The April 11 polling will decide the fate of several political bigwigs.
The 71-year-old remained Sonia Gandhi's most trusted lieutenant for most of her tenure as the longest serving Congress president, standing by her side through sun and shade.
A group of first time voters who run 10 km everyday to prepare for fauji recruitment rallies, tell Rediff.com's Archana Masih they need two things: quality education and jobs.
'A one-party State is not possible in a diverse country like India.'
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.
In terms of electoral fortunes, in all likelihood, the status quo is not going to change in any significant manner. These six seats from Bihar are unlikely to give any clear signal to UPA, NDA or Federal Front.
Lalu Prasad's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav on Friday turned up at a function hosted by Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras, triggering speculations about the maverick RJD leader, who wears his religious fervour on the sleeves, cosying up to BJP-led NDA which his father has always fought tooth and nail.
The focus now shifts to November 10 counting of votes.
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.
Chief ministers and other senior leaders made last-minute appeals to voters for their support in Mokama and Gopalganj of Bihar, Adampur of Haryana, Manugoda of Telangana, Gola Gorakhnath of Uttar Pradesh and Dhamnagar of Odisha.
There are also over 10 million voters in the 18-29 age bracket. Winning them over could be Nitish Kumar's biggest challenge, reports Aditi Phadnis.
The Maharashtra government had opposed an FIR by the Bihar police and a CBI probe in the sensational case.
Indian forces are doing what they have to do to protect the country, whether it is in terms of deployment, action or counter-action, Modi told political leaders.
The actor-turned-politician whose criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has grown progressively sharper, didn't figure on the BJP's list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls.
Unless controlled and contained, given the untested belief that the north Indian labour support and follow the Hindutva kind of political ideology, there is a potential in terms of ideological clashes with their Dravidian brethren in the local neighbourhoods, and it all escalating into violence, especially during election time, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Talking to reporters for the first time after the NDA's victory, Kumar, who is set for yet another term in office, said the date for his swearing-in ceremony will be discussed at an 'informal' meeting of all the four NDA constituents on Friday.
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.
'Log kehte hai desh to humne Modi ko diya hua hai, par pradesh nahi diya hai (we have given Modi the mandate to run the nation, not the state).'
Yadav vowed to dislodge the government headed by Nitish Kumar, whom Congress leader Avinash Pandey in his address accused of "apharan" (hijacking) of the mandate in the previous elections.
While the assembly elections are being seen as largely a contest between the NDA and the Grand Alliance, the state has been witness to mushrooming of "morchas" (fronts) which may queer the pitch for the lead players in a tight contest.
Cutting across party lines, political leaders welcomed the government's decision to confer Bharat Ratna, the nation's highest civilian honour, on former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and freedom fighter Madan Mohan Malviya.
Fadnavis dismissed his appointment as the party's election in-charge for the state was to do anything with Sushant case.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's allies in Bihar Lok Janashakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party chief Upendra Kushwaha on Monday said that the Modi wave is sweeping the state and the ongoing Lok Sabha polls outcome will prove them right.
The Congress-led grouping has some reasons to feel emboldened over recent political developments.
'The BJP and RSS accept that the party is winning election after election because of Modi.' 'If the BJP is winning due to Modi, it will also lose due to Modi.'
President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday condoled the death of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and said his contribution to public service will always be remembered.
The marital dispute between Prasad's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav and Aishwarya Rai, a daughter of Chandrika Roy, has its shadow in the poll battle on this seat which votes on November 3.
Asking the people of Bihar to bring their own government to power, the post made a veiled reference to the alleged high handedness of bureaucracy under the JD(U)-BJP rule but fell shy of a frontal attack on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his arch rival, or the near hegemonic saffron party which considers him a bete noire.
The statements made by the opposition parties after the preemptive air strike on terror camps have made only people of Pakistan happy, he claimed.
Bihar's progress in the last 10 years under Nitish Kumar has been acknowledged by Biharis -- but whom will the astute Bihari choose this time, A Bihari Abroad asks as the first round of polls in the state begins on Monday.
Noting that it was his government that had recommended a CBI probe into the actor's death, Kumar said the incident saddened both the state and the country.
'Was an NDA meeting held to decide if the Shiv Sena has to be removed from the NDA?'
Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Odisha will be held simultaneously in the first phase.
Dalits constitute nearly 16 per cent of the vote and 38 seats are reserved for them in the assembly, reports Satyavrat Mishra
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.
The Bihar CM has made a sagacious attempt to consolidate his extremely backward castes (EBC) support base while trying to make a dent into RJD's Muslim-Yadav combine.
The ruling coalition won 125 seats in the 243-member state assembly against 110 clinched by the opposition Grand Alliance to pave the way for a fourth successive term for Kumar in office.
The 2020 assembly polls marked the coming of age of a politician who valiantly went down fighting an army of battle-hardened veterans.
While P Muralidhar Rao, BJP general secretary, says, 'Digital electioneering is here to stay until the elections in 2021,' the BJP's rallies in Bihar will not be confined to cyberspace. Its strategists have devised other ways of getting around the hygiene protocol that Covid-19 has entailed.
The disaster management department said that the state government has urged the Indian Air Force to send a helicopter for air-dropping of food packets and other relief material in marooned areas.
