The BSP has released its first list of 96 candidates.
Once a close aide to JMM supremo Shibu Soren, Champai is now seen as crucial for the saffron party's efforts to establish a foothold in the tribal belt of Jharkhand, where Scheduled Tribes make up about 26 per cent of the electorate.
Hundreds of people are still seen attending the rallies without wearing face masks and pushing and shoving each other for space.
On May 2, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will step into Bihar and challenge the Nitish-Lalu order in the state.
The 33-year-old, who steered his party to an impressive show in the Bihar assembly polls last year thereby emerging out of the shadow of his father Lalu Prasad, underscored that the opposition needed to bring in "dhaar" (edge) and "nayaapan" (novelty) in its electoral issues.
As the race for Maharashtra chief minister enters the last lap, Hemant Waje looks at several scenarios which can play out.
Acting Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, in his first visit to the national capital after leading his ruling alliance to an unprecedented second straight term in the state.
Lalu Prasad and his Muslim-Yadav line has completely gone off track.
Congress spokesperson Rajeev Gowda tells A Ganesh Nadar why his party may join the Nitish Kumar-led Janata parivar alliance.
With Nitish Kumar on its side, a BJP-led government may feel increased pressure to conduct a nationwide caste-based census.
The final phase of polling on Saturday will cover 78 constituencies spread across 19 north Bihar districts.
However, as the region with the state's highest concentration of Muslims readies for polls on November 7 in the last phase of the elections, it is the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress-Left alliance that draws considerable support from the community amid sporadic voices in Owaisi's support as they weigh their choices.
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'.
The JD-U, may be the BJP's partner for now. But it is a party at all only because of Nitish Kumar. The day Nitish Kumar exits, the JD-U will split into hundreds of pieces. Obviously, Prashant Kishor is setting himself up as the vessel that will collect all the pieces and put them together in some sort of political instrument, explains Aditi Phadnis.
As Bihar awaits the results in the much-awaited polls, Rediff.com takes a look at some of those leaders who won and lost.
BIf you know this BJP, it will now go forward to Jharkhand and Maharashtra as if June 2024 never happened, notes Shekhar Gupta.
How Modi retrieves the situation and how he enlists new allies in the next two years will show if the BJP is fighting fit, report Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
Meanwhile, hectic activity was seen at 10, Circular Road, the bungalow allotted to party president Lalu Prasad's wife Rabri Devi who shares the house with her husband and younger son Tejashwi Yadav, the deputy CM.
It is now a different time in Bihar. It is a different place -- one in which Raghuvansh Prasad Singh's options are very limited, notes Aditi Phadnis.
According to information received from sources, there will be a meeting at 5 pm through video conferencing but its agenda is not clear.
Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav on Tuesday said he was in favour of extending reservation benefits to Muslims but emphasised that it should be based on social backwardness and 'not on the basis of religion'.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party falling short of a majority in the Lok Sabha and needing the National Democratic Alliance partners to form the government at the Centre, Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United head Nitish Kumar and Telugu Desam Party's N Chandrababu Naidu have emerged as potential kingmakers.
The speculation was triggered after Shravan Kumar, a Bihar minister, who is also the Janata Dal-United's in-charge for UP, said there were 'demands' that the party boss enter the fray from the adjoining state.
Pressure from the Soren clan is only one of the challenges Champai faces as he readies himself to helm the predominantly tribal state.
BJP candidate Kedar Prasad Gupta defeated Manoj Singh Kushwaha of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United by 3,645 votes in Kurhani.
Manjhi's political journey took a dramatic turn when, in 2014, he was unexpectedly anointed Chief Minister by Nitish Kumar, who had resigned after a disastrous Lok Sabha election.
In a stunning blow to the BJP on Wednesday, the party lost bypolls to all the three Lok Sabha seats it contested, including its bastion Gorakhpur, and Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh, besides Araria in Bihar.
Here's how the biggies fared in Bihar elections 2020.
'Party workers sit outside polling booths and they know everything that is happening.' 'Besides, as a voter when you push the EVM button to vote there is a paper slip that comes out showing you who you voted for.'
Mukesh Sahni's move to contest 55 seats in the UP assembly polls antagonised top BJP leaders.
Nadda enjoys warm relations with Modi, who was for a long time in charge of the party's affairs in Himachal Pradesh.
Besides Defence Minister Singh (Lucknow), Minister of Women and Child Development Irani (Amethi), those in the fray are Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishor (Mohanlalganj) and Minister of State of Consumer Affairs Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur).
An LJP parliamentary board meeting chaired by its president Chirag Paswan instead passed a resolution in favour of an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and said its MLAs will work to strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Owaisi's five seats in Bihar's Muslim-majority Seemanchal region ought to ring alarm bells, observes Virendra Kapoor.
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.
Prasad was approached with queries by journalists at the airport, where he had reached, alongside son and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, to board a flight to Delhi for the coalition meeting on Tuesday.
Tejashwi's parents Lalu Yadav and Rabri Devi have 11 children and all his siblings were married before him.
Party believes Nitish-Lalu alliance beatable, but wary of self goals.
Now, that's how desperately Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to win Bihar. M I Khan reports from Patna
According to a statement issued by JD-U national general secretary Afaq Ahmed Khan on Tuesday, this is the party's first list of candidates for Madhya Pradesh, where voting will take place for the 230-member assembly on November 17.
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