After a series of desertions in the election year, the ruling Congress in Haryana may face another jolt as its senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP Birender Singh, who has openly revolted against the chief minister, appears set to dump the party and join the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Haryana Police lobbed tear gas shells at farmers from Punjab at Shambhu border between the two states as thousands of protesters stayed put there on Wednesday, the second day of their 'Delhi Chalo' march.
The Congress on Wednesday attacked the government over the dip in vaccination numbers after a record high earlier this week with former party chief Rahul Gandhi saying the country is not safe unless vaccination is done on a large scale but sadly the government is "unable to move beyond a PR event".
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday questioned the ED slapping a money laundering case against him in the MUDA 'scam' and once again ruled out his resignation over the issue.
'Leave aside the negative fallouts of phraseology like 'urban Naxals' and 'terrorists', both the BJP and the Congress have to re-discover themselves in the context of the 2024 election results, including those of the upcoming ones for Maharashtra and Jharkhand,' observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'They refuse to be transparent. They refuse to be accountable.'
Congress leaders are now in a "wait and watch" mode over the possible ripple effect of Punjab developments in faction-ridden Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the only two states other than Punjab where the party is in power on its own.
Former Haryana Congress leader Kuldeep Bishnoi joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday along with his wife Renuka Bishnoi here in the presence of senior party leaders, including state Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
Modi referred to the Lok Sabha polls as a "Kurukshetra (battle)" in which "there is development on one hand and 'vote jihad' on the other".
'Undeniably, Modi's position has stabilised and he has staged a comeback of sorts from the weeks after the Lok Sabha results.' 'Coalition partners are likely to be more tolerant of Modi... The forthcoming elections in Delhi and Bihar will determine whether this continues or not.' 'To win Delhi and Bihar, Modi will have to work in conjunction with the RSS.' 'However, because of the 'truce' that has been worked out within the Sangh Parivar, Modi will have to be more consultative than he has been in the past ten years,' reveals Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Kumar also hinted that the Maharashtra elections could be held after Diwali.
If Meena resigns, it is likely to put pressure on other ministers whose areas also saw poor performance in the general elections.
Shah also challenged the Congress to implement its Lok Sabha election promise of providing Rs 8500 monthly to women in states ruled by the party.
In Maharashtra, where the 'Mahayuti' alliance of BJP, Shiv Sena and smaller parties is against the 'Maha-agadhi' led by the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party whereas the ruling BJP is locked in a contest with the opposition Congress and the fledgling Jannayak Janata Party for the 90 assembly seats in Haryana.
You feel sad when you see Sonia reading speeches prepared by Congress veterans like Moti Lal Vohra and Digvijay Singh. She apparently has no personal feelings for the country and its people.
Several BJP-backed state governments have unveiled schemes targeting the poor, women, farmers and students, following the party's setback in the Lok Sabha polls.
'People in Punjab put their opinion very strongly there and it looks like they will fight. But, there is nothing like that, and they find solutions to their problems'
Manohar Lal Khattar took oath as Haryana chief minister for the second time on Sunday and will lead the Bharatiya Janata Party-Jannayak Janta Party coalition government in the state. JJP leader Dushyant Chautala took oath as the deputy chief minister.
With several Congress leaders pushing for Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's removal, the Congress is finding it difficult to keep its flock together in the poll-bound state. Rediff.com contributor Anita Katyal reports.
Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had earlier admitted that the choice of words by Ayush Sinha, a 2018-batch IAS officer, was wrong but had defended the police action.
Much drama is likely to continue in the coming year, within the Sangh Parivar as well as involving the Opposition parties and, of course the BJP's allies, predicts Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The Congress has 40 MLAs while the BJP has 25 in the 68-member state assembly. The remaining three seats are held by independents.
A voter turnout of 10.82 per cent was recorded till 9 am on Saturday in 58 constituencies in six states and two Union territories where polling is underway in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
From the morning itself, Congress MLAs made a beeline to Cecil Hotel in Shimla where the party's central observers -- Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda -- were staying.
The only occasion when the BJP had 100 seats in the Upper House was in 2022.
Kicking off his two-day Haryana roadshow in Faridabad, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday slammed the Congress and BJP, saying gas prices will "increase manifold" if the two parties come to power.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's unexpected announcement to resign after two days kicked up a strong buzz on Sunday over the names of his wife Sunita and his ministers Atishi and Gopal Rai as his possible replacement.
Sunita Kejriwal is slowly emerging out of the shadows to assume a bigger role to give a fillip to the AAP's campaigning which has been affected by the chief minister's arrest in a money laundering case in March.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday named 72 more candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, including Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal and Anurag Singh Thakur, and former chief ministers Manohar Lal Khattar, Trivendra Singh Rawat and Basavaraj Bommai.
BKU leader Rakesh Tikait said they planned to meet President Droupadi Murmu and will hold another mahapanchayat in Haryana's Kurukshetra on Friday to discuss the next steps in the agitation.
The Delhi chief minister also asked people to vote in the coming Lok Sabha polls to elect an MP, not the prime minister, saying the MP would "work for you during tough times".
"There is a need for a name change. What did Ravenshaw, after whom the university is named, do during the famine," the minister had asked,
The returnees also included three independent MLAs, who too had landed in Panchkula on Tuesday after casting their votes in the Rajya Sabha election.
It appears that the party has some kind of political death wish, observe Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
Police said around half-a-dozen dumper trucks and some machines were buried under the debris caused by the landslide which occurred around 9 am in Tosham block.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Nagrota MLA Devender Singh Rana, brother of Union minister Jitendra Singh, died on Thursday at a private hospital in Haryana's Faridabad. He was 59.
Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said like other states, the BJP started the game of using money power, power of the government and muscle power to destabilise the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh but has failed.
Delhi and Punjab are ruled by the AAP and these are the only two states that have free electricity supply, he said.
The NTA denied any irregularities and said the changes made in the NCERT textbooks and grace marks for losing time at the examination centres were some of the reasons behind the students scoring higher marks.
Singh also defended Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath over the latter's comments on 'Hindu Rashtra.'
