ASSEMBLY-ELECTIONS
Assembly Elections 2023: What is at stake for Congress and BJP today?
Congress will need some big wins to drive home a tough bargain with INDIA alliance partners. For BJP, victories will reinforce perceptions that it is headed for three successive Lok Sabha wins and that PM Modi can front assembly polls for the party without needing strong state-level leadership
ASSEMBLY-ELECTIONS
Rajasthan Elections 2023: Gehlot collects the goodwill, Congress MLAs the voter ire
Rajasthan Elections 2023: Learning from his own experience in 2013, Ashok Gehlot focussed on welfare schemes early in his tenure and marketed them well. This has left him perched comfortably even as his MLAs look vulnerable in a state with an established track record of rejecting incumbents
ASSEMBLY-ELECTIONS
Assembly Elections 2023: For Congress, a test of its OBC strategy before Lok Sabha polls
Assembly Elections 2023: Congress’s outreach to OBCs and its promise to carry out a nationwide caste count and remove the 50 percent cap on reservations for SCs/STs and backward classes will first be tested in the assembly polls before the Lok Sabha elections next year. But winning back the OBC vote from BJP won’t be easy
INDIA
Is Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification just what the country needed?
The disqualification may prove to be the inflection point that galvanises the Congress cadre and brings together the opposition. Unless they manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
POLITICS
Kharge goes the Sonia-Rahul way: Holding CWC polls would have given winning Congress leaders legitimacy
CWC polls would have elevated those Congress heavyweights who have traction among the party’s local leaders at the state and district levels. But these would necessarily not have been the faces Rahul and Sonia Gandhi would have wanted to see in the CWC.
POLITICS
Harish Rawat, once Congress’ troubleshooter, turns rebel-rouser
Former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat was until recent quelling rebellions inside the Congress. Today, he could well be fostering one ahead of the Uttarakhand assembly elections.
BUSINESS
Congress again clings to the past with its ‘do not drink’ debate
The Grand Old Party continues to be deeply reluctant to chart a new course and face up to fresh challenges with creative ideas.
TRENDS
Priyanka Gandhi has so far proved to be a catastrophe for Congress
The Gandhi scion was expected to give brother Rahul Gandhi a helping hand and lift Congress from the doldrums, but has instead provoked a series of political disasters.
POLITICS
Congress readies new playbook to defeat BJP — launch an Anna Hazare-like movement
The Congress is obviously inspired by the 2011 India Against Corruption movement which laid the groundwork for the demise of the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government which was swept aside by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014.
INDIA
Analysis: The constant struggles of an alternate leadership to the Gandhis in Congress
Try as they might, substitutes to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi have not really emerged in the Grand Old Party. This despite the poor electoral and organisational record of the Gandhis.
TRENDS
PM Modi’s steadfast trust in babus reflects in Cabinet reshuffle
But the big question is can former bureaucrats make good politicians. Can they shore up the economy, prop up the government’s image?
TRENDS
In BJP state units, dissenting voices are getting louder and bolder
Though it is the chief ministers of BJP-ruled states like Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh who are on target here, this open show of rebellion is also a challenge to PM Modi and Home Minister Shah’s authority.
BUSINESS
In poll-bound Uttarakhand, severe infighting threatens to ruin Congress’ victory hopes
Severe infighting in opposition ranks could give the BJP a good chance to return to power in the assembly elections due next year. If that happens, it will buck a trend: Uttarakhand has a record of voting out an incumbent government.
