With an eye on the assembly elections due this year end, All India Congress Committee general secretary Rahul Gandhi set out on a tour of Bihar on Monday and said the Congress will go it alone like the party did for Lok Sabha polls in the National Democratic Alliance-ruled state.
Bharatiya Janata Party's National Democratic Alliance partners have got five cabinet ministerial berths in the third term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as against none in the outgoing government, given the party's dependence on allies for a majority in the Lok Sabha.
Among the keenly watched contests are those involving former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav (Kannauj, UP) and Union ministers Giriraj Singh (Begusarai, Bihar), Nityanand Rai (Ujiarpur, Bihar) and Raosaheb Danve (Jalna, Maharashtra).
Following the party's sweep of assembly elections in three Hindi heartland states against the odds, the BJP's brain trust is now busy game-planning as to how it can improve on its 2019 Lok Sabha election tally of 303 seats.
For renomination to the Rajya Sabha, Nadda will have to look for a seat outside his home state of Himachal Pradesh as the Congress is in power there.
Anwar, an AICC general secretary, came out with a flurry of tweets calling for 'urgent and deep introspection' over the debacle of the party, the second largest constituent of the opposition coalition, which contested as many as 70 seats but returned with a tally of just 19.
The Election Commission has reduced maximum number of campaigners for the recognised parties to 30 while for the unrecognised parties it would be not more than 20 in view of coronavirus pandemic, Additional Chief Electoral Officer (ACEO) Sanjay Kumar Singh said on Friday. The maximum number was earlier fixed at 40 for everybody.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday blamed the Congress' preoccupation with assembly polls in five states for the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA)'s inability to build on the momentum it had gained in recent months.
The Commission's strongly-worded instructions came close on the heels of politicians using election rallies and press conferences to target each other ahead of the crucial assembly elections.
Tejashwi accused the Nitish Kumar-led government of meting out "step-motherly" treatment to migrant labourers.
'Episodes of targeted attacks on Muslims established that for a section of people and, sadly, even officials of the State, the election results conveyed no lessons.' 'Opposition parties must not be hesitant in speaking out whenever the mob with tacit State support targets Muslims,' asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
A top BJP leader from Bihar told ANI that Fadnavis is going to play a crucial role in the Bihar assembly election and he is associated with the Bihar BJP on purpose
The Congress will begin the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from the violence-hit Manipur on Sunday, in what is being seen as the party's bid to set the narrative in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls and put the spotlight on issues such as unemployment, price rise and social justice.
Gogoi says BJP will suffer the same fate as Bihar in Assam if secular forces unite.
Top Congress leaders are learnt to be discussing the current political situation.
Hemant Soren staked claim to form the government and the swearing-in ceremony is likely to be held soon. If sworn in, Hemant Soren will be the 13th chief minister of Jharkhand, which was carved out of Bihar on November 15, 2000.
The Congress on Sunday demanded a thorough probe into Siddique's murder and said Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his deputy Devendra Fadnavis, who holds home portfolio, should take moral responsibility for law and order "failure" and resign.
Owaisi's five seats in Bihar's Muslim-majority Seemanchal region ought to ring alarm bells, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Inarguably the biggest gainer in the Grand Alliance, the CPI-ML, often working in the margins of mainstream politics, had 19 candidates in the fray, most of them students and youth leaders.
Maintaining that the INDIA alliance is for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and not for assembly polls in any state, the Congress on Friday asserted that the opposition bloc of 27 parties exists and will fight together.
Some India states are likely to record a significantly higher number of heatwave days, according to the national weather body.
Facing opposition fire for exit polls allegedly being used for stock market manipulation, Axis My India's chief Pradeep Gupta has said he is open to facing all kinds of investigations and it would help do business in a much better way if the government frames specific regulations for pollsters.
His scheduled visit to Sashastra Seema Bal's Patna Frontier on Sunday morning was cancelled due to 'unavoidable reasons', a statement said.
Voting for the second phase of Lok Sabha polls will be held on Friday for 88 seats in 13 states with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi seeking a second-straight term from Wayanad in Kerala.
The party was trounced in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and is now left with only Himachal Pradesh in the north. It is ruling in only three states on its own and is in power in Bihar and Jharkhand as a junior partner in alliance with regional parties.
'As general elections draw near, the BJP and the JD-U (in whatever form it is) will do a deal -- the state to the JD-U in return for support at the Centre for the BJP.'
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) could have performed better in the recently-held Lok Sabha polls and perhaps, too much time was spent in reaching seat-sharing agreements, Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya has said.
The Nationalist Congress Party on Saturday pledged unconditional support to the Janata Dal-United-Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress alliance for the August 21 bypoll to 10 assembly seats in Bihar to keep the Bharatiya Janaat Party away from power.
12 of the 20 MPs with the highest winning margins in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls have not been re-nominated by their parties for the 2024 general elections.
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.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in the assembly polls on Thursday has put the party on a stronger wicket for the election for the post of President expected later this year.
The Nitish Kumar cabinet on Saturday decided to call winter session of the legislative assembly from November 30.
The closed-door discussions between Kishor and Pawar at the latter's residence lasted for about one-and-a-half hours, sources said.
'By naming Tejashwi as the next CM candidate, he has put us in a dilemma.' 'Who will lead us in 2025?' 'What will happen to the party after 2025?'
Asserting that her government has zero tolerance to incidents of rape, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said an amendment to existing laws will be passed in the state assembly next week to ensure capital punishment to convicted rapists.
Seen by political watchers as the favourite to retain power for a third straight term, the Bharatiya Janata Party has set itself an ambitious target of winning 370 Lok Sabha seats, a goal aimed as much at projecting its strength as at diminishing the opposition in popular imagination.
Senior Janata Dal-United leader Dhananjay Singh pitched for Opposition unity ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and said party workers in Uttar Pradesh want Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to contest the elections from the state's Phulpur constituency.
'There was a statement by a minister that 30,000 Kashmiri Pandits have come back to the Kashmir Valley after the abrogation of Article 370, it is all b.......t and a white lie.' 'Nobody has come back.'
Observing that it was dealing with a case which was an "exceptionally painful episode of our criminal justice system", the Supreme Court on Friday convicted former Lok Sabha MP from Bihar Prabhunath Singh in a 1995 double murder case, overturning the orders of the trial court and the Patna high court acquitting him.
The BJP's manifesto speaks about the Prime Minister's vision of making 'Atmanirbhar Bihar'.
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