Adequate security and Covid safety measures have been put in place for the electoral exercise.
There are 64 vacancies in the legislative assemblies of various states and one in Lok Sabha.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com does a deep dive into four elections when Narendra Modi resorted to anti-Muslim fervour and points out that Hindu-Muslim politics does not necessarily mean victory for the BJP.
The two parties had fallen out with each other in October last year when the RJD unilaterally decided to contest by-elections for two assembly seats, evoking strong protest from the Congress which vowed to go it alone in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the assembly elections which will be held a year later.
In the face of sluggish domestic demand and global economic slowdown, Bihar has recorded a staggering growth rate of 11.95 per cent rate annually at constant prices during 11th Five Year Plan, the highest among states.
The counting of votes will take place on November 2.
Voting will be held on Thursday in bypolls to seven assembly seats in six states -- a contest symbolic of the fierce turf war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties.
Two suspects were detained for interrogation in Patna on Wednesday in connection with a bomb blast that took place in a residential building in the Bihar capital on Monday night, police said.
The marathon polling process to elect the 18th Lok Sabha ended on Saturday with the seventh phase of elections witnessing an approximate voter turnout of 62.36 per cent, amid clashes between Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party supporters in Sandeshkhali and some other parts of West Bengal.
The 243-member assembly is witnessing a fierce competition for the chief minister's post, and as per current trends, the NDA is comfortably ahead of the Opposition camp.
Of the two rate structures on the table, one suggests tax slabs of 8 per cent, 16 per cent, and 24 per cent. The other proposes tax slabs at 9 per cent, 18 per cent, and 27 per cent.
Nadda enjoys warm relations with Modi, who was for a long time in charge of the party's affairs in Himachal Pradesh.
In the last five years, 480 candidates with declared cases related to hate speech have contested elections to state assemblies, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, the ADR said.
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The buck for the Gandamal tragedy should not stop with the school-in-charge Meena Kumari. She is just the face of a deeper malaise in Bihar, says Apoorvanand.
Uddhav Thackeray, his son and Maharashtra tourism minister Aaditya Thackeray figured in the list of campaigners.
Dominic Xavier wonders whether Bihari women will remember what Nitish Kumar has done for them or whether electorate amnesia will set in.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah himself sounded more open to such a possibility in a recent interview.
After reaching Patna on Thursday night, Shakti Singh Gohil, Congress's Bihar in-charge, asserted that the situation won't have risen had RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav been out of jail. Lalu is serving a sentence in a fodder scam case in present-day Jharkhand.
Attacking the Nitish government over policy discrepancies, RJD scion claimed that the health and education sectors were in shambles under the current government.
Allies since the 1990s, the JD-U and the BJP have in the recent past squabbled on issues ranging from Agnipath, caste census, population law and ban on loudspeakers.
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.
Chief ministers of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha on Wednesday evening condoled the demise of Tata Group's chairman emeritus and veteran industrialist Ratan Tata, and said his legacy will live on forever.
BIf you know this BJP, it will now go forward to Jharkhand and Maharashtra as if June 2024 never happened, notes Shekhar Gupta.
A 29-year-old woman from Bihar, suspected to have links with the alleged recruitment of youths from Kerala to Islamic State, is being questioned in Kerala's Kasaragod by the state police after being taken into custody from New Delhi.
With the sudden spurt in crimes against women, children and Dalits in Bihar, Leader of Opposition in the state assembly Abdul Bari Siddiqui said that criminals are ruling the roost in the state allegedly due to discriminatory police action against culprits belonging to a certain caste and creed.
Jan Adhikar Party leader Pappu Yadav joined the Congress on Wednesday and announced the merger of his outfit.
Raut said the issue of passage of farm sector bills in the Parliament will have no impact on the elections in Bihar as the state votes "only on the basis of caste and religion".
Yadav took to social media and shared video clips and pictures of the deployment of security personnel, including police and rapid action force, with barricades near his house here, a stone's throw away from the Samajwadi Party headquarters.
As voting begins in Bihar in the first phase of assembly elections on Wednesday, the fate of political leaders depends on how the electorate perceives they can solve ground-level issues from reverse migration to tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
The rout of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance in the crucial assembly polls in Bihar is the "most significant domestic setback" to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, global media commented on Sunday, saying it shows that his vote-winning abilities were on the wane.
Reacting to allegations that his party was dividing anti-BJP votes, Owaisi said he was running a political party that has a right to contest on its own.
About 2.34 crore voters, spread across 78 assembly segments of the 243-strong assembly, will decide the fates of 1,204 candidates, including the Speaker and 12 members of the state cabinet.
Sale of expensive sarees rose by 1,751 per cent while consumption of honey by 380 per cent.
Owaisi's five seats in Bihar's Muslim-majority Seemanchal region ought to ring alarm bells, observes Virendra Kapoor.
The Election Commission on Tuesday appointed special observers for administrative, security and expenditure monitoring purposes in several states to ensure a level playing field during the upcoming elections.
Prasad can still influence the power play in Patna if not change it, reports Satyavrat Mishra.
Voters of Bihar have made it clear that their aspiration and priority are development alone, Modi said in a series of tweets, adding that the people's blessings for the NDA's good governance show what are the state's dreams and expectations.
'BJP's ultimate ambition is to control Bihar independently.'
"Word of the day! Definition of *snollygoster* US dialect: a shrewd, unprincipled politician. First Known Use: 1845. Most recent use: 26/7/17," Tharoor had tweeted in 2017.
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