Ahead of the day-long Opposition meeting on Friday, Samvad Bhavan, Rajkiye Atithisala and Sadaquat Ashram have got a facelift.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday declared that he will not realign with the Bharatiya Janata Party till he is alive, accusing the former ally of using investigating agencies for targeting political opponents like Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad.
The fatwa says the minister has no place in the Muslim community.
The toll in the killer nor'wester in Bihar rose to 54 as reports of 12 more deaths came from the 12 ravaged districts on Thursday.
Ill-health forced Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to cancel his scheduled visit to Chennai on Tuesday, where he was invited by his Tamil Nadu counterpart MK Stalin, a key aide of the Janata Dal-United leader said.
A Division Bench headed by Chief Justice K Vinod Chandran passed the order on a bunch of petitions which had opposed the legislations brought by the Nitish Kumar government in November 2023.
The state police also advised people not to believe in rumours.
While the outcome will be known once the meeting is over, more than one of the prospective attendees denied the party's ties with the BJP having worsened to an extent to call for a realignment.
Portfolios were on Tuesday allocated in the new Bihar cabinet headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who, predictably, retained the all-important home department which helps him keep direct control on the state police.
Tej Pratap Yadav, a leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar, has sparked controversy by demanding a policeman perform a 'thumka' (pelvic thrust) during Holi celebrations at his residence. The incident, which was captured on video and shared widely on social media, shows Yadav seated on a makeshift stage, holding a microphone and telling the policeman, "Hey policeman Deepak.....we are going to play a song on which you shall perform a pelvic thrust. If you do not, you will suspended. Don't mind. It's Holi." The policeman did not appear offended, but he did not perform the dance move. The incident has drawn criticism from the BJP, who have accused Yadav of trying to intimidate the police and of promoting a 'jungle raj'.
But he doesn't want to shut the door completely on the Yadav family as that could create problems for him in 2019.
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.
The two who buried their hatchet to come together for the Bihar polls targeted BJP.
Governor Phagu Chauhan and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar have also been provided with 'Z-plus' security.
The crowd at the mosque was larger than usual, unsurprisingly because it happened to be the last "Jumma" (Friday) of the holy month of Ramzan.
Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar, who returns as Bihar chief minister for a record eighth time on Wednesday, is likely to retain the all-important home department, while the Rashtriya Janata Dal may get most of the departments that were previously with the Bharatiya Janata Party, a highly-placed source said.
Political strategist-turned-activist Prashant Kishor on Thursday took a fresh jibe at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his former mentor, reiterating that the latter may ditch the 'Mahagathbandhan' and return to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance.
Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United on Sunday exuded confidence that its national president, who was sworn in as Bihar CM for a record ninth time after forming a new government with the Bharatiya Janata Party, will win Monday's trust vote.
Firing yet another salvo at the Bharatiya Janata Party, Shiv Sena on Monday slammed its ally over the issue of supporting Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi saying backing him would be a "sin" as it would be an endorsement of "black era in politics".
Startling allegations of backstabbing were made against the Bharatiya Janata Party by MLAs and MPs of the Janata Dal-United on Tuesday at a meeting in Patna after which Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar pulled the plug on the alliance.
At the best, the so called Rs 1.25 lakh crore package will not provide anything more than Rs 10,368 crore as additional or incremental resource to the state, said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar
'If you see the behaviour of the BJP with their allies, they stay with the allies for some time and then take command of the government.'
The BJP's quest for dominance over the states political scene, evident from a seat-sharing deal as part of which it clinched nearly as many constituencies as the Janata Dal-United its senior partner so far- resonated during the election campaign.
"This is not a manifesto, it is our pledge to bring a change which is set to become true. Every sector has been taken into consideration while preparing this manifesto so that we can make Bihar a happy, better and prosperous state," Tejashwi Yadav said while releasing vision document.
Kumar, who is now heading an alliance government in Bihar which includes the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Congress and the Left, has reached out to leaders like Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, all of whom are opposed to the BJP but not very comfortable with the grand old party either.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Kumar on being sworn in as the chief minister.
On April 5, 2016, the Nitish Kumar-led government imposed total prohibition in Bihar. M I Khan crunches numbers for the REAL picture since then.
Another instance of bridge collapse came to the fore in Bihar on Thursday, making it the 10th such incident to have been reported from the state in just over a fortnight, an official said.
Minority conference organised by the JD-U turned out to be a poor show with few from the Muslim community attending it, exposing the falling credibility of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as a secular leader, says M I Khan.
The notification issued by the law ministry on Monday night said the maximum expenditure a candidate can incur for campaigning in Lok Sabha polls is now Rs 77 lakh. It was so far Rs 70 lakh. For assemblies, it has been hiked from Rs 28 lakh to Rs 30.8 lakh.
Noting that it was his government that had recommended a CBI probe into the actor's death, Kumar said the incident saddened both the state and the country.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav on Friday addressed a joint political rally, the first since the two erstwhile rivals buried the hatchet and aligned nearly four months ago.
'What has been done by the police officers of Karnataka (in the arrest of Akhtar) is an example of the violation of the rule of law', Nitish said in a strongly-worded protest letter to the Karnataka chief minister on Saturday. 'There should be no apprehension in the mind of any visiting police officer of any state about professional integrity and commitment of senior police officials available in Darbhanga', he said in a strongly worded letter to his Karnataka counterpart.
Dalits constitute nearly 16 per cent of the vote and 38 seats are reserved for them in the assembly, reports Satyavrat Mishra
The votes for the state assembly polls will be counted on November 10. Prasad is in judicial custody in Jharkhand capital Ranchi after his conviction in fodder scam cases. He was recently granted bail by the Jharkhand High Court in the case related to Chaibasa treasury but could not come out of jail as his bail plea in another case of fraudulent withdrawals from Dumka treasury is being heard.
Disgruntled Janata Dal-United leader Upendra Kushwaha on Monday resigned from Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's party, less than two years after returning to the party, and announced formation of the 'Rashtriya Loktantrik Janata Dal'.
Unfazed by strident criticism of his cousin Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray over his anti-Bihari remarks, Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday sought a permit system to check the influx of Bihari migrants into Mumbai.
Saini's elevation as Haryana chief minister fits in with a pattern that has gathered pace in the BJP after the Congress and its allies like the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar began making an aggressive bid to woo the largest group of communities and politically most significant, especially in Hindi-speaking states, by pushing for a caste census.
Indicating a rift within the party after its split with the ruling Janata Dal-United in Bihar, a Bharatiya Janata Party member of Legislative Assembly on Wednesday said that state Chief Minister Nitish Kumar would be a "better" prime minister than Narendra Modi and blamed his party for the break up of the coalition.
Kumar was talking on employment issue when onions came flying at him at the rally in support of his party nominee Sudhanshu Shekhar at Gangaur village ground in Harlakhi assembly constituency, but it missed the target.
