Is it is necessary to play divisive politics to succeed in the next general elections? asks Dr Sudhir Bisht.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The BJP's defeat in Bihar dents its hopes of improving its RS tally but the grand alliance victory could also present the first signs of tension when five JD-U members retire next year.
As per the two party leaders, they held wide-ranging talks on the current political situation in Bihar and the NDA's strategy for contesting the 40 seats in the state in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Most of those who tested positive either recently arrived from African countries or were in contact with such people.
The formula of Lok Sabha polls this year wherein JD-U and BJP had both fought 17 seats each, leaving six for Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party, which joined the National Democratic Alliance in 2014, a year after Kumar's exit, could not serve as the basis for the assembly polls, said the poll strategist.
'BJP has achieved its aim by making him a regional leader dependent on them.'
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.
Taking a jibe over the reported row in Bharatiya Janata Party over a move to field Narendra Modi from Varanasi and Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Congress on Monday wondered as to why Opposition party leaders were looking for a safe seat if there was a Modi wave across the country.
In switching over, Nitish has sent out a message that if he could not now become the NDA's PM, then he would need to stay on as CM at the very least, which a third term for Modi would not let him have, N Sathiya Moorthy points out.
The scale of victory could be gauged from the fact that from 143 seats in the 2005 elections, Kumar's campaign on the basis of his government's performance helped the ruling alliance notch a spectacular tally of 206 seats in the 243-member House.
Kumar made the remark while replying to questions in Patna, from journalists, about the BJP's decision taken at its two-day state executive meeting that concluded in Darbhanga on the previous day.
The Congress, which had fought nine, lost all but managed to retain Kishanganj.
Counting of votes is underway in assembly byelection to 58 seats in 11 states including Madhya Pradesh where the results will decide the fate of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has already taken a lead with his knock-on-door campaign.
Addressing BJP workers at a felicitation function after the Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in Bihar elections and various bypolls, he asserted that the only mantra for his party's victory was 'Sabka saath, sabka vikas and sabka vishwas' and also launched a veiled attack on the West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress, saying those who cannot challenge the saffron party democratically have resorted to 'murdering' its workers to realise their goals.
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.
Kumar, who looks on course to becoming the longest serving chief minister of the state during his new term, was expected to take oath on or after Monday next week before which he will send his resignation to the governor since his current tenure expires at the end of November.
This is the first time, since the JDU-BJP alliance came to power in 2005, that the saffron party has staked claim for the speakers post.
Mishra was catapulted to the chief ministership of Bihar following the assassination of his elder brother Lalit Narayan Mishra in 1975.
The seats identified are from Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the Northeast.
'After the Congress's 2014 Lok Sabha debacle, commentators identified three major shortcomings: Leadership, organisation, and ideology.' 'Here we are six years later -- and what are the Congress's major failings? Leadership, organisation, and ideology.' 'The party seems to have learned very little during its six years in the Opposition wilderness.'
Training his guns at the Congress, Modi accused the opposition party of having always made false promises of poverty eradication, farm loan waiver and one rank-one pension for retired servicemen.
It's great to win election after election on the strength of Modi's charisma and voter appeal, but the larger the Modi myth grows, the more the BJP diminishes, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
A 7.8 per cent increase in votes for the JD-U-RJD-Congress alliance over BJP-led NDA's tally fetched it another 120 seats catapulting the Nitish Kumar-led coalition to a landslide two-third majority.
Official figures say 1.8 lakh workers have returned home to Bihar. Unofficially, however, that figure is said to have crossed 3 lakhs. Can Bihar cope?
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.
The man, who once lorded over Bihar, was pushed to the margins after the 2010 assembly elections.
When almost the entire political class was engrossed in the Bihar polls, the Congress shahzada was holidaying in a hill station. As the Bihar contest and other by-elections have shown, a large number of states have become Congress-mukt, fulfilling the Hindutva brigade's dream, notes Amulya Ganguli.
always say the same thing at the last rally in every election that 'ant bhala to sab bhala', says Nitish.
The longest-serving chief minister of any Hindi- speaking state, Nitish Kumar seems to have acquired an aura of indispensability when it comes to the highest seat of power in Bihar.
Two poll surveys on Thursday projected a majority for the JD-U-RJD-Congress alliance in the Bihar assembly polls.
A basic outline and roadmap for Opposition unity are likely to be deliberated upon with the contentious issue of seat sharing and leadership questions to be avoided for now.
Most politicians and even non-politicians have been honoured because of what they were purported to be electorally worth for the ruling party of their time, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Nitish Kumar's government will be at stake. The JD-U is working with a very thin majority, which is a borrowed majority. With just two seats Nitish Kumar has no moral right to stay on,' says Professor Prabhat Ghosh.
Startling allegations of backstabbing were made against the Bharatiya Janata Party by MLAs and MPs of the Janata Dal-United on Tuesday at a meeting in Patna after which Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar pulled the plug on the alliance.
The BJP blames Nitish's PM ambition for his decision to walk out of the NDA.
Barclays, the global brokerage firm, also stated that the election verdict could lead to a weakness in the stock market.
While Bharatiya Janata Party's countrywide vote share shot up by over 12 per cent at the expense of other parties, the chart throws some contrary pictures as parties like Bahujan Samaj Party got no seat in spite of third-highest vote share, but Trinamool Congress and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam clinched over 30 seats each with less than 4 per cent vote share.
The former Deputy chief minister made the sensational assertion on his twitter handle, sharing a mobile number which, he claimed, Prasad was having access to despite serving sentences in fodder scam cases.
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