerala.'
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