According to political observers, the AIMIM sees a catchment area in Bihar, where Muslims are more than 17 per cent of the total population but have never got a proportionate representation in the state legislature.
Asked how many seats the Congress would fight on, Singh said they would be flexible in seat sharing.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com does a deep dive into four elections when Narendra Modi resorted to anti-Muslim fervour and points out that Hindu-Muslim politics does not necessarily mean victory for the BJP.
New faces may, however, be inducted in the council of ministers from the allies Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress, he told reporters during his visit to Madhubani on Wednesday as part of his 'Samadhan Yatra'.
Talking to reporters in Patna, the former Union minister asserted that he would happily function as 'an ordinary party worker, worth five rupees', if the JD-U leadership was assumed by 'anybody from among the Luv Kush Samaj (Kurmis and Koeris) or the EBCs whose aspirations have been the party's driving force'.
Kushwaha was referring to 'Luv Kush' rally in Patna, a veritable gathering of Kurmis and Koeris upset with supposed hegemony of numerically powerful Yadavs which Prasad, then helming Bihar, was seen as embodying.
Kushwaha retorted saying that he could not leave the party without his share in the "paternal property".
A former protege of the JD-U de facto leader, Kushwaha, had revolted against Kumar in 2013, giving up his Rajya Sabha berth and floated his own outfit.
The Janata Dal-United parliamentary board chief latched on to reports of KS Eshwarappa, a minister in the BJP-ruled southern state, having said that the tricolour may be replaced by a saffron flag sometime in the future.
"You can see all of us working together. There is no discontent. The problem is, today newspapers have more pages than before, news channels run 24X7 and then there is social media where anybody can say anything without worrying about backing a claim with facts," he said.
The Janata Dal-United supremo, however, also appeared annoyed with parliamentary board chief Upendra Kushwaha who had recently jumped the gun with the insinuation that the RJD could be trying to 'further the Bharatiya Janata Party's agenda' by refraining from taking action against the minister.
Soren spent more than an hour with Prasad at RIMS Director's bungalow, where the RJD leader is staying. Coming out of the RIMS, Soren told reporters, 'we will fight Bihar elections together'.
Both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have refused to meet Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha.
Modi did not have the guts to face the students of the country and so he crushed them using the police, he alleged. "I challenge the prime minister to go to any of the universities, stand over there without his police, without his infrastructure and tell the people what is he going to do with this country," the Congress leader said.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar seems intent on mending fences with estranged former colleagues as part of the spadework for posing a credible challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party's national hegemony.
His resignation came hours after reports surfaced that the party has sought an explanation from him over allegations of corruption levelled by some unidentified workers.
HAM's Bihar president Brishen Patel told reporters on Wednesday that his party can snap the alliance from the BJP after discussions on this matter.
'The JD-U is my party and of thousands of leaders and workers.' 'It is certainly not Nitish Kumar's party.'
According to insiders, Modi wants to sort out internal issues pertaining to their alliance with other regional parties (the Hindustani Awam Morcha, the Lok Janashakti Party and the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party) and ensure the combine presents a unified face before the electorate.
Asking the people of Bihar to bring their own government to power, the post made a veiled reference to the alleged high handedness of bureaucracy under the JD(U)-BJP rule but fell shy of a frontal attack on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his arch rival, or the near hegemonic saffron party which considers him a bete noire.
'There is no law and order in Bihar.' 'Criminals do as per their will.'
By targeting the BJP's Ram temple agenda, Upendra Kushwaha has hinted that his days within the NDA are all but over.
'I am in the NDA as of now,' Kushwaha said.
Bihar being in the grip of a Dusshera festival mood, leaders of rival political groups including Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav on Tuesday used examples of slaying of Ravana to attack each other.
Bihar assembly elections which are to be announced shortly are expected to be five-phased and around 50,000 paramilitary personnel will be deployed in each phase to ensure peaceful polling.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to contest 160 of the 243 assembly seats in the upcoming polls, leaving 83 other seats to its three allies.
Disgruntled Janata Dal-United leader Upendra Kushwaha on Monday resigned from Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's party, less than two years after returning to the party, and announced formation of the 'Rashtriya Loktantrik Janata Dal'.
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.
RLSP leaders feel insulted after getting no response from the BJP on their demand for a 'respectful seat sharing formula' for the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state, BJP will contest 20, while the JD-U, LJP and RLSP will contest 12, five and two seats respectively.
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.
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.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's allies in Bihar Lok Janashakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party chief Upendra Kushwaha on Monday said that the Modi wave is sweeping the state and the ongoing Lok Sabha polls outcome will prove them right.
The notification will be issued on January 20, while January 27 will be the last date of filing nominations.
Rashtriya Lok Samata Party MLA Lallan Paswan has stirred a controversy by purportedly asking objectionable questions to girls of a residential Dalit school in Bihar's Vaishali district where he had gone in connection with death of a Class X girl allegedly after being raped.
Expelled Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav on Monday hit back at Lalu Prasad for calling him "Mir Jafar and Jai Chand" and said his former mentor acted like "Duryodhan" and "Kansh" for the Yadav caste.
"All your queries would be answered at an appropriate time," he told journalists.
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.
Buoyed by exit poll surveys, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday claimed that it would form governments on its own in Haryana and Maharashtra, and stressed that it would not require support of the Shiv Sena to form government in the latter.
The party, however, did not announce as whether it would merge with any other party or become part of some other alliance.
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