One hundred and thirty-three candidates will try their luck from the constituencies falling under the districts of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura.
No one from the Gandhi family was present at the All India Congress Committee headquarters when the leaders filed their nominations for the election.
Gehlot told Congress MLAs that they will be asked to come to New Delhi if he decides to file his nomination.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar wants the Modi government and BJP to reap the profit of the surgical strikes. But electoral history suggests a political party's ability to exploit military successes for poll gains has a mixed record.
'If you want to really grow, it has to be geometric progression like it happened at the Centre or Haryana or Tripura, where you made a quantum jump.' 'This is possible in Kerala provided we present a better alternative with a great leadership, but the current leadership is busy fixing each other.'
The elections in the five states, the first major exercise since the UPA coalition government came to power 20 months back, will start on April 3 and end on May 8.
The moot point is if a re-energised Jayalalitha will order snap polls when the Opposition is in disarray and her own political starts are on the rise, says N Nathiya Moorthy.
The plea filed by advocate Ashok Pandey asked whether the conviction of an accused can be stayed by the court of appeal and if, based on it, a Lok Sabha member's disqualification can be revoked.
The Madras high court on Monday came down hard on the Election Commission and called it the "the most irresponsible institution" for the alleged spread of the second wave of Covid-19 in the country.
In the five years in politics Priyanka Gandhi has undeniably emerged as a thorn in the BJP flesh, notes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. It is time that this thorn is twisted a wee bit more when the elections have become far more uncertain than what it was when the Election Commission announced the poll schedule.
Will it be a cakewalk for Indian Union Muslim League state unit general secretary P K Kunhalikutty in the newly-carved Vengara assembly segment in Kerala's Muslim heartland Malappuram? If the initial trends are any indication, he is expected to have a smooth sailing in the April 13 polls, putting behind his upset defeat from adjacent Kuttippuram in 2006.
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
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.
While Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has made his national ambitions amply clear, even rechristening his party to aid the process, his Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin insists he is already in the national scene and used his birthday rally on March 1 to not only strongly pitch for the Congress as a force to reckon with in the efforts to dislodge the Narendra Modi-led dispensation at the Centre, but also sought to shoot down the prospects of a Third Front.
There are also views within a section of the party that a turnaround in Uttar Pradesh is possible only if either of the Gandhis -- Priyanka or Rahul -- takes the lead in the state polls.
The Congress MP from Sivaganga also slammed the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance and said the people of Tamil Nadu do not want a government which has any "stain, scent or shadow" of the BJP as its 'Hindi-Hindutva' agenda "irritates" them.
However, the AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh said the SC committee has limited terms of reference and 'cannot bring out the deep nexus between' the prime minister and the billionaire businessman.
While the Congress was a unifying force, the Left front was divisive, he said adding "wherever we go, we unify everybody. We are a unifying force. Wherever we go we identify everybody and unite them and make them strong".
Will acting LG Soundararajan invite N Rangaswamy to form a government or recommend President's rule, so close to the assembly election, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
There are "contradictions" in the approach of the two parties in fighting BJP and there is no question of an alliance with the ruling TMC in Bengal as it has inflicted atrocities on grassroot level CPI (M) workers, he said.
Given the politics behind it all, one possibility is for binding the governor to act according to the decisions of the state government and clarifying his position vis a vis bills and resolutions passed by the state assembly -- or, re-enacted if returned, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The SP hopes to rope in Telugu Desam Party, Dravida Munnetra Kazagam and the Nationalist Congress Party in the proposed front.
Gandhi, however, acknowledged that his opinion is different from that of his party on the "emotional issue" after the Supreme Court last month lifted the ban on entry of women of menstrual age to the hilltop shrine of Lord Ayyappa in Kerala.
Senior Janata Dal-United leader Dhananjay Singh pitched for Opposition unity ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and said party workers in Uttar Pradesh want Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to contest the elections from the state's Phulpur constituency.
Stalin said one cannot and should not decide the mood of the entire country based on the results of one state elections.
Rajasekharan resigned from the post as he is keen on contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket from Kerala.
Party leaders are being forced to bite the tongue while answering queries on cut money and alleged arrogance of local TMC leaders.
'The AIADMK has no Number Two, frankly it does not even have a Number Hundred and Two. There is the Numero Uno, and there is everybody else -- a point that was made very clear when Jayalalithaa made her ministers take the oath of office in unison on May 23. What, after all, was the point of having them do so individually when they lack individuality?'
The party president also said that India's self-confidence, pride and scale of ambition have grown manifold in three years.
His immediate challenge is the February 8 Delhi assembly polls followed by year-end elections in Bihar. However, his big test would be the next year's assembly polls in West Bengal, a state where the BJP has emerged as a strong challenger to Mamata Banerjee-headed TMC.
Missed out on the political buzz in the poll-bound states of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry? Here's your daily election dope
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said the assemble elections results were "a setback".
The political rhetoric of Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan was not going to help the ruling Left Democratic Front in its 'losing battle' for the assembly polls as people of Kerala were keen on a change of rule, senior Congress leader Oommen Chandy said on Monday.
Not only the BJP but key bureaucrats are also known to have hinted to the top leadership of the need to expand the Cabinet.
Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is coordinating the meeting. He has invited the leaders of all the non-BJP parties.
Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party has emerged as the third largest party in the Rajya Sabha, relegating the CPI(M) to fourth position in yet another bad news for Marxists ahead of the Assembly polls in West Bengal and Kerala.
'The BJP has everything to lose if it performs poorly in UP. It dreads a repeat of Bihar,' says Rajeev Sharma.
Union minister RCP Singh, who was recently denied another term in the Rajya Sabha by the Janata Dal-United he formerly headed, should "heed the message" and resign from the cabinet, a key political aide of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has said.
Why weren't the chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra and Telangana -- all of which have borders with Karnataka -- not invited to Saturday's swearing-in ceremony, asks Shyam G Menon.
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