The long-standing Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal-United alliance stood the test of time again with the combine scoring a landslide victory in the Bihar assembly polls on the development plank.
JMM leader Hemant Soren was sworn in as the 14th chief minister of Jharkhand in a grand ceremony in Ranchi, amid the presence of a galaxy of INDIA bloc leaders. This is Soren's fourth stint as chief minister. The JMM-led alliance won a majority in the recent assembly polls, securing 56 seats in the 81-member assembly.
Kumar's outburst came as opposition members stood in the well of the House, demanding that the state's amended reservation laws be incorporated in the 9th schedule of the Constitution to make it immune from legal scrutiny.
The meeting was attended by Congress in-charge for Rajasthan Sukhjinder Randhawa, CM Gehlot, RPCC president Govind Singh Dotasra and other leaders.
Politicians across the political spectrum graced Radhika Merchant and Anant Ambani's wedding ceremonies at the Jio World Convention Centre at the Bandra Kurla Complex in north west Mumbai.
Raut said the issue of passage of farm sector bills in the Parliament will have no impact on the elections in Bihar as the state votes "only on the basis of caste and religion".
Ananth Kumar, the BJP election in-charge of Bihar, on Tuesday announced that the party will not declare the name of its chief ministerial candidate.
The party was floated exactly two years after Kishor had embarked on a more than 3,000-km-long 'padayatra' of the state.
'The issue has been cleared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief J P Nadda much before the elections'
Voters, it is said, get the government they deserve. We will soon see what voters in Maharashtra choose. Till then, a sense of helplessness and scepticism hangs in the air, notes Ramesh Menon.
The plea, seeking quashing of the government notification to dissolve the Bihar Assembly, was filed by Shivkumar Prasad Singh.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday appeared all set to make his second political volte face in less than three years, with a highly-placed source close to Kumar saying that the Janata Dal-United president is likely to tender his resignation by Sunday morning.
'Leave alone top gear, we are in the neutral and when we are applying gears, we are applying reverse'
The CEC said 7.2 crore single-use gloves for voters to press electronic voting machine buttons, more than seven lakh units of hand sanitiser, about 46 lakh masks, about six lakh personal protection equipment (PPE) kits, 7.6 lakh units of face shields have been arranged.
Voters of Bihar have made it clear that their aspiration and priority are development alone, Modi said in a series of tweets, adding that the people's blessings for the NDA's good governance show what are the state's dreams and expectations.
Uncertainty shadows the composition of the two main political alliances in Bihar with several parties still exploring their choices as the Election Commission on Friday announced the schedule for the assembly polls.
Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party on Wednesday named former vice chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Krishna Singh, as its candidate for the bypoll to Tarari assembly seat in Bihar.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his cabinet colleagues Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, chief ministers of Nationalist Democratic Alliance-ruled states and prominent personalities from industry and Bollywood on Thursday attended the grand swearing-in of Devendra Fadnavis as Maharashtra Chief Minister in Mumbai.
Former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique, who was shot dead in Mumbai, was a popular figure in Bollywood circles and had earned praise for supplying life-saving medicines to patients during the Covid pandemic.
Today, a friendship forged by common ideals behind prison walls has become a transactional understanding, notes Aditi Phadnis.
As the race for Maharashtra chief minister enters the last lap, Hemant Waje looks at several scenarios which can play out.
According to a report by the Association of Democratic Reforms, 59 per cent of the MLAs (or 141 MLAs out of 241) in the Bihar assembly have criminal records pending against them. Comparatively, the percentage of tainted legislators in the last assembly was 35 per cent
Yadav said all parties have joined hands against the BJP in the Bihar assembly, and added "now this is going to be replicated across the whole country".
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.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and party's candidate from Kalkaji, Ramesh Bidhuri, has yet again courted controversy by allegedly saying that after victory in the Delhi assembly polls next month, he will develop smooth roads in the constituency like Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi's 'cheeks'.
Concerned over large gatherings during campaigning for the upcoming Bihar assembly elections and bypolls in several states amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Election Commission on Wednesday reduced the maximum number of 'star campaigners' for recognised national and state parties from 40 to 30.
'They were as late as June 2023 and they did not follow it up with concrete measures immediately in terms of a secretariat or common minimum programme, working group or seat sharing etc.' 'They continued to have periodic meetings after a gap of weeks where they had tasty dinner and coffee, but beside that they did nothing else.'
Maoist ultras have asked Bihar assembly Speaker Udai Narain Choudhary to present the 'hishab-kitab' (a complete account) of the work he has done in his constituency.Choudhary, the first Dalit Speaker of the Bihar assembly, is a legislator from the Maoist-infested Imamganj in Gaya district. The Maoists have threatened that they will not allow polls to be held in that area and urged people to boycott elections in the constituency.
'To attribute motives to the individual election commissioner or the Election Commission as a group is very unfair.'
Bihar Assembly Deputy Speaker Maheshwar Hazari on Wednesday accused outgoing Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha of having "insulted Dalits" by denying him the opportunity to conduct proceedings of the House after stepping down.
'There was a 77 per cent chance that electorates in India voted for the same party for both the state and Centre when elections were held simultaneously.'
'Undeniably, Modi's position has stabilised and he has staged a comeback of sorts from the weeks after the Lok Sabha results.' 'Coalition partners are likely to be more tolerant of Modi... The forthcoming elections in Delhi and Bihar will determine whether this continues or not.' 'To win Delhi and Bihar, Modi will have to work in conjunction with the RSS.' 'However, because of the 'truce' that has been worked out within the Sangh Parivar, Modi will have to be more consultative than he has been in the past ten years,' reveals Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Sibal said the party had not been an effective alternative in Bihar for a long time.
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.
Who will walk away into the sunset at the end? The reigning superstar who has given three mega blockbusters in 2005, 2010 and 2015? Or the fresh faced son of a former star trying to make a mark for himself, asks Asmita Bihari.
'The Congress should have played a more active role to take care of the needs of regional parties. It failed.' 'Taking this into account, Nitishji took the final decision with the full support of the JD-U.'
'Our approach is forward-looking. The central leadership wants young leaders to lead the charge now. This will also send a clear signal that lapses will not be tolerated. We are targeting beyond 2025.' Satyavrat Mishra reports.
The development highlights worsening of the ties between the two BJP allies in the state.
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