What provoked Ashok Gehlot's belligerence was Sachin Pilot's participation in the Bharat Jodo Yatra with Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi in Madhya Pradesh. Gehlot was also aware that Rajasthan assembly Speaker C P Joshi had met Rahul in Maharashtra.
"NCP president Sharad Pawar, Loktantrik Janata Dal president Sharad Yadav, DMK chief MK Stalin, Bihar's former deputy chief minister and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, SP president Akhilesh Yadav, BSP chief Mayawati and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal among other opposition leaders will attend the oath-taking ceremony in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh on December 17," said well-placed sources.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday shared stage with the leaders of the Left Front
Modi said that some critics described Tripura as 'a small state with only two Lok Sabha seats' to downplay the BJP's win.
Allotting seven seats to smaller allies, AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa on Monday released the list naming candidates for the rest of 227 seats for which she held interviews for ticket aspirants from across Tamil Nadu in the past two weeks.
Senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor, in the race for the post of Congress president, not only possess contrasting demeanour but have had an equally disparate political journey.
CPI-M veteran Pinarayi Vijayan was elected its Parliamentary party leader, paving the way for his successive stint as chief minister of Kerala.
In an open letter, Banerjee said the COVID warriors, including police, home guards, civil defence volunteers, correctional home and disaster management employees, will be administered the vaccine on a priority basis.
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.
At its Jaipur meeting, the BJP will focus on this year's assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh while the Congress's Chintan Shivir in Udaipur will discuss how it can resurrect itself.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra, Ramesh said, has been a "real booster dose" for the public relationship of the Congress.
It said that Congress' strategy to pursue 'fringe and disruptive politics' in Parliament was only for political reasons and opposition to the development agenda of the BJP government, which has been rejected by the people in the four large states of Assam, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala.
Having focussed excessively on the Congress, and continuously drawing a Modi-Rahul parallel as if it were the sole selling point, the BJP has lost sight of the regional parties that are seeking to take the centre-stage, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Never before in the history of the Republic has an election in the state mattered so much as it does now, observes Virendra Kapoor.
The great Indian election is over and now the wait for the results is shrinking with every passing moment. Though exit polls hint at a cakewalk for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his National Democratic Alliance, there are some battles which will be keenly observed on the result day.
Congress leaders feel party President Sonia Gandhi is withdrawing from centre-stage, but without her son filling that void, it could be continued chaos for her party.
Words and actions like those of R N Ravi and a vocal section of the state BJP have only added to Tamil fears and suspicions, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
There are lessons for the Congress to learn from the Karnataka elections of how burying the hatchet among top leaders and not washing dirty linen in public can help, says Ramesh Menon.
In a move that is bound to generate controversy, the election expenditure for both Parliamentary and assembly constituencies is likely to jump by one-and-a-half times before the coming Lok Sabha polls. Anita Katyal reports
Singh, a former Punjab chief minister and a sitting MP, at the same time said that Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi can step into Sonia's shoes if she feels that time has come for her to go and that she is "tired" of being at the helm of the party since 1997.
'The Congress's allies won't be left behind in looking out for their own interests. Some will demand a bigger share of the ministerial or electoral pie, others will simply jump ship,' says T V R Shenoy.
Away from the distraction of its new high-profile politics, Wayanad's worries seemed very down to earth, discovers Shyam G Menon.
'The BJP will not be able to create dictatorship of the kind it is perhaps dreaming of.' 'We have Bengal as the biggest example.'
To help the country emerge as a true welfare State, political parties must put the country's interests first before strategising to win elections and short-term goals, argues Ramesh Menon.
For a party that has adopted the successful social re-engineering model from Gujarat, Rajasthan and across the rest of the 'Hindi belt' over the past decades, Tamil Nadu continues to remain a tricky customer, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam on Monday claimed its activists have filed more than 1,000 complaints against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi at various police stations in the state over his tweets that left the Northeast out of India's geographical expanse while he talked about the country's unity.
The new Council of Ministers has representation from almost all the states, except Andhra Pradesh and the north-eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tripura.
'If Pinarayi Vijayan gets another term, Kerala will be a state where everybody has a house.'
State after state has imposed an alcohol ban, and has had to retreat, unable to address the financial and administrative fallout. Are we set for more of this cycle, asks Aditi Phadnis.
The year 2015 was a mixed bag for the Grand Old party --with the performance in Bihar being a consolation while the the National Herald case came back to haunt its leadership.
The Bihar government on Wednesday issued shoot-at-sight orders against troublemakers and made tight security arrangements to ensure violence free polling in 6 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats to be held on Thursday.
The Tamil Nadu chief minister may have opened a Pandora's Box on the religion front with the appointment of qualified non-Brahmin temple priests, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
As results pour in for the four states -- West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam -- and one Union Territory -- Puducherry - here's a glimpse at the leaders who are trailing and those who are leading.
The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea seeking stay on further sale of electoral bonds ahead of assembly elections.
It will be the year of preparation for the electoral test in Uttar Pradesh, due in 2022. But before that, the West Bengal Assembly election will set the mood for the rest of 2021.
While Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has been made in charge of Uttar Pradesh, Nath will look after Punjab and Haryana, party General Secretary Janaradan Dwivedi said.
'When an individual becomes authoritarian, you can overthrow the individual easily. 'When the system becomes authoritarian, whoever challenges the system will be called a criminal or an anti-national.'
The saffron party is assured of victory in eight of the ten seats in UP going by its dominant numbers in the state assembly.
The Tamil Nadu Toddy Movement had met both Chief Minister Palaniswami and Stalin to seek their intervention in lifting the ban on toddy-tapping and had submitted petitions, but there it remained. So the matter is being taken to the people's court.
The Tamil Nadu voter may not be in the mood to test new talent, not when the state and the people are going through unprecedented and unanticipated crises, of which coronavirus is only the first. All of it boils down to an election between the ruling AIADMK and the Opposition DMK next year, with small-timers, had-been parties and promised parties left on the sidelines, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
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