In Bihar, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad have come a long way from being bitter rivals for over two decades to friends with benefits. Their grand alliance along with the Congress, has won them six of the 10 assembly seats in the by-elections on Monday.
Cracking the whip, Janta Dal-United on Thursday expelled outgoing Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament and senior leader Shivanand Tiwari and four Lok Sabha MPs for anti-party activities.
Saini, who is an MP from Kurukshetra, was unanimously elected as the leader of the state BJP legislature group and will be sworn in later in the day, party MLAs Subhash Sudha and J P Dalal told reporters.
The two who buried their hatchet to come together for the Bihar polls targeted BJP.
All 40-odd rooms at the resort have been booked for the guests from Jharkhand for the next two days, Congress sources said.
Taking a cue from the massive victory of the Grand Alliance against the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday said such a tie-up was possible in the state where assembly elections are due in early 2017.
The range will make way for rallies in Commonwealth Games gold medal-winning shooter Shreyasi Singh's life as she gears up for the electoral battle in Bihar, aiming to restore an average Bihari's faith in the state so that there is an end to the "exodus".
The CM said the alleged sex abuse of girls at the shelter home "has left us with a sense of shame and guilt".
Pushing efforts to firm up a Third Front, top leaders of the Janata Dal-United, Left and the Janta Dal-Secular met in New Delhi on Monday and decided to convene a meeting of 11 parties after the end of the current Parliament session to give concrete shape to a non-Congress and non-BJP alternative.
'Arithmetic could decide the Haryana election given the presence of multi-cornered contests.'
The Bihar CM has made a sagacious attempt to consolidate his extremely backward castes (EBC) support base while trying to make a dent into RJD's Muslim-Yadav combine.
Karnataka Legislative Assembly Secretary M K Vishalakshi, who is the returning officer for the Rajya Sabha polls, declared the 'unanimous election' of Gowda and Kharge from the Janta Dal-Secular and the Congress respectively, and BJP's Iranna Kadadi and Ashok Gasti, with no extra candidate in the fray.
Anyone can make tall promises and it is very easy to accept these promises if they guarantee even an iota of betterment for you, for your existence. Even if these new promises and assurances are accepted with a pinch of salt and discount the actual execution to 50%, even then the Bihari voter will be content, observes Asmita Bihari.
Saini, 54, a low profile OBC leader, rose through the ranks in the party and was unanimously elected as the leader of the state BJP's legislature group at a meeting held in Chandigarh on Tuesday.
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.
Rediff Labs analysed the past performance of the parties to develop this Sentiment Meter for the 2016 Kerala election.
Allies since the 1990s, the JD-U and the BJP have in the recent past squabbled on issues ranging from Agnipath, caste census, population law and ban on loudspeakers.
Chanting Bharat mata ki jai is an affirmation of citizens' faith in their country, their motherland and if a religion preached otherwise, it was against national interest, he said.
'In this election, the only thing that is going to matter is which caste aligns with which coalition.'
Voting will be held on Thursday in bypolls to seven assembly seats in six states -- a contest symbolic of the fierce turf war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties.
The Bharatiya Janata Party swept Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh on Sunday inflicting a resounding defeat on the Congress to tighten its stranglehold in the Hindi heartland, in a big boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and setting the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Vociferous protests by Opposition members led by the Congress continued in the Lok Sabha.
Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday dubbed the coming together of Janata Dal- United and Rashtriya Janata Dal as an alliance of "defeated people."
Amid confusion over the continuation of Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren as an MLA, Governor Ramesh Bais on Friday went to Delhi, a day after ruling United Progressive Alliance MLAs urged him to clear the air over the EC's recommendation on the matter.
Bharatiya Janta Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's 'Hoonkar Rally' in Patna on October 27 has come under the scanner of the income tax department in Bihar, officials said on Thursday.
The legislator visited the residence of mother Rabri Devi on Tuesday evening, spent the night at her place and, according to party sources, announced that he will henceforth not be living at the bungalow allotted to him by the state government.
Wary of the possibility of cross-voting during the polling for two Rajya Sabha seats, the Congress is likely to take its Haryana MLAs to the party-ruled Chhattisgarh to protect them from poaching.
An entirely new lexicon of political jibes emerged during the elections
The Congress on Sunday gave a call to party leaders in poll-bound states to work with unity to ensure victory that will 'set the tone' for 2024 Lok Sabha polls even as it showed willingness to forge an alliance of 'like-minded' parties.
From a comedian to Punjab chief minister, Bhagwant Mann has seen a phenomenal rise in a political career of just over a decade.
The Indian arm is the second largest unit for the company, crosses 500 mn trips milestone
Asking the people of Bihar to bring their own government to power, the post made a veiled reference to the alleged high handedness of bureaucracy under the JD(U)-BJP rule but fell shy of a frontal attack on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his arch rival, or the near hegemonic saffron party which considers him a bete noire.
However, the Congress asserted that its coalition government led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morchais "completely secure and stable'' and would complete its term.
The monogrammed pinstripe suit received a fresh bid of Rs 1.41 crore
After days of tough posturing between leadership of the Janata Dal-United and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar on the issue of alliance for the assembly elections, action has now shifted to the national capital, where top leaders from both the parties will meet to thrash out the differences.
Tej Pratap, the RJD chief's elder son said that "the numbers could swing as voters' mood is also not quite clear at the moment".
Uma Bharti's return to the BJP, six years after she was expelled, has evoked mixed response in the party unit of Uttar Pradesh. The firebrand leader has been entrusted the task of outlining the strategy for the next state assembly elections in 2012.While state BJP president Surya Pratap Shahi has welcomed the move and praised her for her prominent role in the Ayodhya Ram Mandir movement, former state BJP chief and Bajrang Dal founder Vinay Katiyar is not too hopeful.
Before his legislative assembly debut this time, he has been elected twice as a Member of Parliament from Sangrur.
Mann, 48, is a two-time MP from Sangrur and is the party's state unit chief.
Slamming as "fascist" Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's pitch for a "Congress Mukt Bharat", Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Monday reached out to all non-BJP parties on the plank of secularism.
