Tamil Nadu, the land of regional parties where the two Dravidian outfits have ruled the roost for long, is witnessing a few fledgling parties testing their electoral luck for the first time in the April 24 Lok Sabha elections, including Aam Aadmi Party and Indiya Jananayaka Katchi.
Its current majority of 22,078 votes for the purpose of the presidential elections is considered thin, particularly when BJP might not be able to predict voting behaviour of its allies like Shiv Sena.
Talking to reporters at a media briefing, 33-year-old Sreesanth said his name has been cleared by the court in a match-fixing case and he is, therefore, not worried about any Opposition attack on him regarding the controversy.
The DMK chief said it was a 'resounding victory' given to his party led alliance by the people of Tamil Nadu.
The title alludes to Socrates willingly drinking poisonous hemlock as his punishment after he was convicted of corrupting the minds of the young and impiety in ancient Athens.
Scripting history, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday stormed to power in Assam bagging a government in the north east for the first time dethroning the Congress which also lost Kerala while Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee retained power in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal with spectacular victories.
All eyes are on the parties to see which of them can stake claim to power.
Rahul said Modi cannot speak on corruption as the party's chief ministerial candidate Yeddyurappa faced graft allegations.
The total number of states in the country will be now 28 while the total UTs will go up to seven.
Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is coordinating the meeting. He has invited the leaders of all the non-BJP parties.
Can Baichung Bhutia's Hamro Sikkim party pose a challenge to Pawan Chamling who has not lost an election in 24 years?
A section within the RSS feels Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani should be projected as the BJP's CM candidate in UP, says Rajeev Sharma.
Around 62 per cent newly-elected legislators have criminal cases against them in Kerala, while 32 per cent in West Bengal face serious charges including murder and crime against women, a report said on Friday.
She noted that the democracy was at peril under the Modi government and alleged that it was misusing and abusing its mandate in the "most dangerous" fashion, the sources said.
The Lok Sabha election will be held in 7 phases, beginning on April 11, 2019 and ending on May 19, 2019.
Attempting to form a "secular and democratic alternative" to dethrone the Congress from power at the Centre, the All India Anna Dravida Munetra Kazhagam and the Communist Party of India on Sunday announced their decision to enter into an alliance ahead of the coming Lok Sabha polls.
If Vijaykanth and his party stole the media thunder, which lingered in the viewers' mind even while watching Prime Minister Modi's thunderous campaign speech, the latter suffered also owing to visible 'disconnects', says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Finance Minister Piyush Goyal: 'I hope the Congress governments and other states like West Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Telangana will support our effort to bring petrol and diesel into the GST regime.'
The result in Gujarat was not as grand as the saffron party had expected as the party did not even cross its 2012 tally.
The ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Tuesday said that party supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa is a "qualified" leader to lead the country after the next Lok Sabha polls and vowed to work towards this goal by securing all 40 seats in the state.
'What happened in the Vajpayee era will repeat in the Modi era in 2019.'
There are also views within a section of the party that a turnaround in Uttar Pradesh is possible only if either of the Gandhis -- Priyanka or Rahul -- takes the lead in the state polls.
In a major exercise ahead of Lok Sabha polls, Congress on Thursday night constituted screening committees for all states and union territories for early selection of candidates.
Congress workers must feel what their BJP counterparts did in 2009, but that could change.
A majority of Congress leaders said the party will face desertions if Rahul Gandhi does not remain the leader.
The people of Delhi are the victims, Gandhi alleged.
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
With election campaign ending in Tamil Nadu before it goes to polls on Thursday, N Sathiya Moorthy lists a few questions uppermost in the minds of voters.
Though the 2019 alliance talks, if any, are a long way off, CM Jaya's current state of health and her long hospitalisation maybe a facilitating factor for the AIADMK to consider any BJP initiative favourably at the time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam supremo M Karunanidhi on Monday renominated former telecom minister and 2G scam accused A Raja for the April 24 Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu. He also sent a strong message to rebels in the party by denying a ticket to his son M K Alagiri.
The truce, even if it is not permanence peace, will come under stress and test during the pending polls to rural local bodies in nine revenue districts and urban polls across the state, including those for 16 municipal corporations, starting with Chennai, the oldest and largest, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Modi lashed out at the Siddaramaiah government over alleged corruption, saying there is not a single minister who is not facing allegations of financial wrongdoing.
Rahul Gandhi replied on Twitter, saying, 'Thank you for your greetings @narendramodi ji. I appreciate them.'
BJP strategists need to remember even at this late hour that 'negativism' sells when you are in the Opposition as the Indian voter has mostly voted anti-incumbency, and not when you are in power. You still needed to highlight your achievements and promises, and let the voter draw his conclusions, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
However, the EC is yet to make an official announcement in this regard.
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.
Cassandras and Congressis may sneer at the findings, but the Times Now poll indicated that the Modi government was very much on its way to a second term.
The results will be declared on July 20 in New Delhi.
"Only the Congress and the JD-S are celebrating, people of Karnataka are not," he told reporters.
The Congress has been reduced to a C player in national politics thanks to its inability to read the pulse of the people, says Rashme Sehgal.
