With her various overtures and right noises at the right time, Mamata is once again trying to reshape her image from being a regional leader to one with national appeal and acceptability. After all, the charge of building a Federal Front may also bring to the fore Mamata's chances to become prime minister in 2019.
Efforts like the United National Progressive Alliance are a 'result of some honest efforts but the real third force will come into being only in the post-poll scenario', he said while disagreeing that a third force was already in place. The 75-year old veteran socialist claimed his relationship with Congress leadership was 'never strained' though he was pained by the fact that none in the Congress camp tried to 'acknowledge' his efforts to keep away BJP.
The Bharatiya Janata Party parliamentary party will meet on May 20 to formally elect Narendra Modi as its leader, a formality before his anointment as prime minister.
Rahul asserted that Sheila Dikshit was "highly experienced" to change UP's face.
Coming as it does only months ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Chennai meet could provide the launch pad for a national alternative to the BJP-NDA, and MK Stalin may be given the credit for getting it going, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Earlier, KCR had met West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee as part of efforts to build a non-Congress, non-BJP third front ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The Modi wave has blotched the Congress party's copybook. For the first time since the Lok Sabha was constituted in 1952, the party has failed to secure enough seats to be designated as a parliamentary party, notes A Surya Prakash.
The mandate will help further the development agenda in these states, with good governance and policy reforms taking centrestage
Political leaders bid an emotional goodbye to Vajpayee.
Chandrababu Naidu's latest announcement that the Telugu Desam Party would be a part of the just-conceived "Federal Front", on Thursday took senior party leaders by surprise as it currently maintains a cordial relationship with the Left.
More than two decades after the then Janata Dal disintegrated, six of its constituents merged on Wednesday to form a new party which will be headed by Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister-designate N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and demanded special category status for the residual state.
The opinion polls give the edge to the AAP over the BJP and Congress
Born in 1924, Vajpayee entered politics during the Quit India movement in 1942. He was also the first external affairs minister to deliver a speech in the UN Assembly in Hindi. Vajpayee was elected to Lok Sabha from Lucknow in 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004. He is the first and the only non-Congress leader who completed his full term as prime minister.
'Anti-incumbency, especially in Maharashtra; the BJP's success in creating a new social coalition; and the sheer force of the party's campaign which overwhelmed its opponents,' argues Praful Bidwai, brought the BJP victory in Haryana and Maharashtra, not the Modi effect.
Rashtriya Janata Dal President Lalu Prasad on Monday hit the streets, accusing Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of luring his party MLAs and asserting that nine of the 13 legislators who reportedly broke away have denied parting ways.
And in the midst of it all, Jayalalithaa keeps the guessing game going, on her returning as chief minister and on calling for early assembly polls, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The Modi Model we see now is still the old Gujarat Model.' 'But with an acknowledgement that governing India is more challenging than governing Gujarat,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
For Stalin and the DMK, the declaration was the essence of the commencement of seat-sharing talks with the Congress, and even more, the launch of their combined campaign for the LS polls. That meant the DMK had to send out a message also to the 'minorities' in the state, who had deserted the DMK and very badly at that in the critical, post-Jaya R K Nagar assembly bypolls last year, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
In the absence of the over-arching 'Jaya charisma', EPS has to convince the AIADMK's traditional constituencies, including those in his western districts, that his leadership would stand up against the BJP-led Centre even in a post-poll scenario, a la Jayalalithaa, and would not yield as much as party founder MGR had done, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Prime Ministers Office is upset that the Congress party was deliberately playing up the Saeed-Vaidik meeting in Parliament to detract attention from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with the Chinese president. Rediff.com contributor Renu Mittal reports
Kick-starting her party's Lok Sabha campaign, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said her party would go it alone in the 2014 polls and renewed her call for a federal front of non-Congress and non-Bharatiya Janata Party parties.
It may be just a big coincidence or the ever-changing political climate in the region, but a look at the electoral history of Valsad Lok Sabha seat in South Gujarat clearly reveals that whichever political party has managed to win this constituency has ultimately clinched power in Delhi.
'The Congress will never change its ideology, but to fight this new kind of propaganda politics, we have to prepare ourselves.'
Samajwadi Party president and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav on Friday predicted the rise of the third front to power in the post 2014 Lok Sabha poll scenario.
Because of India's weak fiscal position, the plethora of debt-burdened infrastructure companies and the poor asset quality of public sector banks, economic growth in 2015-16 may be limited to about six per cent, say Shankar Acharya.
With almost 300 seats to the Lok Sabha being dominated by regional outfits, the Congress has added to the list by giving space to more regional forces in the Seema-Andhra and Telangana regions, says Saroj Nagi.
Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav's craving to get the country's top job once again came to the fore on Tuesday, when prominent Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan openly called upon madrasas of the state to strive towards making the Samajwadi Party supremo the next prime minister.
CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury was in Chennai on Saturday and AIADMK sources said Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa could be sounded as convenor for the proposed Third Front. Aditi Phadnis reports
Might use it to counter Opposition campaign on land issue.
Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav behaved entirely in character when he broke ranks with the Congress and backed the Bharatiya Janata Party in the monsoon session, says Aditi Phadnis
Narendra Modi, who steered Bharatiya Janata Party and the National Democratic Alliance to a landslide victory in the Lok Sabha elections, was on Tuesday appointed prime minister, ushering in a new era of a non-Congress government with an absolute majority on its own in 30 years.
In an era when the misguided youth of today are trying to build political careers by subscribing to divisive ideologies, they need to look to independent thinking icons such as Acharya Kripalani, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Sunday completed 10 years in office, becoming the first non-Congress chief minister in the state to do so.
'I suggest Rahul Bajaj come out in the open and give us his own white paper on the perceived sense of fear that he thinks haunts corporate India,' says Dr Sudhir Bisht.
The Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party could suffer in the Lok Sabha polls due to "overconfidence" as its campaign is going on the lines of its 2004 "India shining" slogan, nationalist Congress Party chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said on Thursday.
The Narendra Modi government is here to stay for 10-20 years, Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah asserted on Friday, claiming that the new dispensation has ended the "reign of scams" and policy paralysis while changing the political culture in the country.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi asked partymen to focus on Bharatiya Janata Party's return to power at the Centre instead of projecting anyone including him as the prime ministerial candidate.
Indications of a stormy start to the Budget session emerged at an all-party meeting with opposition accusing the government of "setting the agenda for disruption".
V Narayanasamy was on Monday sworn in as the tenth chief minister of Puducherry.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances