Kerala has never witnessed such a close call in assembly elections in its history, as it did this year. It was indeed a photo finish between the Congress-led United Democratic Front and the Communist party of India-Marxist led Left Democratic Front today. It was like a thrilling Twenty20 match with one batsman pitching in with a spectacular performance. The LDF has managed to win as many as 68 seats, against 72 of the UDF, only because of the goodwill of V S Achuthanandan.
'Those who are starving need not go to watch the match'
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday refuted the Congress charge as 'baseless' that her party had not fielded a candidate against Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan in the April 13 assembly elections as part of a secret pact with the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist.
With Malayalis immune to Modi's charms, the Pradhan Sevak must be quite unhappy today, surmises Dominic Xavier.
Besides Defence Minister Singh (Lucknow), Minister of Women and Child Development Irani (Amethi), those in the fray are Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishor (Mohanlalganj) and Minister of State of Consumer Affairs Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur).
He said Priyanka could have been a wonderful candidate in Varanasi as well, especially looking at how good the Congress candidate did against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal (94) became the country's oldest candidate to fight elections as he filed his nomination papers from Lambi on Monday.
The None of the Above option, like previous polls, had few takers in the assembly elections to West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry.
The party has fielded Parvati Das for the by-election to the Bageshwar assembly seat in Uttarakhand and Lijinlal G for the Puthuppally assembly seat in Kerala.
The Trinamool Congress registered a decisive victory in West Bengal on Sunday, contrary to results of most exit polls which predicted a tight race between the BJP and the TMC with an edge to the Mamata Banerjee-led party.
Celebrities and politicians made a beeline for polling stations in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, as both the states go to the polls on Monday.
'The path of militant Hindutva that the BJP's national leadership chose as its main electoral plank literally dug the grave for the party in Kerala,' says M K Bhadrakumar.
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.
This is a brief background of the new Cabinet Ministers.
Azad, who is a prominent member of the group of 23 leaders who had demanded organisational overhaul in the Congress, said that for the next two months the party is the top priority.
The party was trounced in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and is now left with only Himachal Pradesh in the north. It is ruling in only three states on its own and is in power in Bihar and Jharkhand as a junior partner in alliance with regional parties.
Communist Party of India-Marxist Polit Bureau member Pinarayi Vijayan will be the next Chief Minister of Kerala.
The Centre has denied political clearance to Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann for his visit to Paris to support the Indian Hockey team at the Olympic Games, an official source said on Saturday.
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Though electoral verdicts have historically been accepted, even though grudgingly, by all parties, there has been a sharper edge to the questions being raised by Opposition parties this time over the polling process, including the Election Commission.
While 67 per cent of India's population is 39 years old or younger, states are governed by chief ministers who are 70 or older.
The CPI-M's allegations were termed a political conspiracy by the opposition Congress which accused the Left party of stooping low to target its political opponents.
In four years, the state has had to battle cyclones, two floods, and two epidemiological disasters. If people bring Pinarayi Vijayan back to power, he must have done something right, obsevers Aditi Phadnis.
Modi hit out at the Congress for its president Mallikarjun Kharge's attempt to play down his party's poor show in the polls by describing it as "small state elections".
By keeping the Sanatana Dharma row alive and adding the Ayodhya temple consecration scheduled for January 22 and adding the free darshan promise from four polled states to the entire country, the BJP may have a self-fulfilling concoction, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist on Monday took a veiled dig at the Congress by asking it to safeguard its newly elected Karnataka MLAs from being poached by the Bharatiya Janata Party as was allegedly done by the saffron party in Goa amidst the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
There are 64 vacancies in the legislative assemblies of various states and one in Lok Sabha.
This is the first time that third gender figures in the state electoral roll.
Over the last five days, Modi visited all of south, held roadshows, made an aggressive bid for his party, and took on the rivals with full gusto, especially the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi in Telangana that was in power for 10 years.
'They have been pursuing their agenda of bulldozing everything and everybody on their way.' 'They suddenly see Rahul Gandhi standing in front of them without fear and fighting against them aggressively.' 'He doesn't show any compromise in his attitude towards fascism.'
Stalin said one cannot and should not decide the mood of the entire country based on the results of one state elections.
The CPI-M leader was the chief minister of the state from 2000 to 2011.
The IUML leadership viewed the actions of Khader, a two-time legislator, as serious despite his explanation that it was not a meeting of the RSS, but only a cultural event.
Is there more than meets the eye to Kitex Garments, the world's second-largest children's garment producer, abandoning Kerala for Telangana?
The Delhi high court on Thursday sought response of the Centre and the Election Commission on a plea seeking to ensure that masks are worn mandatorily by everyone involved in poll campaigns during the ongoing elections in various states and union territories.
Every passing day featuring parties within the INDIA alliance sniping at each other at state level is bad publicity for the alliance particularly given the proximity of the 2024 general elections, asserts Shyam G Menon.
A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana agreed to hear next week the EC's plea after senior advocate Vikas Singh submitted a large number of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail machines (VVPATs) are still being preserved and need to be released.
The Kerala government on Friday decided to recommend a judicial inquiry against central probe agencies, including the Enforcement Directorate, which are investigating the gold and dollar smuggling cases.
In the event that like in the 17th Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi again gets locked out of the House, the Congress needs a second-in-command who will keep the momentum going inside Parliament, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
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