Indrani Dutta
Mr. Tathagata Roy, 60, member of the BJP national executive, is the senior in a family of four brothers of whom two are in politics. He finds himself locked in a stiff battle in Kolkata Uttar where he faces Md. Salim of the CPI(M) and Sudip Bandyopadhyay of the Trinamool Congress.
Mr. Saugata Roy is […]

Politics in the family
Lalitha Kumaramangalam, the BJP candidate for the Tiruchi Lok Sabha seat, hails from a family, which is the only one, apart from the Gandhis, whose members served in the Union Cabinet for three generations. Her grandfather, Dr. P. Subbarayan, who was the first and only Tamil Chief Minister of Madras Presidency […]

B. KOLAPPAN
Under the merciless sun, hundreds of activists of the AIADMK and its allies are gathered in Sriperumbudur; they are handed sachets of drinking water and treated to popular MGR music numbers as they wait patiently for the arrival of AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa.
Even two decades after his death, M.G. Ramachandran seems to hold sway over […]

Raktima Bose, Kolkata
The Left thinks the ad misleads people
“My name is not Sudip Bandopadhyay, but Urdu Bandopadhyay” — this is the opening line of an advertisement published in a local Urdu daily newspaper on behalf of the Trinamool Congress candidate from the Kolkata Uttar Lok Sabha constituency.
The ad goes on to say that Mr. Bandopadhyay […]

Sruthi Krishnan, Chennai
E-mails, SMSes, voice drops… parties tap all possible ways to reach the voter
Electronic missives are issuing forth from the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to woo voters. The email and SMS campaigns in Tamil Nadu are reaching out to inboxes and mobile phones, campaign managers of both parties say.
The BJP […]

Anyone who says they have no ambition to achieve power at some stage is lying. — Varun Gandhi, BJP’s Pilbhit candidate
 
He [Varun Gandhi] doesn’t have any moral right to use Gandhi in his name. — Mayawati, U.P. Chief Minister

The Congress is living in a fool’s paradise. — Subramanian Swamy, Janata Party president

BJP candidate for Rampur Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi takes a break for a haircut at his campaign office. Photo: PTI

Chandigar (IANS): Gun-crazy Punjab has seen over 1,20,000 licensed weapons deposited by their owners with the police before the parliamentary elections — a five-time increase over the previous poll.
“An important aspect of this election is that against 21,000 weapons got deposited during the last election, 1.20 lakh weapons have been deposited during current Lok Sabha […]

Two dozen voters in a Punjab village did not cast their votes for any candidate on Thursday. They visited polling booths and expressed their disapproval by exercising their right not to vote, election officials said. All these voters belonged to Duhi village near Nabha town, around 50 km from here, in Patiala constituency that saw […]