President's rule was imposed on Sunday in poll-bound Maharashtra after Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan resigned following the break-up of 15-year-old Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance in the state.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan and several of his cabinet colleagues figure in the list of 118 Congress candidates for the October 15 Assembly polls announced by the AICC late on Wednesday.
In a setback to the opposition Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra, the party could win only one of the four seats it held during the biennial elections held for six local bodies constituencies in the state legislative council.
Seeking to put aside speculation about a rift over Maharashtra assembly poll seat-sharing in Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, BJP president Amit Shah met Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray in Mumbai on Thursday night.
Tension within the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance over seat sharing for upcoming Maharashtra assembly polls became perceptible with BJP on Sunday disapproving Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray's statement that in the event of a saffron victory, the top post would go to Shiv Sena and that he was not averse to assuming it.
Bihar's ruling JD-U and Lalu Prasad's RJD will contest the state assembly elections in alliance and a 6-member committee will be constituted for seat-sharing talks.
Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad on Friday left for Delhi to placate Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose party stormed out of the nascent anti-Bharatiya Janata Party grand alliance for Bihar assembly elections on Thursday.
Unlike the frenzy and buzz in political circles during the last few days, the meetings on Thursday were held in a discreet manner.
However, the tilting factor still remains: Can the rivalling 'Modi brand' of 'soft Hindutva' and 'hard-sell nationalism' garner more votes for the NDA in Tamil Nadu, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
The numbers were revealed some concerns arose, says Chirag Paswan
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.
At 70, going by hospital records made public, most age and health-related arguments put out against super-star Rajinikanth's entry into politics, before he withdrew citing a 2016 kidney-transplant, hold good for Sasikala, too, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena were on Sunday trying to make last ditch efforts to salvage their alliance in Maharashtra for the upcoming Assembly polls after the Uddhav Thackeray's final offer of giving 119 seats to the coalition partner was rejected.
'Shatrughan Sinha's name is in the Congress's probable candidates list.'
The seat-sharing talks between senior Congress and NCP leaders for next month's Assembly polls in Maharashtra remained inconclusive on Tuesday night with both sides deciding to meet again tomorrow morning.
Amit Shah is likely to be made poll in-charge in Congress-Nationalist Congress Party ruled-Maharashtra to repeat Uttar Pradesh's 'success'. Sanjay Jog reports
For Stalin and the DMK, the declaration was the essence of the commencement of seat-sharing talks with the Congress, and even more, the launch of their combined campaign for the LS polls. That meant the DMK had to send out a message also to the 'minorities' in the state, who had deserted the DMK and very badly at that in the critical, post-Jaya R K Nagar assembly bypolls last year, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
He said the BJP is leaving a "culture", which may be used against it in the future.
The Bihar CM has made a sagacious attempt to consolidate his extremely backward castes (EBC) support base while trying to make a dent into RJD's Muslim-Yadav combine.
Here are some of the big political leaders' who await their fate on Monday.
Sharpening attack on erstwhile ally Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena on Sunday accused it of backstabbing late Sena supremo Bal Thackeray by snapping ties with his party over seat sharing in Maharashtra assembly polls.
The Congress and NCP are close to finalising a seat-sharing pact for next month's elections to the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly with the two parties likely to contest 174 and 114 seats respectively.
The 25-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance split on Thursday amid continued deadlock over seat-sharing for the October 15 Maharashtra assembly polls.
Elections 2024 is not as open and shut as has been presumed. There is some life left in it, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Our party cadre does not want her in the party.'
Stalin owes his victory this time, like in 2019, to the hate-campaign of the local Hindutva forces, which kept haranguing him, and even his dead father, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Though EPS has sworn peace for now, or so it seems, his camp is said to be considering the possibility of calling an early meeting of the party's general council, to get a mandate in his favour before things went out of control. Ground-level indications are that OPS had lost his limited base, which alone had forced him to patch up with the other, reportedly at the instance of the BJP ally at the Centre, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The grand alliance of the JD-U and the RJD have decided a seat sharing program to contest together in the coming Bihar assembly polls to defeat the BJP-led NDA.
In a major blow to the National Democratic Alliance, the Biju Janata Dal announced on Saturday that it had split from the Bharatiya Janata Dal, over failure to reach a seat sharing deal for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls."The BJP-BJD will contest separately," Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik told reporters, adding that 'winnability' was the reason behind the break up in the decade-old alliance.
'In the last three to four months the BJP vote share in Tamil Nadu, which was 2.86% in 2016, has gone up to about 5%-6%.' 'The AIADMK will lose the minority votes and others who don't like the BJP and Modi.' 'The AIADMK decided to take the risk to get the 5%-6% votes that the BJP will bring in.'
After weeks of bargaining, discussing and protesting, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Telugu Desam Party have come to an agreement on a seat sharing arrangement in Andhra Pradesh.
'Giriraj Singh has told the central leadership that he is being made a target by some BJP leaders and some JD-U in a conspiracy to defeat him in the polls.'
The Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party leaders met on Tuesday morning to decide on seat sharing for the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections but the talks were "inconclusive." With only four days left, to file nominations for the October 15 polls, time's running out for the 15-year-old alliance.
Hours after the Bharatiya Janata Party gave it an ultimatum to take a final call on the seat-sharing pact for the Maharashtra assembly elections, Shiv Sena said on Thursday night that it would not be dictated by anybody.
The Nationalist Congress Party on Wednesday did not rule out Sharad Pawar as prime minister after the coming Lok Sabha elections, as it sought to put pressure on Congress for convening an early meeting of the United Progressive Alliance to chalk out a common strategy and to finalise seat sharing with allies.
Besides lining up Bali, Nairobi and Toronto flights, the airline is also planning flights from Mumbai to Hong Kong. The network expansion will help the national carrier grow its market share and capitalise on the capacity vaccum created by the collapse of Jet Airways.
There is no rift in NDA over the contentious issue of seat-sharing for the coming Lok Sabha polls in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said today.
The announcement was made by AIADMK coordinator and deputy chief minister O Panneerselvam and Union Minister and senior BJP leader Piyush Goyal, party election in-charge for Tamil Nadu, who described it as a "mega alliance".
Bharatiya Janata President Amit Shah's visit to Mumbai on Wednesday has been cancelled, a party spokesperson said in Mumbai.
Maharashtra Congress leader Narayan Rane on Friday said the first list of the party's candidates for next month's assembly polls would be announced on September 25 as he backed the continuation of an alliance with Nationalist Congress Party.
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