Amidst reports of Congress' confabulations with the Rashtriya Janata Dal for a secular alliance in Bihar in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday took a dig at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for the Congress preferring Lalu Prasad over him and said such an 'opportunistic' alliance was not a cause of worry for it.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday tore into the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, blaming its "appeasement politics" for the failure of law enforcement agencies to rein in terror activities when it was in power and claiming it raised the "bogey of Hindu terror" to "misdirect" investigation.
The 2020 assembly polls marked the coming of age of a politician who valiantly went down fighting an army of battle-hardened veterans.
The JD-U appears unwilling to become the BJP's second-string. A senior leader said, "If the BJP demands that the 2014 polls be made the yardstick for seat-sharing in 2019, we will insist the results of the last assembly polls become the criterion for the next state election." Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
While Bharatiya Janata Party's countrywide vote share shot up by over 12 per cent at the expense of other parties, the chart throws some contrary pictures as parties like Bahujan Samaj Party got no seat in spite of third-highest vote share, but Trinamool Congress and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam clinched over 30 seats each with less than 4 per cent vote share.
'After the Congress's 2014 Lok Sabha debacle, commentators identified three major shortcomings: Leadership, organisation, and ideology.' 'Here we are six years later -- and what are the Congress's major failings? Leadership, organisation, and ideology.' 'The party seems to have learned very little during its six years in the Opposition wilderness.'
The bill rules out any provision for an anticipatory bail for a person accused of atrocities against SC/STs, notwithstanding any court order.
n an exclusive interview with Rediff.com's Anita Katyal, Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmad analysed the political scenario in his home-state Bihar, admitting that political equations have changed after the Bharatiya Janata Party forged alliances with Ram Vilas Paswan and Upendra Kushwaha.
Biju Janata Dal members had staged a walk-out while NDA ally Shiv Sena did not participate in the voting.
The marital dispute between Prasad's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav and Aishwarya Rai, a daughter of Chandrika Roy, has its shadow in the poll battle on this seat which votes on November 3.
Bihar assembly speaker Uday Narain Choudhary, who is contesting Lok Sabha polls from the Jamui seat, refuted on Friday that he entered into a pact with the Maoists for their support to win the election.
In an unusual advice to Bharatiya Janata Party Members of Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked his party MPs not to show him respect by touching his feet or greeting other senior leaders by touching their feet.
In a season of political deal-making, it would seem the BJP is not only keener to win new friends but is ahead of rival Congress in the game. Its only competition, if at all, has come from regional satraps and the Left parties, which on Tuesday resolved to fight the elections together against both the Congress and BJP.
Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav was on Monday released from Birsa Munda Central Jail in Ranchi, two-and-a-half months after he was convicted in a fodder scam case.
Counting of votes in the high-stakes close-to-call Bihar assembly elections, billed as a hot battle between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will take place on Sunday.
While the assembly elections are being seen as largely a contest between the NDA and the Grand Alliance, the state has been witness to mushrooming of "morchas" (fronts) which may queer the pitch for the lead players in a tight contest.
The statements made by the opposition parties after the preemptive air strike on terror camps have made only people of Pakistan happy, he claimed.
It was under his stewardship of the Union Rural Development Ministry that NREGA, the flagship rural livelihood scheme, was implemented.
Dalits constitute nearly 16 per cent of the vote and 38 seats are reserved for them in the assembly, reports Satyavrat Mishra
Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Sarbananda Sonowal, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Narayan Rane, all of whom are being seen as probables for induction as ministers in the Modi government, arrived in the national capital on Tuesday amid indications that the Union Council of Ministers is likely to be expanded on Wednesday.
When it comes to the winning strike rate, Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal has emerged victorious on eight of every ten seats it contested while only one of the every three Bharatiya Janata Party candidates managed to win.
Sticking to his offer of 11 Lok Sabha seats to the Congress and one to Nationalist Congress Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad on Sunday appealed to Sonia Gandhi to agree to the seat-sharing formula asserting that he would deliver results in Bihar and Jharkhand in the general elections.
With the matter snowballing into a political controversy, both the Janaat Dal-United and the BJP tried to play down the issue.
'Nitish has no future in state politics.' 'Nitish harassed the Yadav community no end in his earlier tenure as chief minister. So who will the Yadav community vote for in the coming state elections?'
JD-U leaders believe Prashant Kishor's entry would benefit its case for contesting a larger number of seats in Bihar in next year's general election.
A total of 126 votes, including four of Congress and one of CPI, were cast in favour of the confidence motion while 24, including 22 of Lalu Prasad led RJD, voted against the motion as BJP members staged a walkout before the vote.
Ahead of the visit of an all-party delegation to Jammu and Kashmir, political parties on Saturday pitched for holding dialogue with "all stakeholders", including Hurriyat, to douse the unrest and banning the use of pellet guns by security forces.
Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com explains the compulsions that forced Bihar strongman Lalu Yadav to play second fiddle to Nitish Kumar.
Narendra Modi's ministry expansion makes disdain clear for others who are supposedly allies, quite unlike the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance.
Dharmendra Kumar Singh says the Bihar chief minister may be fighting a losing battle.
The prime minister may go for new faces with an eye on grooming younger leaders while also factoring in caste and regional balances
The 'secularists'are more adept at the politics of intense and alarmingly exaggerated fear-mongering, as this kind of politics provides easy votes of Muslims without making them answerable for the concrete issues of poverty, unemployment, lawlessness, and of basic needs like roads, electricity, etc, which is exactly how Nitish Kumar was defeated in the elections, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Half-way through the polls, the fight has become more personal.
Congress received donations worth over Rs 66 crore and NCP garnered about Rs 14 crore from individuals and business entities in fund contributions of over Rs 20,000 in the last financial year while BJP was among the parties which did not disclose such details to the Election Commission till the November 30 deadline.
'The NDA has provided me a healing touch to survive'
The Bharatiya Janata Party was forced to eat the humble pie for a second time in a week. The BJP on Saturday cancelled the membership of controversial former Janata Dal-United MP Sabir Ali.
'Does a political or social worker ever retire? Is Nitish Kumar himself contesting the assembly elections'
'Whether or not Chandrashekhar Azad succeeds or fails electorally, he has already made democratic politics more accountable to Dalits.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Kumar on being sworn in as the chief minister.
Rajnath Singh led the delegation of 26 MPs from 20 parties which stayed overnight in Srinagar before stopping over in Jammu this afternoon.
