The BJP on Monday deputed observers for Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh to oversee the selection of chief ministers in the two states it won in contrasting styles.Union finance minister Arun Jaitley and party general secretary Saroj Pandey have been sent to Gujarat, while defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and minister of steel Narendra Singh Tomar will be in Himachal Pradesh to attend the meeting of legislature parties in the two states.In Gujarat the party might continue with incumbent Vijay Rupani while in Himachal it will have to decide on a new CM as the projected candidate for the post, Ku ... Read More

The curtains have come down on assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. But the poll bandwagon keeps rolling moving this time to the countrys northeast.Assembly polls are due in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura in February next year. Mizoram will also go to polls towards the end of 2018, most likely in November.With a public rally in Shillong on Saturday, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a call to oust the Congress government in Meghalaya, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has got a head start on the others.The saffron party heads governments in Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Prades ... Read More

The Bharatiya Janata Party lost some seats but held onto power in Prime Minister Narendra Modis home state of Gujarat despite a stiff challenge by the Congress in the assembly elections.The BJP won 99 seats, enough to retain a majority in the 182-member assembly. The Congress won 77 seats, a jump from the 61 it held previously. Here is a round-up of the Hindustan Times coverage of the Gujarat elections to help you understand the verdict.PM Modi led the BJP to its sixth straight victory with an increased vote share (compared to the 2012 election), although the Congress won the most seats it h ... Read More

The Bharatiya Janata Party has won elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, but not without a dip in its stronghold in Prime Minister Narendra Modi home state. The Gujarat election results are historic. In this day and age, for a party to keep winning for so long is unprecedented, said Modi, thanking the voters in Gujarat for backing the BJP to a sixth consecutive term.The Election Commission said the BJP won 99 seats in the 182-member Gujarat assembly, more than the majority mark of 92 needed to form a government. But it lost 16 seats compared to the 2012 polls. ... Read More

The BJP has a comfortable lead in terms of both vote share and seat share in the results which have been declared today. This does not mean that Gujarat 2017 was not a closely contested election. Here are four charts which prove this. None of the above (NOTA) has polled more votes than the victory margin in 30 assembly constituencies. Party-wise distribution of these seats is 15, 13 and 2 in favour of BJP, Congress and Independents, respectively. ... Read More

For decades, Thomas Friedman has been selling himself as Americas top producer of labels for global trends that nobody else has noticed. Just last week, he discovered some new big trends.He describes this awakening as a lucky break, important for the permanence of his employment and personal productivity, because he, like so many others, had been sucked into the vortex of the medias obsession with Donald Trump, to the point of forgetting his true mission.As he explains, the focus on Trump created the risk for perspicuous people like himself of not having the time to learn and report about the ... Read More