Conveying New Year greetings to the people of Gujarat, Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said the state will celebrate a bigger Diwali on December 20, the day when results of state assembly elections will be declared. The Gujarati New Year is celebrated the day after the festival of Diwali.
The Gujarat polls are drawing to an end with Tuesday being the final phase of campaigning before the state goes for polling in the second phase on December 14. Results for the 182-seat assembly will be announced on December 18. Ahead of the polling, here's everything you need to know about the candidates.
Will January 22 mark a point of no return for our Constitutional secularism? asks Shekhar Gupta.
'The judge could have given him a six-month, one-year, or one-and-half-year sentence also because the maximum punishment for defamation cases is two years.' 'Disqualification happens only if one is sentenced for two years; it does not happen if the disqualification is for one-and-half years.' 'But the period of sentence is the judge's discretion.'
'The margin of victory or loss would make both camps rethink their strategies for the 2024 assembly election in Maharashtra.'
Union Minister of State Kailash Chaudhary was among the first to cast his vote, exercising his franchise in Balotra.
'The BJP is doing politics 24x365, but the Congress revs up only during elections.'
The Bharat Nyay Yatra will be mostly covered by bus along with short stretches of walking.
Ramesh also said the Congress leadership is considering a proper solution to the Rajasthan issue.
Asserting that Berlin respects the election results in India and has full trust in its judicial system, German Ambassador to India, Michael Steiner, on Friday said the decision to meet Narendra Modi was taken after the Gujarat assembly polls.
Shivakumar also claimed that the BJP wanted to call for elections in Karnataka soon after the 2022 Gujarat poll results were out but backtracked on the move.
In Gujarat's political circles, the appeal was seen as an indirect call to vote against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Patel's elevation and his subsequent projection as chief ministerial face -- he is the first from the Kadva Patidar sub-group to be the chief minister -- is key to BJP's plans to woo the Kadva Patidar community, which some political observers feel, has drifted away from the party.
...close to the 2024 general election. The BJP calling the Congress 'seasonal Hindu' is as laughable as the saffron party sparing itself the title of 'seasonal extreme Hindu.'
How else should one describe its election campaigns of the past years?
It was typically obsessive religion and personality cult with economic development for fig leaf, asserts Shyam G Menon.
The Congress needs to reorganise itself at the grassroots, infuse younger blood, and have more boots on the ground. Just offering freebies is not the answer anymore. Leadership matters, asserts Ramesh Menon.
'What has taken the wind out of its sails is the government's own expectation management and its inability to strategise on delivery,' says Vikram Johri.
Bhupendra Patel can never really break free of intervention from New Delhi. But if he can win over the Gujaratis and improve the BJP's tally substantially, he will have proved that he should be taken seriously.
With the election results pointing towards a convincing victory for Narendra Modi in Gujarat, party president Nitin Gadkari thanked the people of Gujarat for the success.
With the exit polls predicting a victory for the National Democratic Alliance, Gujarat Bharatiya Janata Party leaders on Tuesday went into a huddle, triggering speculations about finding a successor to Narendra Modi, but the party dismissed such conjectures and described the talks as "routine".
"Why was the server down for four hours? We are willing to accept people's mandate but if the result of one place has anomalies, there may be something beyond what appears. We have to seek the truth," she added.
The no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition against the National Democratic Alliance government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was defeated by voice vote in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
'A political party taking the law into its hands is objectionable, especially in the context of the 2002 incidents in Gujarat.'
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday termed the cancellation of over 25,000 school jobs as 'gross injustice' and alleged that it was a ploy by the Bharatiya Janata Party to stop these job losers from being deployed in poll duty.
BJP may get up to a maximum of 115 of the total 182 seats and the Congress 65.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday ducked queries about exit polls predicting wins, in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly polls, for his former ally Bharatiya Janata Party which he has vowed to defeat with the help of a united opposition in the next general elections.
'AAP is more acceptable to sections of the middle class because it has pragmatically tried to accommodate Hindu sensibilities.'
Karnataka dished out a clinical show as they beat Andhra Pradesh by 53 runs in their Elite Group A match of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, in Bengaluru, on Monday.
'Modi is larger-than-life, but not invincible. Yet,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Speaking at a rally at Shivaji Park in Mumbai on Saturday, Raj Thackeray had criticised Sharad Pawar, accusing him of 'playing the caste card from time to time and dividing society'.
'The Gujarat model was never an economic model; it was essentially a governance model.'
'Mr Modi identified what would help him win votes and got it done, like 24x7 power in three phases, better roads, more water, etc.'
'Good economic governance at state level is quite different from good governance at national level,' points out T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
The Patidar leader also urged the Congress to raise the issue of EVM tampering.
Successor Anandiben Patel isn't having an easy time, with a protest movement by her own community and new challenges in keeping the mandate
The Bharatiya Janata Party appeared to cede ground in Uttar Pradesh where Samajwadi Party was leading on six of the 11 Assembly seats where bypolls were held while it was neck and neck with Congress in Gujarat and behind in Rajasthan, exactly four months after it swept the three states in Lok Sabha elections.
'The temple's construction is the result of collective wisdom of some of the best brains in the country. Water and sacred soil from almost all pilgrimage sites in India, including Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kailash Mansarovar, Prayags (there are seven Prayags) and all 'puris' (seven holy towns in India, besides Ayodhya) have been used in the making of the temple'
Modi targeted Congress's president-elect Rahul Gandhi, saying he was born with a "golden spoon" and has not seen poverty.
'Whatever the result on December 18, Rahul has succeeded.' 'He has taken the battle to the rival's territory, and forced him to take him more seriously than he has done so far, or would have wished to.' 'A party, dominating and powerful as the BJP today, is spending all its time attacking the leader of one with just 46 seats in the Lok Sabha, and in the woods in Gujarat for 22 years.' 'This isn't the script the BJP had written,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The Congress would also take inspiration from history as it was from Karnataka that an embattled Indira Gandhi had revived her dwindling political future by winning a Lok Sabha bypoll from Chikmagalur.
On the final day of the Gujarat election, Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore takes a day-long tour of Juhapura in Vejalpur (dominated by India's biggest minority), Naroda Patiya in Naroda (with an explosive mix of the majority and minority communities) and Maninagar (dominated by the majority community) in Ahmedabad. This is what he discovered.
A sombre mood prevailed at the Delhi BJP office ahead of the results, where the party leaders hoped that the exit polls will be proved wrong during the counting of votes.
Narendra Modi is all set to be elected leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the National Democratic Alliance parliamentary coalition on Tuesday as jockeying for positions in the new Cabinet gained momentum on Monday.
