Taking responsibility of his party's debacle in the recent Lok Sabha elections, Asom Gana Parishad leader Prafulla Kumar Mahanta on Monday stepped down as party president.
After the 18-member 'Assam Advisory Committee' suggested the two organisations to form a political party, a source close to the development said the new outfit will be launched within the next 10 days.
The main Opposition parties in Assam -- Asom Gana Parishad, Bharatiya Janata Party and All India United Democratic Front -- have come down heavily on the Congress government in Assam for presenting an 'election-oriented populist' interim budget for the year 2014-15.
'It seems we will get an NRC which will include the names of illegal foreigners and exclude genuine Indian citizens'
The government was on Tuesday asked to take care of the rehabilitation of nurses who have returned from strife-torn Iraq.
The police on Thursday booked litterateur Hiren Gohain, Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti chief Gogoi and senior journalist Manjit Mahanta under sedition charges for their comments on the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
The Congress's share has almost halved, down from 12 in 2014 to six now.
'The BJP is taking a risk in Assam, but it may face a tough time in coming times,' says Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty.
The AGP, which has ruled the state on its own twice, will play the junior partner and contest 24 seats while the rest 126 will be divided among BJP and three smaller outfits, with the saffron party leading the alliance.
As the counting begins on Friday the public focus in Assam will be mainly on how helpful the 'Modi Wave' has been for the Bharatiya Janata Party to challenge a confident Congress in Assam. Both the parties have contested in 13 out of 14 parliamentary seats.
An indefinite bandh by a militant outfit in the Autonomous District (ST) along with last minute canvassing in two constituencies of Karimganj (SC) and Silchar in the Barak Valley marked the end of a high pitched campaigning on Thursday for 3 constituencies in the second phase of Lok Sabha polls in Assam on April 12.
'This time, even the professedly secular parties have maintained a conscious distance from being identified with Muslims.' 'This could be interpreted as a success of the BJP campaign of what it has been calling 'minority appeasement', says Mohammad Sajjad.
'After the NRC it is proved that whatever the BJP was saying about illegal Bangladeshi migrant was a lie and Indian Muslims have their documents to prove their citizenship.'
The elections in two eastern Indian states were keenly observed in Bangladesh for two major contentious issues, writes Prakash Bhandari from Dhaka.
The move is being seen as an attempt to forge opposition unity to defeat the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
With the Modi government battling propriety issues over the Lalit Modi row and the furore on Vyapam scam, leaders of "like-minded" parties will meet for Congress president Sonia Gandhi's Iftar dinner on Monday where they are likely to deliberate on the strategy for Parliament session beginning July 21.
Ahead of the visit of an all-party delegation to Jammu and Kashmir, political parties on Saturday pitched for holding dialogue with "all stakeholders", including Hurriyat, to douse the unrest and banning the use of pellet guns by security forces.
Arch-rivals Left and Trinamool, SP and BSP come together for Sonia's lunch
Kumar, a Dalit, as its candidate for president against NDA's nominee Ram Nath Kovind.
The GST Bill, seen as single biggest tax reform in a long time, needs to be ratified by at least 15 state legislatures before the President can notify the GST Council which will decide the new tax rate and other issues
The All Assam Students Union on Wednesday launched statewide protests against Assam Congress' decision to field a candidate from outside the state, Sanjay Singh in Rajya Sabha election in Assam bowing to the dictate of party high command.
Results coming out of Lok Sabha polls show that parties like Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party and Tamil Nadu's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam managed to corner a large number of votes but failed to convert them into seats, while parties with lesser vote share have got seats to show in their kitty.
Mudslinging and verbal attacks will definitely surge once the poll dates are announced, but as with any state, there are some crucial issues which will play a significant role in influencing voters in Assam too, says Devanik Saha.
Cross-voting by Left and Congress MLAs on Friday helped Trinamool Congress gain an extra seat in West Bengal while a similar action by Congress MLAs in Andhra Pradesh saw the Telangana Rashtra Samithi making its debut in Rajya Sabha as high drama marked the polls to the upper House in the two states.
Sonowal, who steered the BJP to victory in the elections, has put the issue of infiltration and attempts to check them as his government's priority.
Thirty-five per cent of the 64,41,634 voters exercised their franchise till noon on Monday in five Lok Sabha constituencies of Assam where four persons clashed with CRPF personnel demanding that they be allowed to cast their vote first in Kaliabor constituency.
The Bharatiya Janata Party appeared to cede ground in Uttar Pradesh where Samajwadi Party was leading on six of the 11 Assembly seats where bypolls were held while it was neck and neck with Congress in Gujarat and behind in Rajasthan, exactly four months after it swept the three states in Lok Sabha elections.
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
Rajnath Singh led the delegation of 26 MPs from 20 parties which stayed overnight in Srinagar before stopping over in Jammu this afternoon.
'The win in Assam is likely to have a ripple effect in other north-eastern states like Manipur and Nagaland which have been reluctant to embrace the BJP in the past,' says Nitin A Gokhale, the distinguished commentator on strategic affairs, who lived and reported from Assam between 1983 and 2006.
While Bharatiya Janata Party's countrywide vote share shot up by over 12 per cent at the expense of other parties, the chart throws some contrary pictures as parties like Bahujan Samaj Party got no seat in spite of third-highest vote share, but Trinamool Congress and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam clinched over 30 seats each with less than 4 per cent vote share.
The Congress has been reduced to a C player in national politics thanks to its inability to read the pulse of the people, says Rashme Sehgal.
After Bihar elections, Rahul Gandhi's go-it-alone strategy seems to have taken a back seat.
Why the Bihar defeat can be the best thing for him as PM, but only if he has the humility to read the writing on the wall, says Shekhar Gupta.
The BJP's panicky return to basic-instinct majoritarianism in Bihar has pushed Muslims back into the 'secular' basement, says Shekhar Gupta.
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