




Summary India’s southern states could hold the fulcrum of power in New Delhi if the current parliamentary polls result in a hung Lok Sabha, the Lower House of Parliament. Unlike in the northern Hindi heartland states, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a major player in only one of five south Indian states, Karnataka. […..]
From Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s made-for-TV ‘Gabbar Singh Tax’ jibe to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s retort on the ‘Grand Stupid Thought’ of an 18% cap on GST rates, Modi government’s economic performance has been shaping the prestige poll battle in Gujarat. The stakes are high for both: a resurgent Rahul, campaigning with a newfound overt […..]
Machismo has always had political currency in UP, the original birthplace of terms like ‘dabang’, ‘bahubali’ and the utterly untranslatable ‘varchasv ki larhai’. It lies at the heart of Akhilesh Yadav’s 2017 makeover, as epitomised by his “let’s swap seats if you like UP so much” jibe at PM Narendra Modi this week as well […..]
29 assembly constituencies have returned the same party to power through the 2002, 2007 and 2012. What is special about them is that they make up core party bastions that are yet to be breached and any change here in 2017 would reflect a wider shift. SP has retained the maximum of these bastions so […..]
BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Katiyar is founder president of Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s youth wing, Bajrang Dal, and has been a long-time advocate of building a Ram temple in Ayodhya. He spoke to Nalin Mehta and Sanjeev Singh about BJP’s electoral prospects in UP and how it could impact the Ram temple dispute: What is […..]