One is a budding cricketer and the other is a wannabe actor, but politics is what they have in common. Tejaswi Yadav, a cricketer, is better known as the son of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad's son. Chirag Paswan, who is looking for a break in Bollywood, is the son of Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan.
It is absolutely wrong that the LJP is not averse to taking outside support from the BJP, he said.
Governor La Ganesan and Chief Minister N Biren Singh were among the early voters in their respective constituencies of Sagolband and Heingang.
A day after the by-election results in Bihar, though leaders of the Rahtriya Janata Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party claimed victory after the RJD and BJP retained the Mokama and Gopalganj assembly seats respectively, the fact that both seats were won with a reduced margin indicates that there is nothing to celebrate for either party.
The polls for 70-member assembly will be held on February 8 and results will be declared on February 11.
"Is it any surprise that the new Parliament is being consecrated with typically false narratives from WhatsApp University? The BJP-RSS distorians stand exposed yet again with maximum claims, minimum evidence," Congress general secretary communications Ramesh said in his tweet.
The 288-member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly constitutes the electoral college Rajya Sabha elections, scheduled on June 10, and a candidate needs 42 votes to win a seat.
Both polls projected the LJP as having slipped a long way.
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.
The LJP leader said that the party's Jharkhand unit has been for contesting the assembly polls on its own as the party's organisation has become stronger and it has better candidates than before.
LJP candidate from Matihani constituency, Raj Kumar Singh defeated Janata Dal-United's Narendra Kumar Singh aka Bogo Singh by a slender margin of 333 votes.
The development can change the power dynamics within the ruling alliance, even if it manages to retain power in the state and Kumar continues to be chief minister.
"NDA is a beautiful rainbow of regional aspirations... So nation's development through the development of states... At a time when we are working for a developed India, NDA is taking the lead in showing the spirit of sabka prayas," he said.
Mining out fresh ammunition for a prospective slugfest, Congress on Thursday released a three-year-old video clip in which senior party leader Uma Bharti has purportedly described Narendra Modi as an agent of destruction and his development claims of Gujarat as a "sham".
"Today, we stand united in solidarity with our security forces in fighting terrorism and in defending the unity and integrity of India."
Pawar pressed for forging alliances of anti-BJP parties at state level and favoured picking up the prime ministerial candidate after the election results, as happened after the 1977 and 2004 general polls.
In an unprecedented order to check criminalisation of politics, the Supreme Court on Tuesday held nine political parties including the ruling BJP and JD (U) in Bihar guilty of contempt and fined eight of them for violating its February, 2020 order on publication of criminal antecedents of their candidates for the assembly polls.
In both the states where the Bharatiya Janata Party came second is trying to turn the tables on the Congress to form the government.
Here are how the numbers are stack up in the lower house if the no-confidence motion takes place.
Having emerged as a senior partner of the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar for the first time in nearly two decades, the Bharatiya Janata Party finally seems to have come out of the shadow of its allies in the state but new alliance arithmetic has dragged down their overall vote share since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
A top BJP leader from Bihar told ANI that Fadnavis is going to play a crucial role in the Bihar assembly election and he is associated with the Bihar BJP on purpose
An incident involving the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party Amit Shah being trapped in a lift at the state guest house in Patna for around 40 minutes will now be investigated by a high-level committee.
Modi said Vajpayee would remain an inspiration and said the outpouring of emotions following his death despite his being away from public life for over a decade due to illness, shows his greatness.
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.
If the Chirag Paswan-led LJP posts a good result, the young leader could become a formidable caste challenger in the years to come and a permanent fixture as a BJP ally, reports Aditi Phadnis.
Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan on Tuesday fired a salvo at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and said that he should now enjoy the power as November 8 will bring an end to his delight.
Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Narendra Singh Tomar, Prakash Javadekar, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Dharmendra Pradhan and Smriti Irani are also likely to join the second Modi government after being its members in its first avatar.
The series of meetings are being seen as an attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party to reach out to allies who have either been criticising or expressing their dissent with the party and also to strengthen the National Democratic Alliance ahead of the Lok Sabha polls next year.
The party is likely to take a decision in a couple of days, with the nomination for the first phase of three phase-polls set to begin from October 1, they said.
JD-U MP Harivansh filed his nomination as the ruling NDA candidate to the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman's post and is likely to be elected, even as the Opposition is working to field a joint candidate against him to force a contest.
Chirag Paswan is young. He is articulate. He has no political baggage. All he needs is the blessing of Chanakya, observes Asmita Bihari.
Birla, 57, has been MLA from Rajasthan thrice and MP twice.
On Tuesday, the government had agreed to refer it to the committee.
He claimed that Tej Pratap kept egging on his henchmen while Ramraj was being humiliated and that he even got the entire episode videographed.
The LJP will also be given a Rajya Sabha berth and Paswan is likely to be its candidate.
It is an ode to his politics that believed in building bridges across social or political divides that he was one of the most liked state leaders among the upper castes even as he drew his support mostly from Dalits, a group which at times shared antagonistic relations with the more prosperous communities due to a number of social and political reasons.
"If the current Chief Minister again wins this election by mistake then our state will lose. Our state will again stand on the verge of getting ruined. "I wonder how he promotes casteism. It is not appropriate to imagine the development of Bihar under the leadership of a person who promotes communalism," Paswan said while launching the party's manifesto for the Bihar assembly polls.
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