Union minister Ramvilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party will contest six seats in Jharkhand, where the party was excluded by three other United Progressive Alliance partners in the seat-sharing arrangement. LJP candidates will contest for Palamu, Chatra, Dhanbad, Hazaribagh, Koderma and Jamshedpur seats out of 14 Jharkhand LS seats, party spokesman Sanjay Singh told PTI in Patna on Tuesday. =
Releasing the list of LJP candidates, Paswan said his party would contest from around 200 seats leaving 37 and 3 for its electoral allies -- CPI and Forward Bloc.
Bharatiya Janata Party and other National Democratic Alliance members were on their feet demanding an explanation from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the spat, which they said was "very serious".
Sources in both the BJP and the Janata Dal-United suggested such a possibility but it remained unclear if Kumar, the unquestioned leader of his party, has finalised a deal with the BJP top brass.
Lok Janskati Party president Ramvilas Paswan on Friday said he fails to understand why Congress is "dithering" to join the Rashtriya Janata Dal-LJP alliance which is intact in spite of sentencing of Lalu Prasad.
Exigencies of electoral politics and individual ambitions often stoke family feuds and sibling rivalries.
Lok Janshakti Party supremo Ramvilas Paswan on Saturday urged the Centre to raise the number of Lok Sabha seats from 543 to 814 and make provisions for a separate quota for women from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, other weaker sections of society and minorities."I have serious apprehensions over the passage of the Bill in its present form. We have suggested increasing the number of seats from existing 543 to 814," said Paswan.
'The Congress is trying to reinvent itself -- the caste census demand, OBC emphasis, the anti-corporate thrust, especially on Adani etc -- all this is not standard Congress strategy.'
Chirag Paswan cryptically added that he was not ruling out the possibility of siding with the RJD.
Lok Janshakti Party chief Ramvilas Paswan on Sunday said his party would support United Progressive Alliance candidate for Presidency.
Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan is working overtime to ensure the victory of his son Chirag Paswan, who is contesting from the Jamui parliamentary constituency in Bihar.
"The findings of National Commission for Minorities and National Women's Commission on communal violence in Karnataka have established the diabolical role of Bajrang Dal. Dal leaders have openly claimed responsibility for attacks on Christians in Orissa and Karnataka," Paswan said accusing it of espousing a divisive agenda.
A women offers prayers to the Sun God on the occasion of the Chhath Puja in Bhubaneswar.
The decision on whether to remove the LJD from the UPA will be taken by chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
Accusing Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray of hurting the religious sentiments of people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan on Saturday demanded his immediate arrest for causing divisions in the society.
Following on the footsteps of Barack Obama, a Dalit should be made the prime minister of India and Union Minister Ramvilas Paswan is the ideal candidate, the National Dalit Front said on Wednesday. "Change is taking place at a global level. The time has now come for India to have a Dalit prime minister," Udit Raj, the secretary general of the recently-launched NDF said in New Delhi.
The numbers were revealed some concerns arose, says Chirag Paswan
Assembly elections are due in the state in September.
In an attempt to bring uniformity in prices of medicines, Chemicals Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Wednesday asked the states to exempt them from local taxes or at least advance the implementation of value-added tax regime for drugs.
'It is not a question of stature. I had expected Railways,' said the Chemicals and Fertilizer Minister.
A Bihar court on Wednesday issued fresh summons to Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad, his wife Rabri Devi and Lok Janshakti Party President Ramvilas Paswan directing them to appear before it in person on September 15 in a case in which they are accused of damaging public property.
The Janata Dal-United supremo was replying to queries from journalists in Darbhanga district which he visited as part of his state-wide mass outreach programme 'Samadhan Yatra'.
Top political leaders of Bihar, including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan, on Monday strongly condemned the attack on Samajwadi Party Member of Legislative Assembly Abu Asim Azmi.Nitish Kumar condemned the incident and declared that it had again exposed the MNS' true colours "We will take the matter up with the Union government as well as the Maharashtra government."
The Congress party on Wednesday gave a deadline to Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan up to September 23 to decide whether it wanted to come with Rashtriya Janata Dal-led United Progressive Alliance in the coming Bihar Assembly polls.
Three million tonnes of buffer stock, where the government bears the interest and insurance cost, was announced by the Centre only for a year and that period is ending in June.
Scenes from the National Democratic Alliance meeting at the Ashoka Hotel in New Delhi, July 18, 2023.
LJP sources said the BJP's defeat in the five state polls have ignited a rethink in the party over its ties with the saffron party.
"The electorate of Bihar yearn for a change and for this they want the Congress, LJP and JD (U) to unitedly fight the assembly elections," he said.
If the party's members aren't sure what it stands for, see no path to wealth or power, and endure control by a dynasty, which, almighty as it is within the party, cannot get them the votes, they are likely to explore options, notes Shekhar Gupta.
In an embarrassment to the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar, one of its MLAs has been accused of hurting Hindu sentiments by allegedly berating Goddess Lakshmi and Saraswati and Lord Hanuman.
Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers Ram Vilas Paswan said on Monday that his ministry would cut the prices of life saving and other important drugs by bringing more drugs under the 'price monitoring system' and also check the manufacture and
BJP sources said a meeting of the National Democratic Alliance is expected to take place soon to highlight its growing strength and to dispel the impression that the departure of some of its oldest allies such as the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, Shiromani Akali Dal and the Janata Dal-United have the left the saffron party without a major partner.
Steel and Fertilisers Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday asserted that government would pursue reservation for socially backward classes in the private sector as per commitment made in the Common Minimum Programme.
Steel Minister Ram Vilas said in a meeting that the prime minister could intervene, if need be, to provide iron ore blocks to Lakshmi Mittal, CEO of ArcelorMittal, for his two proposed 12 mn tonne steel plants in India. The world's biggest steelmaker has signed MoUs with Jharkhand and Orissa governments to set up greenfield steel plants wherein it will invest a total of Rs 80000 cr. ArcelorMittal has already been allotted two coal blocks, one each, in Orissa and Jharkhand.
"Lok Janshakti Party spent the year 2012 in Jan Sampark Yatra. We worked on all issues, be it Rs. 82,000 crores large-scale corruption or 6,000 MNREGA scandal or people dying after consuming illicit liquor. We conducted the Jan Sampark Yatra on all these issues in 2012 and we announced that we would take out a yatra in 2013. It is after intense thinking that we named this yatra as Bihar Bachao yatra," Paswan told mediapersons here.
Lok Janshakti Party supremo Ram Vilas Paswan and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Rajeev Pratap Rudy on Thursday won their respective Rajya Sabha seats from Bihar.It has been reported that the BJP and its partner Janata Dal -United are optimistic about winning three seats, while the Rashtriya Janata Dal and LJP appear confident of winning both the seats they are contesting.The RJD-LJP alliance has the support of 68 MLAs, against the requirement of 76.