Top leaders of political parties were on Thursday briefed by the government about the surgical strike carried out by the army on terror launching pads across the Line of Control to foil plans of terrorists to target some Indian towns.
On Tuesday, the government had agreed to refer it to the committee.
Bihar Industry and Disaster Management minister Renu Kumari Kushwaha on Monday evening resigned from Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's cabinet and the Janata Dal-United party. Kushwaha is set to contest the Lok Sabha polls from Khagaria seat as a Lok Janshakti Party nominee. LJP has joined hands with the Bharatiaya Janata Party in Bihar.
Lalu Prasad's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav on Friday turned up at a function hosted by Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras, triggering speculations about the maverick RJD leader, who wears his religious fervour on the sleeves, cosying up to BJP-led NDA which his father has always fought tooth and nail.
The 19-year-old partnership ended after the ruling party refused to accede to the ally's demand for 17 of 81 seats.
Rebel Lok Janshakti Party MP Pashupati Kumar Paras appeared to have scored a point on Thursday when he was unanimously elected as the new national president even as the faction headed by his cornered nephew Chirag Paswan dug in its heels and vowed to teach the 'traitors' a lesson.
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.
LJP sources said the BJP's defeat in the five state polls have ignited a rethink in the party over its ties with the saffron party.
'Whether or not Chandrashekhar Azad succeeds or fails electorally, he has already made democratic politics more accountable to Dalits.'
Das lost his seat to Independent candidate Saryu Roy by over 15000 votes. He said the BJP's failure to cling on to the alliance with AJSU is the reason for its loss.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and its National Democratic Alliance partners - the Janata Dal-United and Lok Janshakti Party -- on Monday formally announced their alliance for the Delhi assembly polls, asserting that it will send a "strong" political message across the country.
Two Central Reserve Police Force jawans were killed and three others injured when Maoists triggered an explosive, when they were on way to a polling station in Jamui parliamentary constituency of Bihar early morning, the police said.
Taking a swipe at the 'Modi wave' before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he said, "The Sena has seen enough 'waves' in its journey."
"Every person who wants development in Bihar, wants unemployment and corruption to end in the state and wants migration to stop is voting for the candidates of BJP and LJP. "This time the people have voted for change and development. The feedback I am getting from my party candidates and workers clearly indicates that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar won't be able to retain his position after November 10. "BJP-LJP will form a new government in Bihar," Paswan said.
Eight other ministers from the BJP and its alliance partners also took oath along with the chief minister.
While politicians and pundits speculate a strong possibility of their coming together, the two young leaders, however, told prying journalists their meeting was a result of "family relations" that went back to ties shared by their fathers.
"You can see all of us working together. There is no discontent. The problem is, today newspapers have more pages than before, news channels run 24X7 and then there is social media where anybody can say anything without worrying about backing a claim with facts," he said.
The speculations were triggered by Kumar's reference to the Rajya Sabha being "the only House" he has not been a member of.
Presence of Fadnavis will be keenly watched in view of recent tug of war between his home state Maharashtra and Bihar over death of Sushant Singh Rajput, a Patna born Bollywood actor.
Both MLAs are sitting BJP MLAs.
"Leaders like Vajpayee, Advani treated me with respect," the JD-U leader said.
Political observers are keen to see if the BJP will now be guided by its more firmly entrenched ideological dominance in picking a face solidly identified with its core planks, or if it will choose a person tilted more to its electoral calculations. Or, whether its pick will be an ode to its core supporters or a outreach to relatively new groups of votaries.
M Thambidurai of the All India Dravida Munetra Kazhagam is set to be elected unopposed as Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha after all major parties, including Congress, extended support to his andidature.
L Murugan, 44, is the only newly-sworn minister who is not a member of Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha.
The last time when more than 200 MLAs were part of the state government was in 1972, but at that time all the 222 legislators belonged to Congress. Also, the strength of the House was 270 at that time, a former state legislature official said on Monday citing data.
Paswan, who has chosen to plough a lonely furrow in the ongoing assembly elections, reiterated that the LJP was and will remain loyal towards the BJP, which was staring at the spectre of yet another "paltimaar" (volte face) by the JD-U president.
JD-U national president RCP Singh reacted with a sense of vindication to the developments in the party founded by late Ram Vilas Paswan, whose son has been left cornered in a revolt led by the former's younger brother Pashupati Kumar Paras and supported by four other MPs, including nephew Prince Raj.
The series of meetings are being seen as an attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party to reach out to allies who have either been criticising or expressing their dissent with the party and also to strengthen the National Democratic Alliance ahead of the Lok Sabha polls next year.
Sources later said differences between the two parties have been resolved.
Names of BJP veterans like L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi also do not figure in the list.
The Nitish Kumar government has the support of 132 MLAs.
Rahul Gandhi's birthday greeting to the DMDK supremo signifies that the Congress vice president is expanding his ambit of functioning and graduating from handling just organisational affairs, reports Anita Katyal.
Addressing a press conference barely a few hours before the campaign for the final phase of the elections came to a close, Paswan reiterated that the LJP will do well despite having gone solo in the elections and asserted, "We will help the BJP form the next government."
The party has said resources should now be focussed on curbing the COVID-19 crisis and tackling floods in the state and not holding the polls.
Kushwaha described the meeting as a courtesy call.
The briefing comes ahead of the parliament session beginning Monday.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to contest 160 of the 243 assembly seats in the upcoming polls, leaving 83 other seats to its three allies.
At the meeting which lasted for more than half an hour, the leaders of the two parties are understood to have discussed the key issue of seat-sharing among alliance partners in the NDA, which also includes Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP.
Upset over not getting a Lok Sabha ticket, former Bihar Congress chief Mehboob Ali Kaiser could join Lok Janshakti Party, led by Ram Vilas Paswan, in a couple of days.
Paras, who was sworn in as a Cabinet Minister on Wednesday in the Narendra Modi-led government and made the Minister of Food Processing Industries, asked Chirag Paswan to do "self-introspection" about his mistakes.
