'Akhileshji has to protect his political turf and if it means confronting his father, snapping ties with him and forming another party, so be it.'
The party is counting on women voters and caste calculus, among others, to swing the crucial polls in its favour
An estimated 57 per cent of the electorate cast their votes in the first phase of the Bihar assembly election in 49 constituencies on a violence-free note on Monday.
In an interview to Rediff.com's Anita Katyal, Shambhu Srivastava speaks about the need of breaking out of the communal-secular paradigm and focusing on the Congress party's poor performance and its track record in fuelling communalism.
The Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar is in trouble ahead of the upcoming state assembly polls as two of its ally the Lok Janshakti Party and the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party on Sunday played pressure game to bargain for more seats.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi came under scathing attack from the Grand Secular Alliance on Sunday in poll-bound Bihar with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and Congress President Sonia Gandhi accusing him of "insulting" the state and failing to deliver on any of his promises.
In terms of electoral fortunes, in all likelihood, the status quo is not going to change in any significant manner. These six seats from Bihar are unlikely to give any clear signal to UPA, NDA or Federal Front.
Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi sharpened his attack on Nitish Kumar, saying the Janata Dal-United leader's "arrogance" and "ambition" to become prime minister drove him to split from BJP, and compared the socio-economic conditions of Muslims in Gujarat and Bihar to claim he practised "true" secularism.
Nitish Kumar has failed to curb communal forces and hoodlums across communities. And that is ominous for Bihar's present and future, warns Mohammad Sajjad.
Biju Janata Dal members had staged a walk-out while NDA ally Shiv Sena did not participate in the voting.
The septuagenarian politician, once the right hand man of Bal Thackeray, is now battling irrelevance in a Balasaheb-less Shiv Sena
'I hope the honourable PM and Mr Shah take steps to ensure that the NDA doesn't split.'
A "record" 57.59 per cent of over 1.46 crore voters cast their ballots in 55 assembly seats in Bihar on Sunday in the fourth and penultimate round of polling.
'I am a labourer's wife, the mother of labourers. But I won't be a labourer's grandmother for sure,' she says in the hope that her grandchildren will have a bright future in the Bihar that will unfold in the next decade.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's quest to strengthen its base in north India starts from Bihar, says Bharat Bhushan.
Modi's NDA is good enough to give a psychological boost to the once 'untouchable' BJP and Modi but if the NDA doesn't get a majority on its own, then walking the last mile will be the greatest challenge of this election for Modi, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
The results for the bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tripura were announced on Tuesday.
'Everything was sacrosanct when the BJP was led by Vajpayee and Advani.' 'That was a different culture. But with Modi and Amit Shah nothing is sacrosanct.'
'The clearest interpretation of the November 8 mandate is that the backwards, Dalits and minorities, and a huge proportion of women cutting across caste and class, displayed massive consolidation to the extent that despite chipping of votes by the Left Front, by the Third Front and by the BSP, Mahagathbandhan candidates won, and in many cases by huge margins,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Non-Congressism is the answer to India's current difficulties, says Dr Shambhu Shrivastava, who gives a historical perspective of non-Congress experiments in 1967, 1977, 1989 and 1998.
If we have to elect Rahul Gandhi to rule the country because 'secularism', of all things, dictates it, we are strengthening the ugly aspects of the dynastic system of democracy that has come to infect India's body politic deeply, says Jaya Jaitly.
Bharatiya Janata Party senior leader Sushil Kumar Modi talks to Satyavrat Mishra about the prospects of the party in Bihar. Modi says only the assembly elections or general elections are the true barometers of popularity. Edited excerpts:
Arun Nehru's image of a political strategist, dealmaker and trouble shooter never allowed him to become a political leader of people, says Sheela Bhatt
n an exclusive interview with Rediff.com's Anita Katyal, Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmad analysed the political scenario in his home-state Bihar, admitting that political equations have changed after the Bharatiya Janata Party forged alliances with Ram Vilas Paswan and Upendra Kushwaha.
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