Doodle meeting poll

Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president K. Chandrasekhar Rao has appealed to the electors of the Presidential election, scheduled to be held on July 18, to vote as per their conscience after weighing the two candidates in the fray, and not based on their political affiliation. Addressing a meeting of TRS MPs, MLAs, MLCs, its State executive committee members and other senior leaders of the party convened in support of Yashwant Sinha, the candidate fielded by the Opposition, here on Saturday, the Telangana Chief Minister said Mr. Sinha’s candidature outweighs that of his rival’s as he was a towering personality. “He (Mr. Sinha) is an honest politician and an able administrator who handled the key portfolios of finance and external affairs in the Union Cabinet in the A.B. Vajpayee Government,” Mr. Rao said. In an appeal to all Parliamentarians in the country, the TRS chief said that there was a democratic practice in the country of voting as per conscience on some occasions and … [Read more...] about Telangana: KCR asks TRS legislators to vote as per conscience during Presidential poll

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing a public meeting titled as ‘Vijay Sankalpa Sabha’ at Parade Grounds in Secunderabad here on July 3. As the title of the meeting suggests, PM Modi may sound the poll bugle for the 2023 Assembly polls in Telangana to prepare the BJP cadre for the electoral contest. Modi, who landed here on Saturday to attend the BJP’s two-day National Executive Committee meeting, will address the rally on Sunday evening. During his last visit to the city on May 26, Modi, indirectly referring to TRS party, lashed out at family politics saying ‘parivaarvadi’ is democracy’s “greatest enemy”. He had expressed confidence that the BJP would storm to power in the state in the next assembly elections. According to political pundits, Modi is expected to continue his tirade against Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and the ruling TRS. Rao, popularly known as KCR, on Saturday in a party meeting in support of opposition parties’ presidential candidate Yashwant … [Read more...] about PM Modi to Address Public Meeting in Hyderabad on July 3

How many urban constituencies does India really have? How many Muslim-dominated constituencies do we have? These are key questions around our elections that we have simply not been able to answer – until now. [A brief aside on a frustrating data issue, before I get to the meat of the matter. Feel free to scroll down to the charts if this does not interest you.] Most demographic data for India comes from the Census, which splits its data down from the state and district level to the block, village and town level. The smallest unit of Census data is an Enumeration Block (EB) which consists of around 150 households. Electoral data, on the other hand, comes from the Election Commission of India (ECI), and is centred around parliamentary and assembly constituencies, the smallest unit of which is a polling booth which covers around 1,000 voters. The problem is that the ‘twain don’t meet. Theoretically, if the ECI simply listed all the Census EBs in an assembly or parliamentary … [Read more...] about Urban voters, Muslim voters – Lok Sabha mysteries solved

In the fall of 2012, an ailing Bal Thackeray, founder and patriarch of Maharashtra’s then dominant right-wing party — the Shiv Sena (Army of Shivaji) — had appealed to his Shiv Sainiks to stand by his son Uddhav and grandson Aaditya Thackeray. In what would be his final address to his party workers, Bal Thackeray, in his pre-recorded speech at the party’s annual Dussehra rally in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, called upon the Marathi manoos (Marathi-speaking sons-of-the soil) to remain united and smash the Congress. The speech, three weeks before the 86-year-old Thackeray’s death in November that year, also had an implied appeal to his estranged nephew, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray, to join forces with the Shiv Sena. A decade later, while the prospects of the Sena and the MNS uniting have completely evaporated, a bleaker question facing Mr. Uddhav and his son today is whether ordinary Sainiks will stand by them after the recent rebellion of 40 MLAs led by Eknath … [Read more...] about Shiv Sena | The Maratha tiger in its labyrinth