'Rather than criticising the kind of candidates fielded by political parties from our living rooms, NOTA in a sense implores the electorate to say this by turning up in person at a polling booth to ensure their protest is registered.'
For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
If the Congress is contesting fewer seats than ever before, the BJP is set to contest its highest-ever number of Lok Sabha seats.
In his absence, the party stares at uncertainty as many of its other senior leaders are either in jail or in political obscurity.
The BJP, which rules the Centre, is in power in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and is all set to get Madhya Pradesh back and snatch Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress after today's vote count.
The provisions exempt farmers from attachment of land up to 2.5 acres and provide for prevention of hoarding and black marketing of agricultural produce.
It's obvious to all that the Congress is overestimating its success and the BJP is underestimating the people's message delivered through the ballot box, notes Sheela Bhatt.
Despite the upbeat statement, the party is expected to reflect on what caused the sharp fall in its numbers. It is expected to win about 240 seats against the 303 it had won in 2019.
'Two years ago I told Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi that we have traitors in the Congress.'
The party hopes that the multiple road projects, schools, canals, and water projects which have come up in the Meo-Muslim-dominated area will be able to sway the votes in its favour.
'One needs to understand what kind of means the BJP use to bring other party leaders in their party.' 'They are unscrupulous politicians and money plays an important role.'
In four seats in the coming Rajasthan assembly polls, relatives have been pitted against each other, which includes a husband contesting his wife and nieces up against their uncles.
Chautala told reporters that his party believed the alliance was necessary for stability in Haryana.
Union Minister of State Kailash Chaudhary was among the first to cast his vote, exercising his franchise in Balotra.
In view of the farmers' protest and march to Parliament, the Delhi police started preparations to check the advancing farmers' march beforehand, an officer said.
A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh man, Manohar Lal Khattar toiled on the ground to build the organisation for last four decades till he was handpicked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lead the first Bharatiya Janata Party government in Haryana.
Yadav, who hails from Mahendergarh district, joined the JJP in New Delhi in the presence of its leader Chautala.
Rajasthan is all set to vote on Saturday to elect members of a new assembly with the Bharatiya Janata Party aiming to unseat the ruling Congress, which is fighting hard to change the trend of alternate governments in the state.
Hundreds of fellow-grapplers, coaches and officials, who have assembled for the nationals, were stunned when news trickled in that Nisha Dahiya had been shot to death outside an academy in Sonipat.
Manohar Lal Khattar is a low profile Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader who is known for his quiet work on the field and in the BJP that has earned him the reputation of a tough task master with a no-nonsense approach.
The Congress has appointed observers to coordinate meetings of its legislature party in four states where assembly election results will be declared on Sunday.
"I want to clarify one thing that the BJP is not going to take the support of Kanda," he told reporters in Chandigarh.
Political observers feel that the outcome of the elections weighs in favour of the BJP which had won a massive mandate in the Lok Sabha elections, held earlier this year.
Six Himachal Pradesh Congress MLAs who voted against party nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the Rajya Sabha elections, along with three Independent lawmakers, have shifted to a hotel in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Uttarakhand amid an ongoing rebellion against Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.
The BJP retained power in MP in the November 17 polls emphatically winning 163 seats in the 230-member assembly, leaving the Congress a distant second with 66 seats.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Cow vigilante Monu Manesar, who was booked by Rajasthan Police for the murder of two Muslim men in February and is also accused of inciting communal hatred in home state Haryana, was arrested Tuesday, officials said.
The renaming of Mewat comes within weeks of an RSS-supported think tank issuing a 'study' about the growing population of Muslims in the Mewat region.
In India elections are never fought in a straight line. It's fought on many issues, at many levels, with multiple emotions and with a bit of good luck, too. Sheela Bhatt reports from Rajasthan.
The arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Thursday night could not have come at a worse time for the Aam Aadmi Party, which is already grappling with the absence of its top leadership from action.
A member of the 1983 cricket World Cup-winning squad, Azad was suspended from the Bharatiya Janata Party for openly targeting the then Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over alleged irregularities and corruption in the Delhi and District Cricket Association in December 2015. He joined the Congress in 2018.
All 41 candidates from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Telangana were elected unopposed on Friday after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.
The poll of polls brought out by the NDA gave the BJP and the Congress 66 and 14 seats respectively in Haryana, and 211 and 64 for the saffron alliance and the Congress-NCP in Maharashtra.
There will be a complete ban on gathering, processions or rallies and entry of tractor trolleys carrying people in the national capital as the Delhi Police has imposed Section 144 for a month in the view of intended widespread tension and 'social unrest' due to the farmers' 'Delhi Chalo March' on Tuesday.
Since 2018, the BJP has failed to win a majority in any of the state polls. It lost power in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in 2018 followed by Maharashtra and Jharkhand. The party managed to form government in Karnataka by winning over opposition MLAs and in Haryana by allying with a regional party.
Some 92 Khaps, a highly influential self-styled caste councils, in Haryana hold the key to the outcome of Assembly polls even though Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to them ahead of hustings.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday described as 'historic results' the electoral victory in Haryana and Maharashtra and said it was a matter of immense happiness and pride for the Bharatiya Janata Party.
12 of the 20 MPs with the highest winning margins in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls have not been re-nominated by their parties for the 2024 general elections.
Lok Sabha elections result of 2019 tells us the Modi wave has only consolidated, instead of waning.
After his party lost power in Haryana in the 2014 polls, the 72-year-old satrap had nothing going in his favour.
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