Empty bottles of liquor were discovered inside the premises of the legislature in dry Bihar, in a fresh embarrassment to the Nitish Kumar government in the state, which has been drawing flak over recent hooch tragedies that have claimed more than 40 lives.
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.
Even as the BJP is expected to win the vice-presidential poll, ppposition hopes to make it yet another display of its unity, reports Archis Mohan.
Accusing the BJP of working to 'divide India and spread hate and violence', he asserted that a fight of ideologies is going on in India.
'Rahul Gandhi is raising the issue of a caste census though his party has been doing injustice on this front from the 1950s.'
There is little doubt that the prime minister's own charisma exceeds that of his party, but 2024 is proof that no party can ultimately depend on one person to deliver victory all the time, points out R Jagannathan.
President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday conferred Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian honour, on former prime ministers P V Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh, agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan and two-time former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur, posthumously at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'I have serious doubts about the longevity of the NDA government and the longevity of the 18th Lok Sabha itself.'
In nearly 100 seats, the BJP stands almost no chance of winning. In 200 seats, it is a direct fight between the BJP and the Congress where the BJP has an upper hand. In 243 seats, the BJP is pitted against regional parties and it is not going to be easy. That is why 400 seats may end up as a pipe dream, states Ramesh Menon, author of Modi Demystified: The Making of a Prime Minister.
The IMD has warned of heatwave to severe heatwave conditions in parts of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh during the next five days.
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.
The party, however, did not announce as whether it would merge with any other party or become part of some other alliance.
Chosen for the country's highest civilian award Bharat Ratna a day ahead of his birth anniversary, Karpoori Thakur has been the veritable 'Jan Nayak' or people's hero of politics in Bihar, whose legacy parties cutting across ideologies seek to claim.
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