According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Communist Party of India-Marxist's acting state secretary and Left Democratic Front (LDF) convener A Vijayaraghavan on Monday said that the Kerala government will have a 21-member cabinet.
The national award-winning actor had organised a mass Vishu kaineettam campaign earlier this week in Thrissur, where he unsuccessfully contested in the last assembly and Lok Sabha polls.
A defeat in Assam would be bad news for the Congress which is in power in Meghalaya, Mizoram and Manipur.
Sharing his experience of the yatra so far, the Congress leader said he felt sad while talking to farmers, youth, and tribals.
Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah will on Monday launch a 15-day march in Kerala to target the state's Communist Party of India-Marxist government with the BJP accusing the Left party of being on a "killing spree" against its workers.
The People's Democratic Party of Abdul Nasser Madhani will work for the success of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front in the coming Assembly elections in Kerala.
. Congress, on a high after clinching a deal with breakaway leader K Karunakaran's outfit, is contesting in 77 assembly segments, 17 less from last elections.
In fresh escalation of political violence in poll-bound Kerala, a 28-year-old Youth Congress worker was hacked to death allegedly by Democratic Youth Federation of India workers at Evoor in Alapuzha on Tuesday even as the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India - Marxist workers clashed in Thiruvananthapuram district leaving at least 30 injured.
There are 13 new faces, including two women, in the cabinet. Five ministers had held positions in previous LDF ministries.
While the term of 288-member Maharashtra assembly ends on November 9, that of the 90-member Haryana assembly expires on November 2.
'Whatever the BJP tries to do, they will not be able to make a big mark in Kerala.'
The rival fronts were locked in a fierce combat in most of the constituencies making it a close contest in the state, which had alternately voted for the LDF and UDF every five years and where even a small swing could be decisive.
The BJP wants to win a state where it has been out of power for 15 years. The Congress wants to make its mark in a state where it has been a bit player for nearly 30 years. And the BSP wants to recapture power it lost 5 years ago.
Two state ministers have also come out in the open to demand a detailed assessment by the top leadership.
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.
Shah also said Kerala used to be known for development, literacy and for promoting tourism, but "with the ruling LDF and opposition UDF coming to power alternately has resulted in making the state a platform for political violence."
'I do not want to get into the number game. This time, the BJP will get unprecedented seats and vote percentage in Gujarat.'
The home minister said the guilty will be brought to book.
Coming out clear on its intent to go it alone in Puducherry, the AIADMK released its candidates list for all the 30 constituencies for the May 16 assembly polls.
Women's rights activists and political leaders -- cutting across party lines -- have voiced concern against the murder, which they believe was a first of its kind in the state for the sheer brutality of the crime.
Sources said senior leaders of the party have been told to reach out to other leaders of the alliance and talks with some parties have begun.
Maharashtra Opposition leader Ajit Pawar, who belongs to Nationalist Congress Party, on Saturday said Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) are trustworthy and the system cannot be manipulated by a single person.
A dominant force in the country's politics for decades, the grand old party's free fall continued as it lost Punjab to AAP and finished with just two seats out of 403 in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.
Governments in most of the world saw their approval ratings dip as they struggled to contain the raging virus, which hit economy hard everywhere, but Indian politics followed a different script, with the outgoing year marking further shrinking of a rudderless Congress while the ruling BJP soared riding on Modi's enduring appeal.
The plea had also sought to bar the BJP and its leaders from using the "Jai Shri Ram" slogan during the poll campaign in the state.
An average of nearly 78 per cent voters exercised their franchise to elect new assemblies in the key southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala and the Union territory of Puducherry on Wednesday.
The former IAS officer was sworn-in as Minister of State (Independent Charge) of Tourism; and Minister of State in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
Public money 'looted' through an 'unholy nexus' between United Progressive Alliance politicians and bureaucrats is being used for the April 13 assembly elections in Kerala, alleged Communist Party of India-Marxist General Secretary Prakash Karat on Saturday.
The chief minister, who reached the hospital amid protest by Democratic Youth Federation of India activists alleging lapses in the probe, consoled the mother of the victim and said steps would be taken to provide a government job to the victim's sister to support her family.
The reshuffle in the Union Cabinet, carried out on Wednesday, appears to have some focus on assembly election-bound states like Kerala and Uttar Pradesh.
Emerging from a meeting with Banerjee at the state secretariat, Yadav said that the first priority of his party was to stop the Bharatiya Janata Party's progress in West Bengal.
There was no move to advance elections to the assembly in Kerala which would be held in the mid-May next year, Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi said on Tuesday.
The appointments holds significance as a large number of senior leaders, who had no organisational post currently, have now been given new responsibilities.
Looks like all political parties have thrown caution to the winds where 33 per cent reservation for women is concerned. Take the examples of Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal which recently went to polls.
Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday dismissed as wrong the allegations that two nuns belonging to a Kerala-based congregation were "attacked" during a train journey via Uttar Pradesh recently and alleged that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was "making false statements" on the issue.
Modi's BJP has promised more revdis or freebies for these assembly elections than ever before, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
With mercury level soaring, Kerala is likely to face drought-like situation amid fears of drinking water scarcity and power crisis in the poll-bound state as water bodies are fast drying up.
A meeting of opposition leaders from many anti-Bharatiya Janata Party parties, most of them regional forces, hosted by the veteran leader and Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Tuesday is being seen by political pundits as a beginning of an exercise by them to join forces to put up a more cohesive challenge to the saffron party.
The stage is now set for the first substantial round of polling in the Lok Sabha elections on Thursday, involving nearly 11 crore voters in 92 seats spread across 11 states, including Delhi and the national capital region and the riot-hit Muzaffarnagar.
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