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.
Ahead of the Madhya Pradesh elections, Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs from Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra have arrived in Bhopal as part of the ruling party's programme wherein every legislator will be allotted one assembly seat each that they are supposed to visit to take stock of the ground situation, party leaders said.
'They know that if they do not tie up with the Congress, then the minorities will move to the Congress.'
The BJP is focusing determinedly on the seats it lost in 2019, with the hope of winning these either independently or with the aid of its allies.
The Front partners welcomed the visit of the 19-member team ahead of Assembly elections.
Banerjee has held five rallies in Kolkata in 11 days against the CAA.
Elections in a democracy have their own sanctity and their process cannot be stalled, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday, after a lawyer alleged that voters of Rampur Sadar assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh were beaten up by the police and forced to confine themselves to their homes during the bypoll held on December 5.
'What happened to Andhra Pradesh? It is the perfect example of the transientness of Federal Units.' 'Federalism is a transient thing in this country.'
Out of the 403 seats up for grabs, the BSP had prepared a final list comprising 97 Muslim candidates (12 more than 2012), 87 Dalits and 106 other backwards castes, besides earmarking 113 seats for upper castes -- Brahmins 66, Kshatriyas 36 and others 11.
Tharoor said that he could not meet some delegates as their contact details were "missing" from the list that was provided to him.
In the five years in politics Priyanka Gandhi has undeniably emerged as a thorn in the BJP flesh, notes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. It is time that this thorn is twisted a wee bit more when the elections have become far more uncertain than what it was when the Election Commission announced the poll schedule.
These "instructions" were purportedly given by Bawankule in Ahmednagar where he was addressing a gathering of BJP workers on the management of poll booths.
A section of voters in Delhi chose to exercise the newly-introduced 'None Of The Above Option' on Wednesday, saying they have "little expectations" from any of the political parties engaged in the electoral battle.
The Shiv Sena on Tuesday said the Bharatiya Janata Party faced defeat in the Jharkhand assembly polls because it took people for granted. It said Union Home Minister Amit Shah felt that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act would increase the Hindu voter percentage, but labourers and tribals in Jharkhand rejected the BJP.
Infighting between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot has been out in the open throughout the Congress term.
Indian-American Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign on Wednesday after being defeated in 15 states across the United States on Super Tuesday, paving the way for a rematch between her rival Donald Trump and incumbent Joe Biden in the November elections.
The BJP had earlier demanded that the elections should be held by February 2008. However, the election was delayed as the voters' list in the state had to be revised. The state BJP has said that it will explore all means, including legal ones, to ensure that polls in Karnataka are not delayed beyond May 2008.
Neither the BJP, nor the Congress before it, made any manifesto commitments on defence spending, even though allocations have plummeted from 4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the late 1980s to less than 2 per cent today, points out Ajai Shukla.
Stalin still enjoys a lot of sympathy and empathy as someone wishing well for the state, but not full-throated support as in 2019 and 2021, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
With just 50 days to go for the polling day, the commission might get more tough.
To understand Modi, listen to what he does not say -- vide NRC, suggests Prem Panicker.
'We will go to every home and ask them to vote. We will go back once in 3 hours to check if they have voted. If not, we will ask them again... We will not rest till the final vote is cast,' RSS worker Chandramohan Seth tells A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com
After a series of deliberations, the BJP on Tuesday announced its first list of 189 candidates and a second list of 23 on Wednesday night.
Prodded by Mamata Banerjee, Keya Sarkar updates her voter card only to discover...
The most important lesson is that you have to build your political proposition, and sell it yourself. You can't leave it to the courts, media, NGOs and civil society and expect them to play the role of the Opposition. That's precisely what Mr Modi's challengers have been doing and we know the results, notes Shekhar Gupta.
The Election Commission is set to ask the government to amend laws to disqualify candidates listed in chargesheets for bribing candidates, a move which comes days after it cancelled a Tamil Nadu assembly bypoll following allegations of use of money to influence electors.
Against the backdrop of the Bharatiya Janata Party's demand that the Centre should not postpone Assembly polls in Karnataka, state Governor Rameshwar Thakur on Wednesday said the elections are likely to be held in May.
'Who has given how much money to which party, the people of India must know this fact.'
The notification for the Congress president's election will be out on September 22 by when all the PCC delegates will be finalised and electoral roll published and the election, if required, will be held on October 17.
Mudigere's Bharatiya Janata Party MLA, M P Kumaraswamy, on Thursday announced his resignation from the party, after he was denied ticket to contest the Karnataka assembly polls, and blamed national General Secretary C T Ravi for not getting nominated.
'The Congress government is on its way out in Himachal Pradesh.'
The Election Commission's insistence on physical verification of millions of non-resident Indians wishing to get voting rights has led to delay in finalizing modalities for entry of their names in electoral rolls.
The Madras High Court on Tuesday dismissed as not maintainable, a public interest litigation (PIL) petition challenging the organisational polls of the opposition AIADMK, where incumbents O Panneerselvam and K Palaniswami were elected unopposed as Coordinator and Joint Coordinator, respectively, of the party.
'The people of Tamil Nadu in particular Chennai know about the double standards of the BJP. Nothing will work for them here.'
'It is up to the voters to decide whom to vote for," Hazare said, adding, "we will tell them about the status of the cases pending against a candidate.'
They all seem to forget that the Music Academy is as much an independent institution as T M Krishna is an individual musician. In drawing those red lines for the Academy management, they do not even seem to recognise that they too have crossed a red line themselves, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
While Muslim candidates find no place in the list, the BJP has decided to go ahead with a majority of Vokkaligas -- Of the 25 names announced, 8 are from the Vokkaliga community. Brahmins, Reddys and Scheduled Caste candidates have been given four tickets each. There are two Lingayat candidates and three Naidus in the BJP list.BJP leaders defend the non-inclusion of Muslim candidates by claiming that there were no suitable candidates from the minority community.
Indian American Republican South Carolina Governor Nimrata 'Nikki' Randhawa Haley, has absolutely no intention of responding to state Democrats who upon seizing a 10-year-old voter registration document, where she has listed her race as 'W' for white, have charged that she uses her Indian American heritage when its convenient.
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