'The Modi Sultanate -- like the Congress Sultanate -- does not understand local aspirations and politics. It will repeat the same mistakes whenever it takes on powerful regional leaders.'
The Congress's revival plan says it needs to bring back into its fold Hindus repelled by the Sangh Parivar, take its message to youth and women and sections upset at curbs on their personal freedoms.
India's main hubs are bursting at the seams.
'Shivraj Singh Chouhan gave an affidavit in the Supreme Court that his government will give reservation in promotions which resulted in a powerful reaction by the youth.' 'These youth used to vote for the BJP, but will not vote for it in this election.' 'Even if the Congress does not make any gains, the BJP is losing voters in the current situation. It is losing farmers, OBC votes.'
'Their dharma propels them to pay their workers; otherwise, they know the boys would starve.' 'At the same time they will not allow their business to suffer,' observes Dr Sudhir Bisht.
'Modi remains the most popular politician in India; the BJP's organisational and fundraising prowess is considerable; and the Opposition, while newly collaborative, has no leader or clear economic messaging as of yet.'
'At the end of the day, there will largely be a single candidate against the NDA's.' 'That itself will produce a different result altogether.'
Chouhan's son Kartikey accused the Congress leader of intentionally making a false allegation about his name being in Panama Papers of alleged tax evaders.
The narrow win in Gujarat can be contributed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his no-holds-barred approach and party president Amit Shah who plays to win and knows that there are rules to be followed when suited and broken when needed.
Can compassion, common courtesy or an 'emotional connect' win seats in the harsh realpolitik of UP, a state riddled with divisions of caste and religion, and confronted with a seemingly impregnable BSP-SP alliance? asks Sunil Sethi.
'Vaghela has said he is with the Congress.' 'The controversy that he may switch to the BJP is a creation of that party to create confusion in the Congress.'
Modi will need to understand that the formula for success will have to be Local Leaders + Modi and not Modi alone...Shivraj Singh Chouhan is in the running for prime minister... The AAP will have to ally with other parties if it hopes to make any dent in the Lok Sabha election. Dr B Venkatesh Kumar, Professor at the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, lists some learnings from the 2013 assembly election results.
Union minister Jairam Ramesh is back to doing what he does best: working out the logistics for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Taking on the Adityanath government over handling of protests against the amended Citizenship Act, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Sunday said it has "crossed all limits of inhumanity" and claimed party worker Sadaf Zafar was arrested on "baseless" charges.
No matter how much the likes of Modi brag about cleaning up politics, the goondas and the godfathers will flourish until India can deliver justice to its poor and the system can work to the benefit of ordinary Indians, says Vir Sanghvi.
'It is the regional parties and their leaders who are the ones we have to watch.'
'A fierce crusader against communalism, George joined hands with majoritarian forces, never to revisit or re-assess his saffron association.' 'He was a Union minister in 1998-2004, a time when people like Graham Staines were lynched in Orissa.' 'On the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, George went on to kind of justify the slashing of pregnant women, by saying in the Lok Sabha that this was nothing new for India.' 'Thus, he was in sharp contrast to what he had himself stood for in the heyday of his political career in the 1970s and 1980s, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagging the "distressing rise" in incidents of Dalit atrocities.
'It is a tense border and there are numerous elements that keep these tensions alive.' 'India is willing to militarily respond if provoked.'
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar wants the Modi government and BJP to reap the profit of the surgical strikes. But electoral history suggests a political party's ability to exploit military successes for poll gains has a mixed record.
Get ready to walk into an airport minutes before a flight, check in your own luggage, walk on to the tarmac to board a plane.
Yet another Congress leader has attacked party Vice President Rahul Gandhi saying he has neither direction nor any policy and called him an 'MD of a team of jokers'.
'The problem here is not that one community's deity has suddenly become another community's meal.' 'Hindus and Muslims have been peacefully coexisting with their cows for centuries now.' 'The problem here is that a section of Indians has been suddenly made to realise that it makes great political sense to degrade each one of the 170 million Muslims to a potential cow-killer, lynch a few of them to keep the heat on, polarise and win elections.'
Desperate times need desperate actions, and the BJP's only option is to enforce legislation to build a Ram mandir, says Sunil Sethi.
If I were the BJP, I would not be celebrating quite so quickly. It can sweep its heartland in 2014, as it has shown it can do, but that heartland isn't quite big enough. And it can put up a good fight in towns and cities, too - but unless it neutralises AAP or similar political entrepreneurs, it may find itself tantalisingly short, just as has happened to it in Delhi, says Mihir Sharma.
A clean sweep for the BJP and the emergence of the AAP do not look good for the Congress, which now faces a serious leadership crisis, says Bharat Bhushan
Modi accused the TMC of killing the aspirations of the middle-class people in the state and said the ruling party in West Bengal is known for 'triple T -- Trinamool Tolabaji Tax'.
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi warned his party's ministers in Jammu and Kashmir that they could be denied tickets in the next elections if they did not reach out to the people and address their grievances.
Security is a worry but the Gujarat chief minister will continue is campaign ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
Nondescript Bhiwani and Mahendragarh in Haryana, recently named part of the NCR, are likely to see developers queueing up soon and investors betting big on the new hubs.
It might have taken several years, but the intelligence and security agencies in several states recently tracked down and arrested dreaded terrorists involved in creating havoc in the country. It began with the arrest of Zabbiuddin Ansari, an accused in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, then came the arrest of Indian Mujahideen co-founder Yasin Bhatkal followed by Lashkar-e-Tayiba bomb maker Abdul Karim Tunda, Zaveri Bazaar bomber Waqas Ahmed and now IM chief Tehsin Akthar. In a five-part series, Rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa describes how each of these terrorists were painstakingly tracked by the Intelligence Bureau and arrested by the security agencies.
Opposition parties now recognise that the king on one side of the chessboard, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is ensconced, and unlikely to be shaken, although on his side there are no identifiable kings, queens, rooks, bishops or knights.
Political parties are getting battle-ready, nominating their best candidates to contest Election 2014... Rediff.com's incomparable Sheela Bhatt begins a new column where she reveals the ground realities in the Battle for India, as only she can. Don't miss it!
Gandhi attacked the government over its 'maximum governance' slogan, saying this also meant expanding the base of disagreement without inviting retribution, a reference to its crackdown on several non-governmental organisations.
The renaming of Mewat comes within weeks of an RSS-supported think tank issuing a 'study' about the growing population of Muslims in the Mewat region.
With one year left for assembly elections in Karnataka, the last big bastion of the Congress, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has found an emotive issue to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party as the latter prepares the ground for a fight to grab power. Raghu Krishnan and Nikita Puri report.
'So far the youth were Modi's strength.' 'It now seems under pressure, and for good reason: Crisis in education, jobs, slowdown in manufacturing, and thereby trading,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
'The decline in BJP seats tells us that despite the rote incantation of the development mantra, Gujarat is not immune to the economic pain the country is feeling and is telling the ruling party so,' says Shreekant Sambrani.
The Congress is seeking to oust the BJP government in Haryana in the October 21 polls.
The rising price of pulses has become a hot issue during the Bihar assembly polls.
