Asking the people of Bihar to bring their own government to power, the post made a veiled reference to the alleged high handedness of bureaucracy under the JD(U)-BJP rule but fell shy of a frontal attack on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his arch rival, or the near hegemonic saffron party which considers him a bete noire.
'The TMC forgets that if people don't stand by you, your party will never win.'
The winds of nationalism laden with religion will now yield to those of concern over the stalled economy, unemployment, and a general malaise and unhappiness, predicts Shekhar Gupta.
'The BJP leaders will go crazy if they are thrown out of power. They will lose their mental balance'
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 Congress on Saturday demanded the dismissal of the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Karnataka following leak of an audio clipping in which Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa purportedly can be heard mentioning the disqualification of rebel Congress-Janata Dal-Secular MLAs and alleged involvement of the saffron party's central leadership. "How the BJP misused power and money was exposed yesterday. Now people have to judge them," he said. Congress leader and former chief minister Siddaramaiah also attacked the BJP, saying what the party had done was "a conspiracy to murder democracy and a violation of the Constitution".
'There is no question of joining hands with the BJP.'
'I came to politics accidentally. I became the chief minister accidentally. God gave me the opportunity to become the chief minister twice'
Chirag Paswan is young. He is articulate. He has no political baggage. All he needs is the blessing of Chanakya, observes Asmita Bihari.
Mishra and AAP's women's wing chief Richa Pandey joined the BJP at the party office in New Delhi in the presence of vice-president Shyam Jaju and Delhi unit chief Manoj Tiwari, former Union minister Vijay Goel and leader of opposition in the assembly Vijender Gupta.
The court struck down the portion of the Speaker's order by which the legislators were disqualified till the end of the 15th Karnataka assembly.
The lawmakers have said that they had moved the Supreme Court after tendering their resignation, which had also directed the Speaker to consider their resignation.
There is an acute imbalance of power between the various organs of the State, including the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, and the ultimate sovereign -- the people, argues R Jagannathan.
With a substantially weakened Left Front and the Congress, political observers say the anti-Trinamool vote will go to the BJP.
Pinarayi is exploring the potentials of 'socialism with Indian characteristics'. The next five years under Pinarayi's watch will be a transformative period for Kerala's development, observes M K Bhadrakumar.
Having emerged as the face of opposition resistance to the Narendra Modi juggernaut after the TMC's triumph in the assembly elections, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is locked in an unequal battle as she squares off with "lightweight" rivals in her own lair--Bhabanipur.
The 14 MLAs who had resigned earlier this month include Pratapgouda Patil, BC Patil, Shivaram Hebbar, ST Somashekhar, BA Basavaraja, Anand Singh, R Roshan Baig, Munirathna, K Sudhakar, MTB Nagaraj, AH Vishwanath, K Gopalaiah, Narayana Gowda and Shrimanth Patil.
Political watchers believe that there is little denying the loss of face the party has suffered in its bid to rule India's richest state.
'Why should we disclose how and from where we will get these numbers?'
These MLAs were present when BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis and NCP's Ajit Pawar were sworn in as chief minister and deputy chief minister at Raj Bhavan. Both the MLAs said they were with the Nationalist Congress Party and expressed solidarity with its president.
Never before in the history of the Republic has an election in the state mattered so much as it does now, observes Virendra Kapoor.
With his exit, the TMC will lose a crucial, politically influential vote catcher in the Jungalmahal region and areas in minority-dominated Murshidabad, and the BJP will get a face it badly needs, especially in rural Bengal, reports Aditi Phadnis.
"Contradicting the emerging narrative, Indian-Americans remain committed to the Democratic Party. Nearly three-quarters of registered Indian-American voters intend to support Joe Biden this Fall, compared to just 22 per cent for Donald Trump," it said.
A copious amount of blood, beating, crying, saving, sacrificing, nationalism fills up its staggering three hours running time. Emotions run sky high, but you feel nothing, sighs Sukanya Verma.
'People say my personality doesn't have sharp edges, but politics doesn't have to be about pulling down your opponents or bad mouthing them.'
The Emergency greatly influenced the RSS' makeover from a fringe force in the Indian political imagination to one that could have its own man sworn in as prime minister in two decades' time. A riveting excerpt from Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil's India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-1977.
Ahead of the elections, a lot had been spoken of the large number of leaders defecting from the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena. In fact, a month before the polls, more than two dozen Congress-NCP leaders quit and joined the BJP in hopes of riding high on the Narendra Modi wave. While for some the shift has brought in good fortune, for others it has brought loss. Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com analyses how these defectors have fared.
Nandigram, 126 km south of Kolkata, is Suvendu Adhikari's bastion, where he has vowed to defeat Mamata Banerjee by 50,000 votes or quit politics.
Else, warns rebel party MLA, the RJD will split.
In a Sri Lankan House of 225 members, the cut-off figure comes to 113. With Wickremesinghe side touching 102 and Rajapaksa's team at 101, the three-party Tamil National Alliance with 16 members and the left-leaning Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna with 6 members hold the key. But with the latter declaring that they will not support either formation in a vote count,that leaves the TNA as the deciding factor, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar also ruled out any alliance with the Sena.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government marking its first anniversary on Saturday, the first year is likely to be remembered for the fulfilment of decades-old Hindutva demands as Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the huge majority his party won in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to push through its core agenda.
Capping a three-week-long high-voltage intense power struggle triggered by a raft of resignations by rebel lawmakers that pushed the government to the brink of collapse, the motion in the Karnataka Assembly was defeated with 99 members voting for the motion and 105 against it.
Thackeray held talks with Thorat, former chief minister Ashok Chavan and another senior Congress leader, Manikrao Thakare, at a suburban hotel.
"I also say, on behalf of my party, that we can form government if we want and there can be a Shiv Sena chief minister," Raut told reporters.
The Opposition must understand that while 2024 may draw mileage from the growing resentment towards the BJP, the real battle and proof of how well India learnt from its disastrous dalliance with the Right-wing, will be in 2029, observes Shyam G Menon.
Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Wednesday expanded his 17-month old cabinet, inducting seven ministers, and indicated that excise minister H Nagesh would be dropped. Governor Vajubhai Vala administered the oath of office and secrecy to the ministers at a ceremony at the Raj Bhavan.
Sharif, 67, had to step down as the chief of the PML-N after he was disqualified as the prime minister by the Supreme Court on July 28 in the Panama Papers scandal.
'Kumaraswamy is not officially the leader of the opposition. For three years and eight months of Yediyurappa's government, Siddarmaiah will officially be the leader of the opposition'