This was a difficult election to win, but the Modi card, the caste divide and the division in the Opposition vote bank helped overcome many challenges.
If the Congress comes to power in the state, it will not allow his government to work, Modi claimed.
As many as 37 ministers have been dropped from the government in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's third term and these include seven with cabinet rank -- prominent among them being Smriti Irani, Anurag Thakur and Narayan Rane.
Yadav said all parties have joined hands against the BJP in the Bihar assembly, and added "now this is going to be replicated across the whole country".
Bihar has fertile grounds for caste to emerge as an electoral issue.
'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.
Campaigning for May 13 elections in 96 Lok Sabha constituencies across 10 states and Union territories including all seats in Andhra Pradesh, where assembly elections are also being held concurrently, and Telangana concluded on Saturday evening.
'They were as late as June 2023 and they did not follow it up with concrete measures immediately in terms of a secretariat or common minimum programme, working group or seat sharing etc.' 'They continued to have periodic meetings after a gap of weeks where they had tasty dinner and coffee, but beside that they did nothing else.'
RJD president Lalu Prasad's daughter Rohini Acharya has entered the fray to wrest back her father's erstwhile pocket borough.
'The BJP's numbers in this government are almost the same as those enjoyed by the Congress under P V Narasimha Rao when the reform process was kicked off in 1991.' 'As before, the only constraints on the prime minister's actions are internal, not external.' 'They come from his own assessment of the political consequences of any action,' points out Mihir S Sharma.
'What's sad today is that there are so many people who cannot find work, not because the country is devoid of that opportunity, but because we are not doing enough in the country.'
'Aquaponics can effectively cushion the impact of a calamity like COVID.'
Gandhi said the Congress' slogan is 'count' because that would be the first step towards justice.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, along with her team of bureaucrats, delved into the fine print of the 2024-25 Budget documents in a press conference, detailing the government's road map on bringing down the debt-to-GDP ratio and bold tax measures.
Both Khera and Suman joined the saffron at its headquarters in Delhi in the presence of senior leaders, including BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde and national media department in-charge Anil Baluni.
'BJP's ultimate ambition is to control Bihar independently.'
In a poor village of daily wage earners in Siwan, Bihar, people speak about their hard lives and why they vote.
'Rahul Gandhi is raising the issue of a caste census though his party has been doing injustice on this front from the 1950s.'
'Nitish may take such a decision because he was the first person who was with the INDIA front.' 'He went back only because he did not get proper encouragement from the Congress.' 'Nitish will take a decision provided there is a strong alternative.' 'If he feels ours is a weak coalition, he will not come.' 'Then, this government will continue for five years.'
Loss of power in Bihar has upset the Bharatiya Janata Party's calculations for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls but a section of its leaders also see a chance for the party to break the dominance of regional parties in the state, like it has in Uttar Pradesh.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
'Despite being Bihar chief minister twice and an MLA for over three decades, he and my mother used to stay in a jhopri in our village.'
The court order is in the public domain for all to see, the JMM executive president said, adding that he would discharge his duties with commitment.
Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh have emerged as the poorest states in India, according to Niti Aayog's first Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report. As per the index, 51.91 per cent population of Bihar is poor, followed 42.16 per cent in Jharkhand, 37.79 per cent in Uttar Pradesh. While Madhya Pradesh (36.65 per cent) has been placed fourth in the index, Meghalaya (32.67 per cent) is at the fifth spot. Kerala (0.71 per cent), Goa (3.76 per cent), Sikkim (3.82 per cent), Tamil Nadu (4.89 per cent) and Punjab (5.59 per cent) have registered the lowest poverty across India and are at the bottom of the index.
'If such a practice were feasible, every state would seek additional funds, posing a significant risk to the overall health of the economy.'
Seeking a third straight term, Modi is not just looking to stamp his electoral dominance on India but also chasing history with another consecutive victory equalling first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's record.
The party leaders and ministers also credited the victory in Bihar to the Modi government's success in navigating the country during the COVID-19 crisis.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday said his party's alliance with the Congress is 'off to a good start' with 11 'strong' Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.
BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday said that fire-crackers will burst in Pakistan if the NDA did not form the next government in Bihar.
JD-U chief whip Shravan Kumar said those defying the whip "will lose their membership" even as he maintained that it was a "routine exercise that takes place ahead of every assembly session".
The opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) was in the grip of a crisis on Saturday with the Janata Dal-United saying the alliance was collapsing amid indications that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will switch back to the National Democratic Alliance, prompting the Congress to allege that the Bharatiya Janata Party is doing its best to cause a 'mini implosion' in the coalition.
'We want to strengthen hands of Modiji and sure that LJP (Ram Vilas) will contest polls as an ally of NDA.'
Few finance ministers announce any taxation measure that could upset the stock market. Ms Sitharaman decided to take that risk, observes A K Bhattacharya.
With the hugely popular Panchayat's third season ready to drop this week, we look at all the rural themed shows available on OTT.
In the letter to the Bihar CM, the Bharatiya Janata Party MP and rural development minister said, 'Things which have no connection with Islam are being Islamised. Some institutions have become self-proclaimed in giving halal certificate and are giving halal certificate to companies manufacturing goods by paying huge sums of money.'
'Nitish Kumar's newly-formed alliance with BJP would unravel before the 2025 assembly polls in Bihar'
Kishor held out the possibility of Jan Suraaj metamorphosing into a political party at a latter stage.
'If people don't see you, they might be hesitant, but once they see you, they are confident that this is the person they will vote for,' says political debutant Shambhavi Choudhury, 25, alumnus of the Lady Sriram College and the Delhi School of Economics.
The defence minister, however, said the matter is under the domain of the Union home ministry and it will take appropriate decisions.
He assured all possible support from the Centre for the welfare of Bihar.
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