What should have been a direct contest between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress in the Ladakh Lok Sabha constituency is now a three-corner fight with an alliance of local groups fielding an Independent to challenge the national parties.
Former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer M G Devasahayam, who was one of the signatories to the representation on the credibility of electronic voting machines (EVMs), voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) and the vote-counting process, had filed an application with the poll panel under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, seeking details of the action taken on it.
The Election Commission on Monday censured BJP leader Dilip Ghosh and Congress'd Supriya Shrinate for derogatory remarks against the dignity of women.
'However, to establish a quid pro quo, one can potentially see several things, like whether they got any benefits from the party that they gave money to. That is something that people (of India) will gauge. But to finally establish that there was money paid as consideration, it would require an investigation, a proper investigation, to be able to come up with such conclusions.'
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said the government is close to reaching saturation in implementing social sector schemes designed to provide basic necessities to the poor. Addressing the students of Hindu College on the occasion of its 125th anniversary, she said the time has come for India to become economically 'aatmanirbhar' (self-reliant) and march forward to becoming a developed nation by 2047. Regretting that 60 years since Independence passed without any sense of urgency, Sitharaman said, "We have laid the material foundation for a Viksit Bharat" and empowering people by providing basic necessities to all.
Ron Somers, founder and CEO of India First Group and the former President of leading business advocacy group US-India Business Council said that when Lok Sabha election results are declared on June 4, "I believe that Narendra Modi will win Parliament by the largest majority ever recorded in the country's history.
'If the government can conduct elections during such a time, I am sure they can find ways to bring peace and address the concerns of people. Everything that we had built over the years got burnt and now we are supposed to start our lives from scratch and we should also vote?'
'The Congress is solely responsible for the situation that has arisen in Surat'
'The PM who is first among equals, who has to listen to others, take their point of view into account and who would have to be a good manager'
Now, every state election -- first up, Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand later this year, then Delhi in January and Bihar in September next year -- will be seen by his followers for evidence of his recovery, and by rivals of sharpening decline, points out Shekhar Gupta.
'Bringing in Dr Mohan Yadav as the Yadav-OBC face from Ujjain as chief minister, and a scheduled tribe leader Jagdish Devda from Mandsaur district, and a Brahmin face Rajendra Shukla from Rewa, the BJP is making an attempt to put in place a new caste equation in the state keeping an eye on the general elections next year.'
The decision to repeal the Act was taken at a late-night cabinet meeting on Friday as it is an obsolete pre-Independence Act of the British for the then province of Assam, the CM said.
It is in power on its own only in three states -- Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana -- with a big question mark on whether it can even stake claim to be head of the INDIA bloc.
It's a different Srinagar from what Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf encountered 24 years ago. Tourists throng the Kashmir Valley post-Article 370, azaadi appears dead, and everyone says one man is responsible for this change, so what if his poster is nowhere to be seen.
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Trying to strike an emotional chord with the voters, Sonia asked the people to consider Rahul Gandhi too as their own.
'BJP has lot of money. Even a rich person like me is scared of taking on the financial muscle of the BJP.' 'What is the point of throwing money? Result toh aane wala nahi hai.'
The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) on Sunday elected its first Dalit president from the Left-backed groups after nearly three decades.
Sinha, while congratulating the EC for ensuring peaceful voting, alleged that the sense of fear and terror did prevail at some places.
'There is a huge wait in Kashmir for compassion from the prime minister of India.'
Addressing a gathering of around 6,000 in-charges of 'Shakti Kendras,' each comprising two to three booth-level areas, at Marine Drive, the prime minister said that Kerala has the potential to influence who will be in power in Delhi.
Modi can abandon the path of Hindutva only at risk to his position within his own fraternity. But if he pursues a hard line, he faces the risk of being hauled up by his coalition-partners. For the first time in a decade, Modi is not in enviable situation, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Several BJP-backed state governments have unveiled schemes targeting the poor, women, farmers and students, following the party's setback in the Lok Sabha polls.
Targeting Modi over inflation, Priyanka called him a "mehengai" man.
The CAA, enacted by the BJP-led government at the Centre in 2019, aims at granting Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants, including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan who entered India before December 31, 2014.
Modi wants the BJP to gets an additional 10% of the vote share from what it won in 2019. Plans are afoot to get new faces to replace MPs with poor chances of winning. Sources say more than 100 MPs are like to be axed, notes Modi biographer Ramesh Menon.
In his first visit to the valley after becoming the prime minister for the third consecutive term, Modi emphasised the importance of enabling the people of Jammu and Kashmir to elect their representatives for the assembly.
The climate for 'doing business' remains forbidding, taxtortion is still rife, corruption at state and district levels has increased, oil prices remain extortive with high taxation, and the continued red tape has kept the enterprise system as stifled as before, points out Debashis Basu.
'There might be some internal tussles that can be expected between any two persons in any party.' 'But I do not see any tussle which might weaken the possibility of dictatorship.'
The Congress needs to reorganise itself at the grassroots, infuse younger blood, and have more boots on the ground. Just offering freebies is not the answer anymore. Leadership matters, asserts Ramesh Menon.
'This might prove to be a temporary gain for the BJP, but at a huge cost to the people of Gujarat and democracy in India.'
The lawmakers expressed concerns about "pre- and post-poll rigging in Pakistan's recent parliamentary elections" and urged the US Congress to "withhold recognition of a new government in Pakistan until a thorough, transparent, and credible investigation of election interference has been conducted".
The home minister also reviewed the preparations for the annual Amarnath pilgrimage scheduled to begin on June 29.
'Nobody is speaking up for Muslims today.' 'Secular parties too have calmed down because they feel this will hurt the Hindu vote (bank).' 'In this scenario, where does a Muslim go?'
'Nehru remains central to the polemic between the Congress and the BJP, or stated ideologically, between secular and Hindu nationalism.' 'The reason is that Nehru represents what is optimally possible as a secular politics along with liberalism and democracy in a country like India.'
A number of high-profile electoral battles, starring veterans and debutants, formidable opponents and unlikely contestants, feature in Tuesday's outcome.
Encouraged by their initiatives which resulted in high voter turnout in Naxal-hit areas, officers in Chhattisgarh's Chief Electoral Office are hopeful of a similar trend in 72 constituencies going to polls on Tuesday.
'Rahul should have learnt so much in the last 20 years. But give him a mic and he begins to talk without thinking about its consequences.'
The Delhi high court on Friday refused to entertain a PIL seeking direction to the Centre and the Election Commission to make voting compulsory in parliamentary and assembly polls, saying it cannot force a person to vote.
Six decades and more later, we are now captives of our identities. Every poll is based on elaborate calculations of electability of candidates on the basis of their castes and other narrow definers. That, along with voter promiscuity, is what defines our political culture, which remains stubbornly resistant to any change, asserts Shreekant Sambrani.
