'Rahul Gandhi has done nothing for the constituency'
24 hours before campaigning ends in Thiruvanathapuram, Archana Masih/Rediff.com discovers Shashi Tharoor and his BJP rival Rajeev Chandrasekhar are busy getting their message across to voters.
'Everyone is unhappy with the lieutenant governor's administration, which is ignorant, high-handed, and inaccessible.'
Constituencies that are going to the polls in the first phase, slated for April 19, have just 19 days for campaigning. Contrast that with those going to polls in the 7th phase, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Mayawatiji no more controls the bahujan vote in UP.' 'In this election more than 40 per cent of the BSP's core voters blessed the SP without the SP even asking for it.'
The final figure of polling could increase and it will be available on Tuesday, officials said.
For India to view the new Sri Lankan leadership only through the prism of the past or through their narrow view on China, is fraught with possibilities that should be avoided, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
'People in politics have lost the value of being connected to their own people.' 'Now it's all about vote share, vote bank, how many parties can you break and make them join you.'
Speaking at a rally in Madhya Pradesh's Harda on April 24, Modi praised Chouhan saying the two had served together in the party organisation and also as chief ministers.
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.
It keeps getting harder every day for the government to drive its narrative that ample jobs are being created. They sound increasingly silly as they try to defend the indefensible, says Mahesh Vyas.
The RJD polled the highest vote share in Bihar, but it was not reflected in the number of seats it won.
Every passing day featuring parties within the INDIA alliance sniping at each other at state level is bad publicity for the alliance particularly given the proximity of the 2024 general elections, asserts Shyam G Menon.
The commission said polling was held at 15,940 polling stations spread across 44 assembly constituencies in this phase of polls.
Barring 2004 and 2009 when Navjot Singh Sidhu won the Amritsar seat as a BJP MP and 1998 when Daya Singh Sodhi from BJP was elected as the MP, it has essentially a Congress bastion.
If Tamil Nadu voters preferred the DMK combine, it owed to the Modi-Annamalai combo's ideological battle which often crossed the line of political decency and also challenged 'Tamil pride', argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
Singh has questioned the reliability of the EVMs on more than one occasion following the Congress' defeat in the recent assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
Politics is not on the radar of 18 to 21-year-old Indians, reveals Rama Bijapurkar.
'Israel is counting on the United States to enter the fray on their behalf and perform destructive strikes against these targets that are beyond Israel's conventional capabilities.' 'They may well get their way if they start a war, because the United States is still committed to Israel's security, and it won't matter whether it is Trump or Harris in the White House.'
If the idea was to garner AIADMK votes with or without the three faction leaders after the party broke ties with the NDA, it may not work after all, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Wednesday's Vikravandi by-election has become a referendum on the Stalin government, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The BJP is not as mighty a political force in Odisha as it is made out to be.'
"The emails were sent from 'mail.ru' domain, in which a man impersonating himself as Tauheed Liaquat sent them to all the schools with the aim of spreading fear among voters and Indian citizens," the Ahmedabad crime branch said in a press statement.
'Can you imagine that Surat's voters won't have any say now in exercising their fundamental right to choose a candidate of their own choice? This is what the BJP has reduced India's democracy to.' 'With this ugly act, in one stroke, the BJP has disenfranchised the voters of Surat.'
Congress wants to change the Constitution and rob Dalits, OBCs of quota benefits for religion-based reservation, Modi said.
Market chatter suggests that the BJP could win fewer than 300.
Despite declining by three percentage points in 2022-23 (FY23) compared to FY19, Odisha's unemployment rate remains higher than the average in India.
In India elections are never fought in a straight line. It's fought on many issues, at many levels, with multiple emotions and with a bit of good luck, too. Sheela Bhatt reports from Rajasthan.
'Episodes of targeted attacks on Muslims established that for a section of people and, sadly, even officials of the State, the election results conveyed no lessons.' 'Opposition parties must not be hesitant in speaking out whenever the mob with tacit State support targets Muslims,' asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
'Commentators have said that dealing with allies as equals will make Modi more sensitive.' 'Remember that the people Modi is dealing with are equally autocratic in their own lairs.' 'Further, Modi always has handy the threat of dissolving Parliament and calling for fresh polls.' 'Most of his own party, and certainly his allies and opponents having blown their budgets of efforts and resources in the just concluded elections, have no stomach for this.' 'They are all greatly looking forward to the loaves and fishes of office on offer.' 'That gives Modi an unbeatable advantage in any push-comes-to-shove situation,' explains Shreekant Sambrani.
Adityanath on the occasion praised the Centre's 'Agnipath' scheme and highlighted its benefits.
Besides India, the United States and the United Kingdom will also go to the polls this year.
BJP candidate Rajeev Chandrasekhar's wife and son who keep themselves far from the political limelight reveal what it is like to campaign for the first time.
It is crucial to electoral democracy that the exercise of freedom to vote is not subject to undue influence, the Supreme Court said on Thursday while striking down as unconstitutional the electoral bonds scheme for political funding.
'Outside the core voter base of upper caste Hindus, there is a large section unhappy with the performance of the BJP.'
The best-case scenario is that the BJP will top out at around 50 seats in UP -- a drop of 12 from the 62 it had won in 2019. Taken in tandem with Maharashtra and Karnataka, this is what is likely to put paid to the BJP's ambitions of a third term for Modi, argues Prem Panicker.
US Vice President Kamala Harris, who is of Indian and African heritage, has formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination becoming the first Indian-American to win the nomination from a major political party, and chose Minnesota Gov Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.
Kerala's election discourse operates surreptitiously. Its explicit face focuses on important national and local issues. At the same time, it seeks to secure apt communal equations to ensure votes, notes Shyam G Menon.
While Wadiyar, scion of the erstwhile Mysuru royal family, is making his political debut from the Mysore Lok Sabha segment, Lakshmana is state Congress spokesperson and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's confidant.
The five-state assembly elections are seen as a now-or-never, no-holds battle for the Congress, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
