M I Khan in Patna Nearly twelve years after he left the National Democratic Alliance and resigned from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government after the Gujarat riots in 2002, Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan will share the dais with Gujarat Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi at his 'hunkar' rally in Bihar's Muzaffarpur town on Monday. Paswan, who joined the NDA last week to contest the Lok Sabha polls and took a U-turn on Modi, will appear in public with the BJP's top brass including Modi at the rally. Paswan's son Chirag will also be present at the function. Upendra Kushwaha is another new face that will be at the event. Kushwaha is the chief of the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) that joined hands with the BJP last week. Both Paswan and Kushwaha are known as their own caste. Paswan is said to enjoy overwhelming support of his caste -- locally known as Dusadh, the only Dalit caste in Bihar after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar categorised 21 other Dalit castes as 'Mahadalit' -- poorest of the poor. Kushwaha has been trying hard for last few years to emerge as a leader of his caste -- Koeri, an agrarian backward caste spread across the state. A senior BJP leader said that presence of Paswan and Kushwaha will send a strong political massage among respective castes in Bihar. "It will strengthen the BJP's social support base in Bihar," he said. In Bihar, the BJP is widely seen as an upper caste party. The much-hyped rally is seen as a bid to mobilise support and strengthen the support base in the state. The state in the Hindi heartland that sends 40 Lok Sabha members to Parliament is politically very important. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the party had won 12 seats, while the Janata Dal-United won 20 seats, when they had contested as a combined force. It is expected that Modi will target Kumar, who has openly opposed him by repeatedly saying that the prime ministerial candidate should be of nsecular credentials.
Pointing out that the party had contested seven seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the state LJP chief said there was no reason why it would settle for less than that for the 2019 elections, or for six Lok Sabha seats and one in Rajya Sabha.
A 15-year-old Mahadalit was allegedly burnt to death in Bihar's Rohtas district by an upper caste man because the boy's goat grazed standing paddy crop.
"We got a lot of confidence from our success in Bihar, and we will continue that momentum," Owaisi told reporters after their meeting in Lucknow.
The Union minister asserted that it is the might of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi that has compelled political rivals "those who used to avoid each other to hug each other."
The induction of former Bahujan Samaj Party leader Babu Singh Kushwaha is a sign of the Bharatiya Janata Party's nervousness on the Uttar Pradesh battlefield. It is also the result of the BJP's intra-party tensions, analyses Sheela Bhatt
An apparently embarrassed Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday said it will not give ticket to tainted former Uttar Pradesh Minister Babu Singh Khushwaha, against whom Central Bureau of Investigation conducted raids on Wednesday in the national Rural Health Mission scam case, and made it clear that he will not be its star campaigner.
Hours after he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, ousted Bahujan Samaj Party minister and former Mayawati confidante Babu Singh Kushwaha was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation early on Wednesday morning.
Former cabinet minister Babu Singh Kushwaha, widely known as Mayawati's virtual bell-boy, is all set to now give sleepless nights to the state government.
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The party will also leave two seats for the Apna Dal, and entered into an electoral agreement with the lesser known Jan Adhikar Party.
Six days after he dared to sound the bugle of revolt against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, former UP minister for family welfare and mines, Babu Singh Kushwaha, was served a notice of eviction from the ministerial bungalow he has been occupying in Lucknow.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Thursday reportedly sacked two ministers in her cabinet; though the state government maintained that Family Welfare minister Babu Singh Kushwaha and Health Minister Anant Kumar Misra had resigned from their posts voluntarily.Kushwaha and Misra tendered their resignations after taking responsibility for the multi-crore scams unearthed in their respective departments during the investigations in the murder of Lucknow CMO Dr B P Singh.
Deputy Chef de Mission Balbir Singh Kushwaha said that facilities at the Games Village were good.
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'Modi has said the poor are sleeping peacefully and the rich are buying sleeping pills.' 'The reality is the other way around.' 'Poor people are not able to sleep because of hunger.'
Addressing a press conference in Patna, All India Congress Committee general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala said the party would like the Central Bureau of Investigation to complete its inquiry in three months and favoured setting up of a special court to facilitate expeditious trial.
Hours before Union Home Minister Amit Shah's virtual rally in Bihar on Sunday, Rashtriya Janata Dal leaders and workers staged protests, beating utensils and blowing conch shells against what their leader Tejashwi Yadav dubbed as the ruling party's celebration of the devastation caused by COVID-19 and the lockdown.
Reacting to allegations that his party was dividing anti-BJP votes, Owaisi said he was running a political party that has a right to contest on its own.
The final phase of polling on Saturday will cover 78 constituencies spread across 19 north Bihar districts.
Both the BJP and the JD-U abetted the LJP split but interestingly, independently. And there hangs a tale of conflicting interests, gamesmanship, subterfuge, and retribution, reports Radhika Ramaseshan.
A day after Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi hinted at the next Bihar assembly polls being held in September-October, most of the political parties including ruling Janata Dal-United and Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party claimed they were fully ready for it.
Voicing "dissatisfaction" over remarks by Modi on Friday at a university in Lucknow, the Joint Action Council spearheading the stir asked if the prime minister would now take action against his ministers.
Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am for the savage assault in an empty moving bus on the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern who came to be known the world over as Nirbhaya.
Pramod Singh Kushwaha, then the additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) and who headed the investigation team, said each member of the team pitched in to prepare a watertight case against the convicts.
The 28 new ministers who joined the Chouhan cabinet on July 2 include 20 of cabinet rank and eight ministers of state.
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Rai hinted that his daughter might contest the coming assembly polls.
They had said they wanted to protest, while maintaining social distancing, against the attack on the family of a party supporter in which case a Janata Dal-United MLA has been named as an accused.
Answer sheets are found to be missing from BSEB office when the SIT sought them for a forensic test, reports M I Khan from Patna.
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Everyone is playing politics over a dead person now, why no one bothered to visit him when he was alive, Paswan asked.
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Responding to a query about corruption in the scheme's implementation, Minister of State for Rural Development Upendra Kushwaha said almost all members know about it and added that steps are being taken for improving the scheme.
If the Chirag Paswan-led LJP posts a good result, the young leader could become a formidable caste challenger in the years to come and a permanent fixture as a BJP ally, reports Aditi Phadnis.
This is the first time, since the JDU-BJP alliance came to power in 2005, that the saffron party has staked claim for the speakers post.
'There is no law and order in Bihar.' 'Criminals do as per their will.'
The Patna civil court on Thursday deferred hearing of a case that was filed against Priyanka Gandhi on Wednesday for her remarks on Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, terming his speech in Amethi as "neech rajniti" (low level politics).
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