'Mulayam has by design cornered the people's attention back to the party and Akhilesh.' 'People were only talking of Modi and demonetisation, but now suddenly everybody is talking of Akhilesh and the SP.' 'My personal subjective impression is that the SP is neck and neck with the BJP.'
Sidhu, while addressing a rally, had warned Muslims not to split their votes and instead defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party by voting against it unitedly.
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday claimed that neither the Bharatiya Janata Party nor the Congress would get a majority in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, while also dismissing the possibility of emergence of a Third Front.
The bypolls are termed as a 'rehearsal' for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by CM Yogi Adityanath.
According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
'At no point did Kamal Nath and Digvijaya indicate that the Opposition bloc was formed only to fight the Lok Sabha polls.'
Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In his address to the joint sitting of the state legislature, Rajeswar, while outlining the priorities of Mayawati government, said that an atomosphere of "anarchy" prevailed in UP during the last four years.
'If Muslims who are 20 percent of UP's population feel the SP has no future they will go with the BSP. Even if 10 percent Muslim vote goes to the BSP every equation will change.'
Shiv Sena candidate Rupesh Mhatre won the by-polls held in Bhiwandi (East), Mumbai, by a margin of 16,076 votes on Saturday. The by-poll was held after Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi resigned from the seat as he had also won from Mankhurd in Mumbai in the state assembly polls that were held in October.Azmi had fielded his son Farhan Azmi to retain the seat for the party. But the presence of Muzaffar Hussain of the Congress split the Muslim votes.
'Ajit Pawar's speech leaves no room for reconciliation.'
The SP's bid to dent the BJP's formidable social equation is playing out in a big way in the Poorvanchal or eastern region of Uttar Pradesh as the ruling party is working overtime to keep its caste equation unharmed.
Mulayam on Sunday blamed the defeat on son Akhilesh's decision to ally with a Congress, which he said had tried its best to "ruin" him.
Since the trouble in Uttar Pradesh's ruling party became public, Akhilesh has been insisting on sidelining or expulsion of Singh.
The father and son were together for over two hours.
Insiders said Akhilesh's warring uncle Shivpal Yadav and Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh were not present at father-son meeting.
The Samajwadi Party on Thursday pulled out of the 'grand alliance' in poll-bound Bihar, saying it felt "humiliated" as it was not consulted while deciding seats and would contest the assembly elections in the state on its own.
Yadav, who hails from Mahendergarh district, joined the JJP in New Delhi in the presence of its leader Chautala.
Outside CM's residence, high drama was witnessed with youth supporters of Akhilesh assembling in large numbers to vent their fury.
Several SP leaders fear Muslim voters may shift loyalty, which will benefit rivals like the BJP.
In Phase 6, indications are that the BJP, which is defending 40 seats, will lose in double digits and gain in single digits. Not good, if you are the ruling party scrambling to earn a working majority, with just one phase left to go, argues Prem Panicker.
As CM, he took decisions that confirmed his image as a Hindutva mascot. Early in the first term, he banned illegal slaughterhouses and the state police cracked down on cow slaughter. But the menace of stray cattle created disquiet among farmers, presenting the Adityanath government with a new challenge.
The marathon meeting, spread over two sessions and kept under wraps, came a day after top leaders of socialist-leaning parties attended SP's silver jubilee meet here -- a move seen as an attempt by Mulayam to forge an alliance ahead of the assembly polls hardly a few months away.
The BJP's 2022 assembly election win may have further consolidated Adityanath's stock within the BJP. The saffron party is now set to win the UP state polls twice in a row, a feat achieved by no other party in three decades.
Opposition parties on Sunday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party after Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar and eight others were inducted into the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, saying the ruling party's 'washing machine' has resumed its operation to clean tainted leaders and it was an 'ED-facilitated power grab'.
Shivpal Yadav on Friday held talks with defiant nephew Akhilesh at his residence on a "compromise formula" for a possible patch-up.
Will Akhilesh ask Azam Khan to lead the SP legislature party?
At a time when the BJP's stars are at the top on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls, the Puri-Joshimath Sankaracharyas may have kick-started a row whose efforts might be to divide Hindus, not in the name of castes, but on what passes for greater belief, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Loss of power in Bihar has upset the Bharatiya Janata Party's calculations for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls but a section of its leaders also see a chance for the party to break the dominance of regional parties in the state, like it has in Uttar Pradesh.
'Akhileshji has to protect his political turf and if it means confronting his father, snapping ties with him and forming another party, so be it.'
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.
Rumours of a live power line having snapped triggered the stampede. The injured have been rushed to a local hospital, a BSP spokesperson said.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis e Ittehadul Muslimeen seem to have dented the Congress's sway over the votes of minorities in Gujarat in the just concluded assembly polls, bringing down the main Opposition party's vote margin considerably in various seats across the state.
The group led by Akhilesh Yadav is the Samajwadi Party and is entitled to use its name and reserved symbol bicycle, the three-member Election Commission headed by Nasim Zaidi said in its order.
For now, the DMK can be expected to sound the bugle for Opposition unity at the national level, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Asthana was sent on a forced leave after the CBI registered a case of corruption against him. His plea to quash the FIR was rejected by the Delhi high court.
The war in Samajwadi Party was far from over on Sunday with a defiant Ram Gopal Yadav declaring Akhilesh Yadav as party president at the national convention in Lucknow which was declared as "unconstitutional" by supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Opposition MLAs flung paper balls at Governor Ram Naik and marshals frantically deflected the projectiles with files as the opening day of the maiden session of the new Uttar Pradesh assembly presented a spectacle of complete mayhem.
