'Some of his ministers have performed abysmally, and Bommai has faced an unwanted campaign of religious polarisation imposed by national BJP leaders.'
'The 4th meeting of the leaders of INDIA parties will be held on Tuesday December 19th, 2023 in New Delhi at 3 pm,' Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X on Sunday.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday accused NIA officials of attacking villagers in Purba Medinipur district, the BJP hit back at her saying that the attack on the NIA officials is Sandeshkhalli 2.0 orchestrated by the state.
A string of episodes including the latest removal of Aamir Khan as brand ambassador of the Incredible India campaign point in this direction, say experts
'The time has come for all those believe in a democratic India to stand up and be counted and to make a choice.'
The state entered its Golden Jubilee year with the usual quota of conflicts, controversies and scandals.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday urged people to celebrate the Hanuman Jayanti festival peacefully, and said while religion is a personal choice, festivities were an occasion for all to join in.
'...for success like the BJP.' 'The BJP's work for the next election begins the day one election ends.'
Using the Jinnah portrait as an issue, and by demonising AMU and consequently Indian Muslims, the politics of communal polarisation is sought to be played out ahead of the Kairana Lok Sabha by-poll and to sustain it till the next Lok Sabha election, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Amid different voices within the Congress and INDIA bloc on DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin's remarks against Sanatan Dharma, the principal opposition party on Monday said it respects all religions and stressed that others also have the freedom to express their views.
While addressing a Veerashaiva-Lingayat meeting in Shivamogga, Eshwarappa said, "We do not want even a single Muslim vote here. Nationalist Muslims will, however, vote for the BJP."
'The performance of any government is benchmarked on five parameters -- India's external security, the state of the economy, social cohesion, internal security, and India's relations with the world or its foreign policy. On each of the benchmarks in the past nine years, the NDA-BJP government has come up completely short'
The Congress on Saturday wrote to the Election Commission seeking action against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his 'Congress shielded terrorism for vote bank' remark and said he has crossed the 'lakshman rekha'.
In the coming days, unless Modi tones down the communal spiel, it will be clear that anxiety continues to drive his mind and clouds his judgment, observes Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
'Modi's campaign has been strikingly devoid of anti-Muslim rhetoric. After the kutta pilla incident, it has been several months since he said something horrible about the Muslims of India. It is the result of democratic constraints. He has to make compromises... He's trying to reinvent himself. He will politically hurt himself if 2002 becomes the definition of Mr Modi again', says political scientist Ashutosh Varshney.
'Mr Modi's next challenger/s will need to invent a new politics,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The New Delhi G20 Declaration refers only to the "war in Ukraine" and noted with "deep concern the immense human suffering and the adverse impact of wars and conflicts around the world."
Modi wants the BJP to gets an additional 10% of the vote share from what it won in 2019. Plans are afoot to get new faces to replace MPs with poor chances of winning. Sources say more than 100 MPs are like to be axed, notes Modi biographer Ramesh Menon.
'Khalistanis can be divided into three categories: Firstly, hardcore ideological people. They are microscopic, not even 1%.' 'Secondly, those who consider Khalistan a business.' 'The third category that has built the narrative of Khalistan are those who gain from polarisation.'
2019 was the Bharatiya Janata Party's breakout year, when it stretched the boundaries of what was thought possible and ended up with 303 seats on its own steam. Now it is forced to play defence, on a pitch queered by too many variables, asserts Prem Panicker.
The Gulberg massacre case verdict on Friday sparked a war of words between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, with both the parties accusing each other of trying to turn the issue into a tool for their own political advantage.
'Corruption overshadowed Modi's roadshows.' 'As the BJP did not deliver any of their promises, people stopped believing him.'
'I see this judgment as a chance to say 'Boo' to the dark. But we shouldn't lose sight of the larger darkness that we have to keep fighting in everyday ways.'
For the most battle-hardened, specialised and successful counter-insurgency army in the world, this is an unfamiliar, first-time experience of dealing with the north east's deepest complexities, observes Shekhar Gupta.
India appears poised to sustain its growth in a more durable way than before with the economy carrying the momentum from FY23 into the current fiscal year, the Annual Economic Review for 2022-23 released by the finance ministry on Thursday said. However, the report cautioned that escalation of geopolitical stress, enhanced volatility in global financial systems, sharp price correction in global stock markets, a high magnitude of El-Nino impact, and modest trade activity and FDI inflows, are factors that could constrain the pace of growth. "Should these developments deepen and dampen growth in the subsequent quarters, the external sector may challenge India's growth outlook for FY24," the finance ministry said.
The Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party are using communal violence to polarise the voters in the state with an eye on the 2014 general elections, reports Sharat Pradhan
'All parties are engaging in polarisation to strengthen their political vote banks, which is very unfortunate because these are young, impressionable, students.' 'These students are our future.' 'What kind of a society are we banking upon if we are planting such poisonous seeds into their minds?'
Setalvad was taken into custody on June 25 last year along with former Gujarat Director General of Police R B Sreekumar and ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in an offence registered by Ahmedabad crime branch police for allegedly fabricating evidence to frame "innocent people" in the post-Godhra riots cases.
'It is difficult to replace him because if he is replaced, it will lead to a sense of defeat among the Meiteis, rightly or wrongly, and more chaos.'
'Lalu understands that his words can be used by rivals to consolidate Hindu votes which may damage the prospects of his party's social support base.'
Should he begin the yatra from Gujarat's Porbandar, the birthplace of the Mahatma, on October 2, and skip campaigning for the five assembly polls?
'Where you change the law and then say, we are following the law.' 'The fact is, the law is not meeting any international standards.' 'How can you call UAPA or PMLA a law when you are guilty until proven innocent?'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will sharpen Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign for the high-octane assembly elections in West Bengal with a mega rally at the Brigade Parade Grounds in Kolkata on Sunday.
'Congress and BSP are in the fray, but not in the contest.'
'Amritpal was just a plant.' 'We have to be careful that such kind of people do not emerge in Punjab.'
'Till now, many political parties indulged in Muslim appeasement.' 'This is one experiment, successfully carried out by the AAP, in indulging in Hindu appeasement.'
'... are losing faith in the institutions of government, where people do not believe that the institutions of government operate according to the Constitution, within the confines of the law, where these institutions are seen to be representing a small faction of a particular community against all other (minority) communities.'
The poll panel also referred to the instances of "inappropriate vocabulary and language" used during the ongoing campaign by persons, "in particular, by those invested with the statutory status of star campaigner".
"Somewhat surprisingly, Indian-Americans born in the United States are much more likely to report being victims of discrimination than their foreign-born counterparts," said the report.
Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday linked Congress leaders' protest in black clothes over the issues of price rise and unemployment to the party's "appeasement" politics to convey its opposition to the Ram temple foundation laying by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on this day in 2020.
