In Phase 6, indications are that the BJP, which is defending 40 seats, will lose in double digits and gain in single digits. Not good, if you are the ruling party scrambling to earn a working majority, with just one phase left to go, argues Prem Panicker.
Notably, Yadav, the younger son of Rashtriya Janata Dal's founding president Lalu Prasad, had steered the 'Mahagathbandhan', which then did not have the chief minister on its side, to an impressive electoral performance in 2020 assembly polls in which the National Democratic Alliance could barely scrape through.
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.
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 RJD said that it is boycotting the swearing-in ceremony of Kumar as the mandate is against the National Democratic Alliance.
The former Union minister joined the UPA after holding talks with the Congress leadership.
The grand alliance ministry, headed by Kumar, collapsed in July last year after the chief minister resigned over graft charge against his then deputy, Tejashwi Yadav.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, whose Rashtriya Janata Dal on Sunday retained Mokama assembly seat but failed to wrest from the Bharatiya Janata Party Gopalganj constituency, losing it by a whisker, asserted that the outcome marked a success of their 'experiment'.
With most political parties failing to articulate the concerns of Muslims, who account for 15 per cent of the population and can swing the electoral outcome in 21 constituencies, the AIMIM hopes to make a mark in the ongoing assembly elections, says Shafeeq Rahman.
"Our decision to form an alliance with the Congress was to stop the Modi-Shah duo," Sisodia said.
Altogether 160 MLAs voted in favour of the confidence motion while no vote was cast against the same.
'Where would a person living in the forest for 14 years go to find vegetarian food? Is it correct or not (question to the public)? Tell me when I am telling the truth'
Amid a brewing political storm in Bihar, the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal on Monday said it was ready to "embrace" Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal-United if he broke ranks with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Ahead of the crucial third round of discussions, the opposition INDIA bloc on Wednesday exuded confidence that it would provide a formidable alternative to bring political change in the country and asserted that it has several prime ministerial faces against BJP's only one.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena were on Sunday trying to make last ditch efforts to salvage their alliance in Maharashtra for the upcoming Assembly polls after the Uddhav Thackeray's final offer of giving 119 seats to the coalition partner was rejected.
As part of the efforts to bring several opposition parties together on a common platform to defeat the BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Pawar met Kharge on Thursday evening.
The Janata Dal-United on Tuesday became the third major ally after the Shiv Sena and the Akali Dal to snap ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party after 2019.
Both Raghopur and Hasanpur seats will go to polls in the second phase of Bihar elections, on November 3. Notification has already been issued for phase-2 and nomination filing is currently underway.
The BJP and JD-U will form the new government after the latter party's chief resigned saying in the circumstances it became difficult to run the grand alliance government.
The Grand Alliance of four opposition parties -- Telugu Desam, Telangana Rashtra Samiti, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India Marxist -- who have decided to make the alleged corruption of the Y S Rajasekhara Reddy-led Congress government the main issue in the coming assembly elections, on Friday demanded that the chief minister be prosecuted under the Prevention of Corruption Act. A delegation of the Grand Alliance leaders met Governor N D Tiwari.
Irrespective of the number of seats the Grand Alliance led by the RJD gets, it is a "good achievement" and it will give inspiration to the young generation, Pawar added.
EC in its fresh advisory said despite the direction certain advertisements of "offending nature" have been brought to its notice.
Besides the four ministerial berths, the Congress has also sought the post of Speaker of the state assembly, but Kumar is not keen on giving that, sources said.
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.
The National Democratic Alliance in Bihar which so far had BJP, JD-U and the LJP as its constituents will now have another dalit-centric party HAM as a member.
The two-day deliberations, which will be held at Grand Hyatt in the suburbs, will begin in the evening of August 31 and from 10am on September 1. The meeting will be followed by a press conference, Raut informed.
'For the last two elections, the Congress manifesto has been thrown into the dustbin.' 'This manifesto will also be thrown into the dustbin.'
Yadav claimed that his boss Nitish Kumar, with whom he took oath the day before, has issued instructions to the officials concerned to accord "top priority" to job creation.
'The issue has been cleared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief J P Nadda much before the elections'
Assuming we still have a Modi-led majority government after May 2024, there is no guarantee that reforms will move at anything more than a snail's pace, though we must be thankful even for that, notes R Jagannathan.
According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Gogoi says BJP will suffer the same fate as Bihar in Assam if secular forces unite.
'Can we force somebody to contest and fight an election when they don't want to contest an election?'
President Murmu reached the new Parliament building in a six-horse buggy accompanied by the Presidential Bodyguards riding horses.
Addressing a press conference in Patna, All India Congress Committee general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala said the party would like the Central Bureau of Investigation to complete its inquiry in three months and favoured setting up of a special court to facilitate expeditious trial.
In the coming days, unless Modi tones down the communal spiel, it will be clear that anxiety continues to drive his mind and clouds his judgment, observes Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Barclays, the global brokerage firm, also stated that the election verdict could lead to a weakness in the stock market.
'Nitish does not want to talk about development, unemployment, education, health infrastructure and poverty'
"In Bengal, the BJP has only one MLA but they are so afraid of us that they are saying 'bachao' (save us)," he said.
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