Sources said that Congress leaders, including Kamal Nath, Digvijaya Singh, Mukul Wasnik, KC Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, AK Antony, Ambika Soni and Randeep Surjewala, are also taking part in the meeting at Sonia Gandhi's 10 Janpath residence.
Empty bottles of liquor were discovered inside the premises of the legislature in dry Bihar, in a fresh embarrassment to the Nitish Kumar government in the state, which has been drawing flak over recent hooch tragedies that have claimed more than 40 lives.
The rout of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance in the crucial assembly polls in Bihar is the "most significant domestic setback" to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, global media commented on Sunday, saying it shows that his vote-winning abilities were on the wane.
'Bihar today has erected a barrier against the BJP bulldozing the polity, the Constitution, and Opposition parties.'
The BJP held a meet amid hints that the central leadership may bring in new faces at key positions in the state.
The Congress also asserted that the opposition INDIA bloc had been formed for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections at the national level and was not state specific.
Rampur Sadar and Khatauli in Uttar Pradesh, Padampur in Odisha, Sardarshahar in Rajasthan, Kurhani in Bihar and Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh are the assembly seats where the bypolls are being held.
According to a senior Congress leader, the constituents of the opposition alliance intend to move forward with the theme "Main Nahin, Hum (We, Not Me)" at the meeting.
'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.'
Formal talks over a seat-sharing formula among the National Democratic Alliance constituents are yet to begin and JD-U leaders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the BJP should take the lead to ensure that it was done quickly to avoid any serious differences near the polls.
A man with an air gun was arrested on Saturday, an hour ahead of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's rally in Bihar's West Champaran district, police said.
'Elections are fought to win.' 'In our party, the leadership takes the final decision, and our leaders are very clear about it.'
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, however, was conspicuous by her absence at the event, which was attended by tens of thousands of people as the Congress sought to promote opposition unity.
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.
With assembly elections in Bihar likely to be held later this year, the Election Commission is dispatching four special teams of 'auditors' to the state on Monday for weeding out duplicate entries from electoral rolls.
What some of our leaders were up to on Monday and Tuesday.
The Election Commission on Tuesday ordered the delisting of another 86 'non-existent' registered unrecognised political parties, raising the number of such organisations red flagged by the poll panel for failing to comply with electoral rules to 537.
The 'Khela Hobe' slogan will reverberate across India in the coming days, said Trinamool Congress MLA Madan Mitra on Saturday.
Now, every state election -- first up, Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand later this year, then Delhi in January and Bihar in September next year -- will be seen by his followers for evidence of his recovery, and by rivals of sharpening decline, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Bihar Chief Electoral Officer H R Srinivasa said the Election Commission has established a three-tier security system for strong rooms (housing the electronic voting machines) and the counting centres. The inner core is being guarded by the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), then there is the Bihar Military Police (BMP) and then the district police, he told reporters.
With their high-decibel campaigns so far, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party may appear to be locked in a direct fight in Uttar Pradesh.
For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
As name-calling like 'cannibal' and 'devil' permeates the high stake Bihar assembly poll campaign, the Election Commission on Thursday expressed "deep anguish" at the "plummeting level" of speeches.
A BJP leader in Bihar on Thursday died while taking part in a 'Vidhan Sabha march' against the state's Nitish Kumar government, evoking allegations from senior party leaders that he was "killed in a brutal lathi charge".
'Bachcha' Rai is alleged to be the mastermind behind Bihar's topper scam.
A senior BJP leader from Bihar said that a strategy has been worked out to ensure Tejashwi's defeat from the Raghopur seat in Vaishali district, from where he is also the sitting MLA.
Rajasthan assembly Speaker C P Joshi is the slender thread that stands between a Congress and BJP government
Three of the fence-sitters rule fairly large states Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha that together send 63 members to Lok Sabha -- where the Congress or other opposition parties have been pushed to the margins.
'Commentators have said that dealing with allies as equals will make Modi more sensitive.' 'Remember that the people Modi is dealing with are equally autocratic in their own lairs.' 'Further, Modi always has handy the threat of dissolving Parliament and calling for fresh polls.' 'Most of his own party, and certainly his allies and opponents having blown their budgets of efforts and resources in the just concluded elections, have no stomach for this.' 'They are all greatly looking forward to the loaves and fishes of office on offer.' 'That gives Modi an unbeatable advantage in any push-comes-to-shove situation,' explains Shreekant Sambrani.
'The commission has taken a serious view of the laxity on the part of political parties and candidates, on the ground, in terms of maintaining crowd discipline'
The Congress should take the lead in resolving differences of opinion within the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) and show 'large-heartedness' in seat sharing to emerge as a viable alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party in upcoming elections, according to some opposition leaders.
'The BJP has started a war-like situation against farmers and the Jat community.'
Samajwadi Party and the Nationalist Congress Party on Monday announced entering into alliance for the coming Bihar assembly elections and claimed they were in talks with some other anti-BJP and anti-Congress regional parties.
Political observers lauded the SP's choices in fielding several non-Yadav and Scheduled Caste candidates, the party's alliance with the Congress, and Rahul Gandhi's campaign around the danger to the Constitution if the BJP won a big majority.
Referred to as 'Badlav Patr (document of change)', Congress leader Randeep Surjewala and All India Congress Committee's Bihar in-charge Shakti Sinh Gohil presented the manifesto that promises farm loan waiver and 50 percent subsidy in electricity bills to farmers up to 100 units of consumption. The manifesto also promised that it will reject the Centre's farm laws if voted to power.
The opposition hit the roof and likened rulers of the state to Hitler, Mussolini and Kim Jong Un, though the department came out with a clarification that the controversy was stemmed from 'wrong interpretation' of a paragraph in the missive that ran into many pages.
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.
Pronouncing the judgement, Justice Khanna said the court has rejected all the petitions, including those seeking resorting back to ballot papers in elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have got a tough fight in Varanasi had Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra contested against him as Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) candidate, feel party workers from the temple town.
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.
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