The Congress is "not a factor" in the Assembly polls in Bihar as the situation in the state is vastly different from that in Uttar Pradesh, which had seen the revival of the ruling party at the Centre, JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav said.
As many as 35 of 53 Nationalist Congress Party MLAs were present at the party meeting convened by Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar in Mumbai on Wednesday, party sources said.
The political war of words over Manipur intensified on Saturday with the BJP raising the incidents of atrocities against women in West Bengal and Rajasthan and questioning the 'silence' of the opposition, which termed it as a diversionary tactic to avoid debate on the situation in the north-eastern state.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday called for a "main front" of all non-BJP parties to take on the ruling alliance in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and asserted that the decision on its leadership can be taken later.
A Bihar court on Saturday summoned Congress President Sonia Gandhi to appear before it on July 29 in connection with a complaint alleging that her depiction in posters in Uttar Pradesh in 2007 as Goddess Durga was an "insult to Hindu religion."
The Congress on Thursday virtually ruled out any grand alliance in poll bound Uttar Pradesh including with Samajwadi Party insisting that Rahul Gandhi wanted to set things right in the state which is in bad shape for past 27 years in non-Congress rule.
The government on Monday said it was willing to discuss every issue under rules during the Budget session of Parliament and sought the support of the Opposition in running the proceedings smoothly.
The BJP sought to distance itself from its leader's sexist comments.
The Nitish Kumar government is leaving no stones unturned to plug the loopholes in the implementation liquor ban.
People, cutting across all ages and from all walks of life, turned up to pay tribute to the child at the school where she was a student till Thursday.
The opposition alliance that will take on the ruling National Democratic Alliance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections will be called Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) and an 11-member committee will be set up for coordination, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge announced after a meeting of the parties in Bengaluru.
According the latest CNN-IBN-CSDS-Lokniti post poll survey, the National Democratic Alliance is projected to win 274 to 286 seats, and the Bharatiya Janata Party is projected to win 230 to 242 seats on its own, it best ever poll tally.
Amidst reports of Congress' confabulations with the Rashtriya Janata Dal for a secular alliance in Bihar in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday took a dig at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for the Congress preferring Lalu Prasad over him and said such an 'opportunistic' alliance was not a cause of worry for it.
After Bihar elections, Rahul Gandhi's go-it-alone strategy seems to have taken a back seat.
However, speculation remained rife that the meeting was part of Banerjee's plan to form an opposition front with regional players minus the Congress.
Opposition parties on Sunday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party after Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar and eight others were inducted into the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, saying the ruling party's 'washing machine' has resumed its operation to clean tainted leaders and it was an 'ED-facilitated power grab'.
Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien said the situation in Bihar is one of the reasons behind the Parliament session being cut short by the government.
The battle for Uttar Pradesh will now be fought by two Gujarat leaders for their respective parties, reports Saroj Nagi
In an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana, the party said that while on the one hand the Bharatiya Janata Party has already started preparing for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress is in dire straits.
P Chidambaram and Rajeev Shukla of the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party's Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar, former Congress leader Kapil Sibal, Rashtriya Janata Dal's Misa Bharti and Jayant Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal were among the 41 winners declared elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha.
'He is a key fulcrum point in the pan-Indian creation of an effective Opposition to the BJP.'
The second meeting of the NITI Aayog's governing council, was, however, attended by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
The Congress chief hit out at the BJP's ideological mentor, the RSS, alleging that it was a "male chauvinist organisation" and did not have women in it, thus cannot do what the Congress can for women.
The coming together of SP and BSP leaders on one platform is being seen as the emergence of a new phase of politics in the state after a dismal show of all anti-BJP parties in the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2017 assembly polls.
Congress' poll strategist Prashant Kishor on Tuesday held a two-hour meeting with Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is trying to cobble together an alliance of like-minded parties ahead of Uttar Pradesh assembly polls due early next year.
Pawar, who had surprised the BJP by forging an unlikely alliance of Congress-Shiv Sena-NCP to form government in Maharashtra after the 2019 assembly elections, has already appealed to opposition parties to keep aside differences and join hands to challenge the Modi juggernaut.
The Congress's revival plan says it needs to bring back into its fold Hindus repelled by the Sangh Parivar, take its message to youth and women and sections upset at curbs on their personal freedoms.
The BJP is confident of winning all the 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh and even political experts believe the Congress stands no chance. Bikash Mohapatra reports
The Congress may proudly claim that the party has given the country its first woman speaker in Meira Kumar, but sources tell rediff.com that the Bihar MP was in fact a last-minute choice for the august office.
What some of our leaders were up to on Monday and Tuesday.
Around 1.72 crore voters, including 94.60 lakh men and 77.84 lakh women, are eligible to cast their votes in this round to decide the fate of 635 candidates.
Party's performance will also work as a catalyst in Uttar Pradesh elections.
"In May 2014, the BJP won 282 Lok Sabha seats. In four years, BJP government is down to 271, losing its simple majority in Lok Sabha minus its allies - considering the fact that PM Modi has suspended Kirti Azad and virtually disowned their most truthful, fiercely independent Patna Sahib MP," Surjewala tweeted.
When it comes to the winning strike rate, Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal has emerged victorious on eight of every ten seats it contested while only one of the every three Bharatiya Janata Party candidates managed to win.
Opposition leaders on Saturday lauded the Congress for its victory in Karnataka and thanked the people of the state, saying that this win has showed that 'Modi is not invincible'.
Nirmala Bhuria lost to former Union minister Kantilal Bhuria, who wrested the tribal-dominated seat from the BJP by a convincing margin of 88,832 votes.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday came down heavily on opposition leaders, asserting that he will not "spare anyone involved in corruption" while pledging "to take every scamster to task".
He told PTI in an interview that parties that are still thinking of 'being the leader' of a possible united front against the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls have not understood the gravity of the situation at all.
The Congress expects Rahul Gandhi to take over as its chief this year, Jairam Ramesh said on Monday.
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