The no-frills ceremony comes a day after Kumar snapped ties with the BJP-led NDA and joined hands with the RJD to form a 'mahagathbandhan' government.
A special CBI court in Godhra on Saturday granted the probe agency four-day custody of Jay Jalaram School's principal Purushottam Sharma, teacher Tushar Bhatt, and middlemen Vibhor Anand and Arif Vohra, all of whom are alleged to be involved in irregularities in the May 5 NEET-UG exam in Godhra.
Addressing a poll rally in Katihar, the former Congress president criticised the NDA government over demonetisation, migrant crisis, GST, handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the three new farm laws.
The grand old party faces the onerous task of rebuilding its moribund organisation, which is struggling to overcome a leadership crisis and regain credibility with the voters.
The credibility of the examination system has also come under question, they said.
KC Venugopal mentioned that the Congress's goal is to diminish the BJP's representation in Uttar Pradesh by securing half of the seats in the state.
Raut said such friendly fights should happen on all 48 seats in Maharashtra as well as in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
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".
Ahead of senior BJP leader Narendra D Modi's election rally in Karakat on May 25 to support National Democratic Alliance candidate Upendar Kushwaha, the BJP finally acted against Pawan Singh, who refused to withdraw from the fray.
Former union minister and Lok Janshakti Party president Ram Vilas Paswan, who lost the recent Lok Sabha elections, said in Varanasi on Wednesday that his party would contest the 2010 Bihar assembly elections in alliance with Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal and also welcomed Congress party to their fold.
Close to half of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats are bracing for multi-cornered fight this time, making the contest way more interesting and intense than it was in the 2019 elections.
Police scoured places of worship in Madhya Pradesh's Ujjain and Khandwa in their hunt for the third shooter wanted for Nationalist Congress Party leader Baba Siddique's killing.
Reacting to the results, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said that in the by-elections held on 13 seats in seven states, the people of the country have given their support to the INDIA bloc.
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.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday said his party's alliance with the Congress is 'off to a good start' with 11 'strong' Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.
In a shot in the arm for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar, Chirag Paswan on Sunday cast aside his ambivalence and announced that he will campaign for the saffron party in bypolls to two assembly segments in the state.
Bihar is no stranger to being at the centre of a tectonic shift in national politics fuelled by turbulent regional forces.
Terming the Congress a "shackle" for the alliance, Rashtriya Janata Dal Shivanand Tiwari said the party had contested on 70 seats but did not hold as many rallies.
A voter turnout of 10.82 per cent was recorded till 9 am on Saturday in 58 constituencies in six states and two Union territories where polling is underway in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress would also take inspiration from history as it was from Karnataka that an embattled Indira Gandhi had revived her dwindling political future by winning a Lok Sabha bypoll from Chikmagalur.
Top leaders of Opposition parties will brainstorm at a meeting in Patna on Friday to chalk out a roadmap for the formation of an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party front for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, with sources saying that they would look to avoid the prickly leadership question and emphasise on common ground.
'The Shav Sena did kill its own colleague (Congress) in Bihar'
Veteran Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Awadh Bihari Chaudhary was on Friday unanimously elected as speaker of the Bihar legislative assembly.
Leave alone taking forward the seat-sharing talks with the existing and probable allies, the Mahagathbandhan remains an amorphous entity weeks before the first phase of polling on October 28, a situation that will make the rival NDA camp, which in any case looks sitting pretty, all the more happier.
Rahul Gandhi has spoken to Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav about the Begusarai seat, but the CPI is unwilling to give up the seat.
A close aide of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday confirmed that a 'proposal' to make the Janata Dal-United president convener of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) came up at the meeting of coalition leaders through virtual mode.
Rashtriya Janata Dal President Lalu Prasad on Wednesday said that final talks on alliance with Congress in Bihar for the coming Lok Sabha polls has been completed and the announcement of the tie up is expected Wednesday evening.
The TMC also announced it would hold talks with other regional parties in their bid to take on the BJP in the crucial 2024 elections but at the same time denied that it was planning a third front, separate from the Congress-led front.
Seeking a third straight term, Modi is not just looking to stamp his electoral dominance on India but also chasing history with another consecutive victory equalling first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's record.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday asserted that she did not threaten junior doctors at state-run hospitals, who have been continuing cease-work for 21 days now to protest against the alleged rape and murder of a woman medic. Addressing a rally organised by the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad, Banerjee had on Wednesday urged the agitating junior doctors of Bengal to urgently consider returning to duty and said she doesn't want to lodge first information reports (FIRs) against the striking doctors in consideration of their future careers.
The Congress chief added that the governments of Delhi and Bihar are 'captive governments' -- demonetisation, lockout, trade-off, economic bandit, farm-barn captive, bread-employment detention.
What some of our leaders were up to this week.
The BSP leader won the Bijnor Lok Sabha seat in 1989, her first electoral triumph.
Lalu is miffed with the Congress for entering into an electoral tie-up with JMM in neighbouring Jharkhand.
"Public does not who 'Kharge Pharge' is. Even I don't know he was the president of Congress. Nobody knows him. Masses don't know him. The public knows Nitish Kumar. Nitish Kumar should become prime minister. He is popular all over India," Mandal said.
"We should support the Nitish Kumar government after it separates from the communal BJP," Tauseef Alam, Congress legislator from Bahadurganj in Kisanganj, told PTI. Congress Legislature Party leader Sadanand Singh, however, said this was Alam's personal view.
He argued that if inflation is low, stable and moving towards the 4 per cent target, why has the RBI not revised downward the bank rate fixed in June 2023?
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
Campaigning has reached a fervent pitch in Bihar with senior political leaders wooing the voters, one last time before the state goes to the polls.
The Bharatiya Janata Party suffered stunning losses in three Hindi heartland states, partial poll results showed Tuesday, forcing the party to rely on allies to form the government after a bitter and divisive election that was projected as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity.
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