Despite Gaikward's brilliance, Maharashtra could not qualify for the knockout stages of the competition.
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said the assemble elections results were "a setback".
Eminent jurist Ram Jethmalani on Sunday asserted that Indian Parliament "is not sovereign" for its decisions can be challenged in court, as he hit out at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for criticising the Supreme Court verdict to scrap NJAC Act on appointment of higher judiciary.
He laid stress on workers' connection with the ground and cited his own example when he was party in-charge for various assembly elections in the past.
Just as the superstars of Indian cricket only play IPL and international fixtures and ignore the Ranji and Mushtaq Ali trophies in domestic cricket, Narendra Modi should play a very limited role in state assembly elections, argues Sudhir Bisht.
The third phase of Lok Sabha elections scheduled for Tuesday will see the maximum number of seats going to the polls in a single phase -- 117 across 15 states and Union Territories. It will also be a test for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which will aim to defend the maximum number of seats at 62. This time the BJP will be tested in its bastion Gujarat -- where polling will be held for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state -- apart from Karanataka, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, where the party had done well in 2014. Here are some of the big political leaders' who await their fate on Tuesday.
'If the chief minister says there are areas in her home state where she cannot enter, where has she driven the state to!'
The Marxists are heading for their worst debacle in many elections. How will May 16, 2014 affect India's Communists? T V R Shenoy surveys the landscape.
This is the first time that Gandhi has raised an issue in the 17th Lok Sabha
The West Bengal on Thursday became the sixth state to pass a resolution against the three contentious farm laws enacted by the Centre, even as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party staged a walkout from the assembly amid 'Jai Shri Ram' slogans.
Seeking to defend its leadership from the attack by its veterans, the BJP said the "healthy precedent" of collective responsibility for poll defeats was set by Vajpayee and Advani.
Rahul said his party's soon-to-be released manifesto will reflect the people's voice and not just one man's view.
'Someone who has lost a dear one to Covid; that person is not going to forget and will not vote for the BJP.'
The Congress chief will also be contesting from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.
The Left's decline will adversely change the complexion of Indian politics by pushing its centre of gravity further to the right. This would be tragic, says Praful Bidwai.
It is increasingly clear that for the BJP to try and establish itself as an electoral force in Tamil Nadu, the party has to come out of the old Brahminical mould, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Modi is given a longer leash by his fans than any other leader of our time.' 'Will he be able to continue putting himself above the fray if other scandals continue to emerge in his term? No, the erosion will inevitably come, given the awful state of this country. But for now, he has managed to shine through a period that would have tarnished any other leader but him.'
'This survey, done on the basis of feedback from BJP-RSS workers at the booth level, has given Narendra Modi the confidence to start packing his bags in Gandhinagar. on Tuesday, he has done photo shoots with his colleagues and staff.' Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com presents the Sangh Parivar's assessment of how many seats the BJP will win in this election.
'The cadres who die for the party are from the backward and scheduled caste communities while the leaders and those who enjoy power are from the forward community.' 'When this is the reality, who will stay with them?'
The Congress candidate from Thiruvanathapuram said that the Centre has ignored the concerns and aspirations of southern states and that Rahul Gandhi's decision to contest from the south has made a very effective outreach.
The PM name is to be decided only after the Lok Sabha results, a top opposition leader said.
The seats identified are from Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the Northeast.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist on Monday ruled out any change in leadership following the poll debacle in West Bengal and Kerala as top leaders met in New Delhi to analyse what went wrong for the party in the assembly elections.
Most exit polls on Sunday forecast another term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with some of them projecting that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance will get more than 300 seats to comfortably cross the majority mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha.
'He always had a choice to resign and walk toward the sunset in protest.' 'Instead, he chose to be a mute witness to one of the most sordid chapters of India's parliamentary history when MPs were bought up like cattle to steer the nuclear deal through,' says M K Bhadrakumar.
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.
It looks as if competing political parties in Tamil Nadu have not grasped the full impact and import of a sizable section of voters possibly staying away from voting -- voters, supposedly with a predictable polling pattern -- owing to the Covid second wave and more so, how it could affect the outcome in individual constituencies and even booths, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Even if the anti-Modi 'Mahagatbandhan' gets a majority there is simply no way that Nitish Kumar can ensure even a stable government, leave alone a good -- clean, development-oriented -- government,' argues T V R Shenoy.
The Delhi government and a section of parents pitching for its cancellation amid the pandemic and others favouring holding it at a later period.
Former India captain Sourav Ganguly will take over as the 39th BCCI president on Wednesday, but he will have a curtailed tenure of around nine months as he would need to demit office by the end of July, next year as per the provisions of new constitutions, which makes 'Cooling Off' period mandatory after six years in office.
Unlike the LDF and NDA nominees who are at ground zero and campaigning hard every day, the Congress candidate's campaign is undertaken in absentia, dependent on an army of local and imported from the rest of Kerala Congresswomen and men.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that Mamamta is busy fighting with the poll panel instead of taking on political parties.
Referring to party's win in Assam and rise in its vote share in Kerala and West Bengal, and 'unequivocal rejection' of the Congress by voters in the recent assembly polls in five states, it said the National Executive notes with 'pleasure' that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for 'Congress-mukt Bharat' has today become a 'people's mission'.
India is in the midst of its biggest crisis since Independence. It is a national emergency and begs to be dealt with. Politics can wait. Lives need to be saved. We need to vaccinate India at a pace faster than any country in the world, asserts Ramesh Menon.
What we have in the Congress is a useful glue to hold a non-cultural, unified Opposition together. That is the sacrifice the Congress must be willing to live with if showing the BJP the door is what the collective Opposition wants, observes Shyam G Menon.
32 years ago, CPI-M activists hacked both the legs of Sadanandan Master, a former party member who has moved over to the RSS. Master learnt to walk using prosthetic legs and rebuilt his life. Today he is the BJP candidate highly-sensitive Koothuparamba constituency of Kannur. He told Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com his story.
'The story of how Modi won a re-election in the face of severe agrarian crisis, mounting unemployment, looming economic crisis, is the story of how the power of the message can be put to devastating effect in the hands of a strong leader,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
As counting is on in the five states - Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Assam and West Bengal -- here's a look at where the heavyweights stand.
At the best of times, ticket distribution in India's political parties is a tough business. The post-election result has to be judged, and judged correctly. It's an impossible job in view of the 814 million voters for whom the party bigwigs have to perform. Sheela Bhatt presents this light-hearted assessment of what's top of the mind for our political heavyweights.
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