With challenges such as raising the legal age of marriage for women, combating malnutrition among women and children, and addressing women's safety issues, the new ministers face a formidable agenda.
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.
JMM leader Hemant Soren was sworn in as the 14th chief minister of Jharkhand in a grand ceremony in Ranchi, amid the presence of a galaxy of INDIA bloc leaders. This is Soren's fourth stint as chief minister. The JMM-led alliance won a majority in the recent assembly polls, securing 56 seats in the 81-member assembly.
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.
The monthly Rs 2500 payment for poor women is expected to cost Rs 11,000 crore while the pension scheme of Rs 2000 for every senior citizen will cost around Rs 4100 crore. The Yamuna clean up will cost over Rs 10,000 crore while a similar amount is required to upgrade Delhi's hospitals. Ultimately, the new BJP government will have no choice but to ask the centre for financial support, notes Rashme Sehgal.
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.
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.
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.
As the race for Maharashtra chief minister enters the last lap, Hemant Waje looks at several scenarios which can play out.
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.
With Nitish Kumar on its side, a BJP-led government may feel increased pressure to conduct a nationwide caste-based census.
As Bihar awaits the results in the much-awaited polls, Rediff.com takes a look at some of those leaders who won and lost.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
BJP candidate Kedar Prasad Gupta defeated Manoj Singh Kushwaha of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United by 3,645 votes in Kurhani.
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.
Here's how the biggies fared in Bihar elections 2020.
BIf you know this BJP, it will now go forward to Jharkhand and Maharashtra as if June 2024 never happened, notes Shekhar Gupta.
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'.
Pressure from the Soren clan is only one of the challenges Champai faces as he readies himself to helm the predominantly tribal state.
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.
Mukesh Sahni's move to contest 55 seats in the UP assembly polls antagonised top BJP leaders.
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.
Party believes Nitish-Lalu alliance beatable, but wary of self goals.
Tejashwi's parents Lalu Yadav and Rabri Devi have 11 children and all his siblings were married before him.
Now, that's how desperately Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to win Bihar. M I Khan reports from Patna
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.
The Bihar assembly elections in October will be the biggest electoral test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi so far, scholars from a top American think-tank have said, noting that the ramifications of its results will be felt far away from the state's borders.
'He is a key fulcrum point in the pan-Indian creation of an effective Opposition to the BJP.'
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).
Nadda enjoys warm relations with Modi, who was for a long time in charge of the party's affairs in Himachal Pradesh.
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