India are the only team to have broken Australia's dominance over the last 20 years when they won the silverware on home soil in 2011. Expectations are high in India that their team can bring home a third world title, emulating the famous first success in the tournament in England in 1983.

Narendra Modi now is the leader with the largest popular mandate in the world. In 2014, US President Obama, meeting Modi in Myanmar on the sidelines of the Asean summit, declared, “this man has the biggest electoral victory of all of us”. In 2019 that holds even more true

In his first term, Narendra Modi ran a tight ship with a firmness missing since Indira Gandhi. His control over the govt was akin to the hold US prez have over their team, or the type of clout wielded by British PM Margaret Thatcher after Falklands War. Modi was principal plank of BJP’s campaign and Opposition worked tirelessly to turn the contest into a referendum on Modi.

Despite carrying a Right-wing image and unabashed endorsement of Hindu cultural ideals and symbols, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's welfare approach is considered closer to the Left. Having drawn lessons from ill-fated 2004 Shining India campaign, Modi didn't want to let adversaries daub the party as pro-rich. MANREGA was made more accountable and Food Security Act rolled out.

The latest defeat to Narendra Modi will trigger bigger concerns in Congress than its decimation of 2014. On the backfoot against a rampaging BJP for the better part of its tenure, Congress had fortuitously managed a clean sweep over its rival’s strongholds in MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.

A call on Shah’s new role can be tricky because of the transformation he brought about in BJP, turning what was a languid organisation into a relentless poll machine. There are doubts whether an effective substitute can be found.

Campaign Modi was a celebration of his aggressive military retaliation against Pak-sponsored terror which the intellectual establishment derided as jingoism and an unabashed emphasis of Hindu symbols and themes — an anathema to the “ancien regime”. In his victory speech, Modi said the verdict showed that the political use of “secularism” had run its course.

Smriti Irani, whose meteoric rise in BJP saw her become the HRD and information & broadcasting minister before being divested of these portfolios, on Thursday emerged as a giant-killer — this time scripting a historic win by dethroning Rahul Gandhi in Congress's home turf. Irani continued to cultivate Amethi in the past 5 years despite her loss in 2014 to Gandhi.

After Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Narendra Modi is the third prime minister of the country who has been able to retain power for a second term with full majority in Lok Sabha. As counting goes on across the country on Thursday, trends show the Modi-led BJP would be easily able to cross the halfway mark of 272 seats in the 17th Lok Sabha elections.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is delivering his victory address at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi. Stay with TOI for live updates:

Ahead of the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections on Thursday, ministry of home affairs (MHA) has alerted states regarding the possibility of violence in different parts of the country. State chief secretaries and DGPs have been tipped-off in this regard by the ministry. The MHA has asked all states and Union Territories to maintain law and order.

The government is learnt to have cleared the names of 4 judges for their elevation to the SC, sources said on Wednesday. The 4 names cleared are: justices Aniruddha Bose, A S Bopanna, B R Gavai and Surya Kant. The names of justices Bose and Bopanna were earlier returned by the government to the SC collegium citing seniority & representation of regions as reasons.