Congress has indicated it won't settle for less than 50 seats in any non-BJP alliance, unlikely if a JD(United)-RJD deal does take place.
Sunday's denial of Rajya Sabha ticket to Union minister indicates that an end game to the JD-U-BJP rift may be in sight.
Kushwaha was referring to 'Luv Kush' rally in Patna, a veritable gathering of Kurmis and Koeris upset with supposed hegemony of numerically powerful Yadavs which Prasad, then helming Bihar, was seen as embodying.
The Nationalist Congress Party on Saturday pledged unconditional support to the Janata Dal-United-Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress alliance for the August 21 bypoll to 10 assembly seats in Bihar to keep the Bharatiya Janaat Party away from power.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday said R C P Singh, whom his Janata Dal-United has denied another term in the Rajya Sabha, does not need to resign as a Union minister ahead of the expiry of his Rajya Sabha tenure.
The focus now shifts to November 10 counting of votes.
'If people don't see you, they might be hesitant, but once they see you, they are confident that this is the person they will vote for,' says political debutant Shambhavi Choudhury, 25, alumnus of the Lady Sriram College and the Delhi School of Economics.
JD-U leaders contend that R C P Singh may have misled the BJP leadership into believing that Nitish Kumar was ready for a smaller share in power at the Centre.
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.
The performance of Janata Dal-United has down compared its performance in the 2015 elections and the ruling party could not win even half of the number of seats it contested in this election.
The new cabinet, predictably, has a sizeable number of Yadavs and Muslims, though members of other sections of the society also find a place.
Both MLAs are sitting BJP MLAs.
With the reality of coalition politics staring the BJP in its face, this was inevitable, points out Ramesh Menon.
Those joining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers for the first time include three former chief ministers -- Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana) and H D Kumaraswamy (Karnataka).
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.
"We were called by Nitish Kumar, but this morning we read in a newspaper that he has raised the issue of prime ministership. Our national leaders can only speak on this issue and we are not authorised to discuss it. So, there was no point in meeting the Chief Minister," BJP leader and NDA convenor in Bihar Nand Kishore Yadav said.
The JD-U has 115 MLAs in the 243-member assembly, most of who are reportedly with Nitish
The Janata Dal-United supremo, however, also appeared annoyed with parliamentary board chief Upendra Kushwaha who had recently jumped the gun with the insinuation that the RJD could be trying to 'further the Bharatiya Janata Party's agenda' by refraining from taking action against the minister.
He has served as a minister in all the previous National Democratic Alliance governments in Bihar. He was the minister for the road construction department in the last government.
The CM will either force Tejashwi to resign, or tender a resignation himself to put pressure on the RJD.
Janata Dal-United MLC Manorama Devi faced an arrest warrant on Wednesday for violating prohibition laws and allegedly harbouring her fugitive son.
Speculations are rife about a tie-up between the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal- United after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar resigned following the severe drubbing his party suffered at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha polls.
Accompanied by his son Santosh Suman, Manjhi met Shah at his residence in New Delhi.
The BJP's Bihar unit responded to the tweet saying, "The first picture is your future and the second is of India. Understood?"
Expelled Janata Dal-United leader and former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi on Friday launched a new party -- Hindustani Awam Morcha -- to counter the Janata Parivar. The party will contest alone all the 243 seats in Bihar polls scheduled for later this year.
There is a view that heavyweight portfolios like home, finance, defence and external affairs besides education and culture, two ministries with strong ideological hues, will be kept by the BJP, while its allies can get anywhere between five to eight cabinet berths.
'Nitish Kumar's newly-formed alliance with BJP would unravel before the 2025 assembly polls in Bihar'
Lalu Prasad and his Muslim-Yadav line has completely gone off track.
Among the major political parties, chief minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United is contesting in 35 of the 71 seats, followed by its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (29), while the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal has fielded its candidates in 42 and its coalition partner Congress is in the fray in 20 assembly segments.
More than two crore voters in Bihar will decide the fate of 1,066 candidates on Wednesday across 71 assembly segments in the first phase of elections.
Bihar CM Jitan Ram Manjhi is set to meet PM Narendra Modi while attending the NITI Aayog meetings.
In the tweet, Yadav had claimed that the result in the assembly segment of Araria district proved that Kumar owed the success of his party in 2015 assembly polls to the alliance with the RJD and not the other way round.
Despite the BJP emerging as the largest party in the ruling alliance with 74 seats, 31 more than the JDU, the top leadership of the saffron party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has emphatically endorsed Kumar as the next chief minister.
'The main characteristic of Bihar politics is that it has always affected Delhi.'
The Congress, which had fought nine, lost all but managed to retain Kishanganj.
Twenty-three per cent or 244 candidates have declared serious criminal cases against themselves, it said. Serious criminal cases are non-bailable offences with over five years of imprisonment.
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.
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.
The 94 constituencies which are going to poll on November 3 are in 17 districts: West Champaran, East Champaran, Sheohar, Sitamarhi, Madhubani, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj, Siwan, Saran, Vaishali, Samastipur, Begusarai, Khagaria, Bhagalpur, Nalanda and Patna.
JD-U sources conceded that the BJP's "Bihari martyrdom" line will give the coalition an edge or "at least help us combat anti-incumbency if the Opposition makes an issue of Nitish's governance".
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