In a shot in the arm for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar, Chirag Paswan on Sunday cast aside his ambivalence and announced that he will campaign for the saffron party in bypolls to two assembly segments in the state.
Both MLAs are sitting BJP MLAs.
There is a view that heavyweight portfolios like home, finance, defence and external affairs besides education and culture, two ministries with strong ideological hues, will be kept by the BJP, while its allies can get anywhere between five to eight cabinet berths.
The Janata Dal-United supremo, however, also appeared annoyed with parliamentary board chief Upendra Kushwaha who had recently jumped the gun with the insinuation that the RJD could be trying to 'further the Bharatiya Janata Party's agenda' by refraining from taking action against the minister.
Bihar CM says there's no question of going back on supporting Kovind.
"We were called by Nitish Kumar, but this morning we read in a newspaper that he has raised the issue of prime ministership. Our national leaders can only speak on this issue and we are not authorised to discuss it. So, there was no point in meeting the Chief Minister," BJP leader and NDA convenor in Bihar Nand Kishore Yadav said.
Accompanied by his son Santosh Suman, Manjhi met Shah at his residence in New Delhi.
'Nitish Kumar's newly-formed alliance with BJP would unravel before the 2025 assembly polls in Bihar'
The BJP's Bihar unit responded to the tweet saying, "The first picture is your future and the second is of India. Understood?"
He has served as a minister in all the previous National Democratic Alliance governments in Bihar. He was the minister for the road construction department in the last government.
The JD-U has 115 MLAs in the 243-member assembly, most of who are reportedly with Nitish
The CM will either force Tejashwi to resign, or tender a resignation himself to put pressure on the RJD.
Janata Dal-United MLC Manorama Devi faced an arrest warrant on Wednesday for violating prohibition laws and allegedly harbouring her fugitive son.
Speculations are rife about a tie-up between the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal- United after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar resigned following the severe drubbing his party suffered at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha polls.
Expelled Janata Dal-United leader and former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi on Friday launched a new party -- Hindustani Awam Morcha -- to counter the Janata Parivar. The party will contest alone all the 243 seats in Bihar polls scheduled for later this year.
Bihar will have a new chief minister chosen by Nitish Kumar who on Monday refused to take back his resignation despite repeated pleas by Janata Dal-United legislators to continue in office.
Lalu Prasad and his Muslim-Yadav line has completely gone off track.
Among the major political parties, chief minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United is contesting in 35 of the 71 seats, followed by its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (29), while the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal has fielded its candidates in 42 and its coalition partner Congress is in the fray in 20 assembly segments.
More than two crore voters in Bihar will decide the fate of 1,066 candidates on Wednesday across 71 assembly segments in the first phase of elections.
Bihar CM Jitan Ram Manjhi is set to meet PM Narendra Modi while attending the NITI Aayog meetings.
Despite the BJP emerging as the largest party in the ruling alliance with 74 seats, 31 more than the JDU, the top leadership of the saffron party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has emphatically endorsed Kumar as the next chief minister.
In the tweet, Yadav had claimed that the result in the assembly segment of Araria district proved that Kumar owed the success of his party in 2015 assembly polls to the alliance with the RJD and not the other way round.
Bihar Assembly Deputy Speaker Maheshwar Hazari on Wednesday accused outgoing Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha of having "insulted Dalits" by denying him the opportunity to conduct proceedings of the House after stepping down.
Talking to reporters in Patna, the former Union minister asserted that he would happily function as 'an ordinary party worker, worth five rupees', if the JD-U leadership was assumed by 'anybody from among the Luv Kush Samaj (Kurmis and Koeris) or the EBCs whose aspirations have been the party's driving force'.
'The main characteristic of Bihar politics is that it has always affected Delhi.'
'Dynastic politics has become a tool of convenience for political parties. The BJP does not hesitate to accept it when it comes to its own alliance or party candidates. The same goes for the others.'
Twenty-three per cent or 244 candidates have declared serious criminal cases against themselves, it said. Serious criminal cases are non-bailable offences with over five years of imprisonment.
The Congress, which had fought nine, lost all but managed to retain Kishanganj.
Leave alone taking forward the seat-sharing talks with the existing and probable allies, the Mahagathbandhan remains an amorphous entity weeks before the first phase of polling on October 28, a situation that will make the rival NDA camp, which in any case looks sitting pretty, all the more happier.
The 94 constituencies which are going to poll on November 3 are in 17 districts: West Champaran, East Champaran, Sheohar, Sitamarhi, Madhubani, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj, Siwan, Saran, Vaishali, Samastipur, Begusarai, Khagaria, Bhagalpur, Nalanda and Patna.
The JD-U leader rubbished speculations that he was maintaining an eloquent silence on the issue because of anxieties about tarnishing his own image for probity by aligning with "tainted" politicians and could even be thinking of breaking away with the "Mahagathbandhan", which besides RJD, also includes Congress and the Left.
JD-U sources conceded that the BJP's "Bihari martyrdom" line will give the coalition an edge or "at least help us combat anti-incumbency if the Opposition makes an issue of Nitish's governance".
Sharing Yadav's tweet, Giriraj Singh, who has often been critical of Kumar, on Wednesday said, "The snake has entered your home."
The state polls are due in October-November.
Once rolled out, theaterisation will be the biggest military reform in the country. It will see the creation of unified theatre commands within the 1.7 million-strong Indian armed forces.
Without naming Chirag Paswan, the legislators are reported to have recalled the actions of the former Lok Janshakti Party chief during the 2020 state assembly polls while warning the CM that if they were not alert, it would not be good for the party.
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.
New faces may, however, be inducted in the council of ministers from the allies Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress, he told reporters during his visit to Madhubani on Wednesday as part of his 'Samadhan Yatra'.
Facing apparent defeat, Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi resigned on Friday.
"The meeting was very fruitful and we all are very happy with the outcome. I could not attend the press conference after the conclave as I had to come back to Patna. My effort is to unite all opposition parties ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and now things are taking shape," the Janata Dal-United leader said.
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