Kumar recommended Sahani's expulsion from the cabinet to the governor in the evening, after a written submission to the effect by the BJP, hours after the minister for fishery and animal husbandry was given the ultimatum to withdraw forthwith a recent notification.
As many as 13 (93%) are crorepatis with their average assets pegged at Rs 3.93 crores, the report said.
Despite the BJP emerging as the largest party in the ruling alliance with 74 seats, 31 more than the JDU, the top leadership of the saffron party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has emphatically endorsed Kumar as the next chief minister.
With four seats each won by junior allies Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular and Vikassheel Insaan Party, the NDA bagged 125 seats in its kitty, three more than the number required for a simple majority.
Mukesh Sahni's move to contest 55 seats in the UP assembly polls antagonised top BJP leaders.
District Collector Alok Ranjan Ghosh said that the Sector Officer Awadesh Singh's driver had expressed his desire to vote. According to a primary reply by the officer, he had taken the EVM machine and VVPAT into a private hotel. A formal reply by the Sector Officer is awaited.
The two parties had fallen out with each other in October last year when the RJD unilaterally decided to contest by-elections for two assembly seats, evoking strong protest from the Congress which vowed to go it alone in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the assembly elections which will be held a year later.
Paswan's statement came on a day when he was excoriated by Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, who called the LJP leader a "vote Katua" (splitter of votes) and accused him of trying to create a confusion by harping on his equations with senior leaders of the saffron party.
BJP candidate Kedar Prasad Gupta defeated Manoj Singh Kushwaha of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United by 3,645 votes in Kurhani.
A senior BJP leader from Bihar said that a strategy has been worked out to ensure Tejashwi's defeat from the Raghopur seat in Vaishali district, from where he is also the sitting MLA.
Tejashwi took the four MLAs to the assembly in a car he himself drove, in a gesture that was rich in optics as well as symbolism.
All the winners in the assembly bypolls were from the respective ruling parties.
"'So ja bete nahi to Gabbar Singh aa jayega'. Mothers, who have seen the jungle raj days in Bihar, please do tell your children, especially youth, on the polling day to cast their votes carefully, otherwise they (the RJD) may return to power... those who ran a regime of terror and fear," he told a press conference.
The bandh was called by Left parties in protest against CAA and NRC. It is being supported by several small political parties of the state.
Lalu Prasad's eldest daughter Misa Bharti, a Rajya Sabha MP, and elder son Tej Pratap Yadav have been omitted from RJD's star campaigners' list released on Thursday for the upcoming by-elections to a couple of assembly seats in Bihar, a development seen as an attempt to push them to the margins in an intra-family feud to control the single largest party in the state assembly.
Names of eight-term MLA from Gaya town Prem Kumar and that of Kameshwar Choupal, a Dalit MLC who had laid the foundation stone for the temple at Ayodhya in the 1990s, are also doing the rounds for the post in the political circles.
The former Deputy chief minister made the sensational assertion on his twitter handle, sharing a mobile number which, he claimed, Prasad was having access to despite serving sentences in fodder scam cases.
A 14-member council of ministers, headed by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, was on Monday sworn in by Governor Phagu Chauhan.
'We are allies and equals. We have to run Bihar collectively'
The Bihar assembly election results appeared to belie predictions made by most exit polls which had given a clear edge to the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Mahagathbandhan.
'Shatrughan Sinha's name is in the Congress's probable candidates list.'
The invite to Paswan from the BJP assumes significance as this made it clear that the LJP remains a member of the NDA despite walking out of the alliance in Bihar during the state assembly polls.
"We want to make it clear that we have no relations (with LJP), and we do not like this politics of spreading confusion," BJP leader and Union minister Prakash Javadekar said.
With their high-decibel campaigns so far, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party may appear to be locked in a direct fight in Uttar Pradesh.
The governor accepted the resignation and asked Kumar to continue as the caretaker chief minister till the new National Democratic Alliance government is sworn in.
While Yadav began to tour different constituencies and address public meetings to mobilise the SP rank and file, he has concurrently started the tedious process of cobbling up an alliance of smaller outfits representing a mlange of castes and sub-castes, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
The CM was present at the Patna airport to receive body of the LJP founder with whom he spent long time in the politics. The CM and other leaders cutting across party lines paid respect to the septuagenarian leader, who died in Delhi on Thursday, at the airport premises.
'The NDA has provided me a healing touch to survive'
Bharatiya Janata Party national spokesperson and former Union minister Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, who got elected to the Bihar legislative council last month, was on Tuesday sworn in as a member of the Nitish Kumar cabinet.
Why MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy and his party, the BJP, are angry with Pappu Yadav.
'The only thing that makes Nitish Kumar acceptable to Biharis, to the Mahagatbandhan allies, is the BJP.'
West Bengal had witnessed violence and arson from December 13 to 17 during protests against the new citizenship law.
In the backdrop of the ongoing farm protests, back into public consciousness in the aftermath of the recent Lakhimpur Kheri episode, smaller parties are expected to not only enliven the election theatre, but also queer the pitch for the Opposition.
'Yogi Adityanath is working for one caste only and suppressing the others,' Bihar Minister and NDA ally Mukesh Sahni tells M I Khan.
'Rahul Gandhi was given the impression that if the seat was given to me, then the alliance would be broken in all 40 seats.'
Lalan Kumar Paswan, who lodged the FIR with the vigilance department, held that the RJD chief's alleged act was tantamount to 'corruption' since, as a member of the legislative assembly, he was a 'public servant' whom Yadav had tried to entice away from 'performing the constitutional obligation of taking part in voting in the House'.
The death of the 74-year-old leader, who was identified with the state's Dalits for over five decades, so near the polls will mean that none of the LJP's rivals will like to attack the party and its young president strongly.
No one in Bihar will deny Nitish Kumar's contribution to governance, notes Aditi Phadnis.
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.
Prime Minister Modi will address three rallies -- at Dehri-on Sone (Rohtas district), Gaya and Bhagalpur -- to seek support for National Democratic Alliance nominees on different assembly constituencies going to vote in the first phase on October 28. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is also slated to launch his campaign in Bihar elections on Friday.
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