Amid deepening fissures in Kumar's ties with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress, BJP leaders have indicated that they are open to tying up with him again.
Yadav struck deals with the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress whenever needed to form or save the governments led by him in Uttar Pradesh.
The BJP won 74 seats in the 147-member Odisha assembly and was leading in four more seats, the Election Commission of India.
Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
'Modi's image has no takers among the masses.'
Khan, who is currently lodged in Sitapur jail, has been replaced by Mohibullah Nadvi, a cleric of a mosque located on Delhi's Parliament Street.
Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi held a virtual meeting on Friday evening with leaders of 19 Opposition parties, including the chief ministers of some Opposition-ruled states, amid efforts to boost Opposition unity and evolve a common strategy against the National Democratic Alliance government.
In the first phase of the Lok Sabha polls, there were 135 women candidates while in the second phase, there were 100 women candidates, bringing the combined total for the first two phases to 235 women candidates.
A senior SP leader requesting anonymity said that the party chief had called a meeting to brief the MLAs about the voting process of the Rajya Sabha elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's move to get reservation for women in legislatures promises to shape the political discourse ahead of key state polls and Lok Sabha elections, and a parliamentary approval to the long-contested proposal will be used by the Bharatiya Janata Party to burnish his credentials as a decisive leader.
KV Singh Deo and Pravati Parida were made deputy chief ministers of the state, he said.
Nitish has been engaging with national and regional party leaders in recent months as part of his mission to strengthen 'Opposition unity'.
With six children of Karnataka ministers in the Lok Sabha poll arena, the campaign scene is getting spiced up in the high-stakes elections for the ruling Congress in the state.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The representation of women in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls continues to remain dismally low, as only about 12 percent of the candidates in the fray in the fifth phase are female, according to an analysis by poll rights body ADR.
'One needs to understand what kind of means the BJP use to bring other party leaders in their party.' 'They are unscrupulous politicians and money plays an important role.'
The party's national executive meeting chaired by its president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar flagged price rise and unemployment as "burning issues"
'BJP's ultimate ambition is to control Bihar independently.'
The third phase of polling will take place on May 7, 2024.
The party fielded Maneka Gandhi from Sultanpur, while Uttar Pradesh minister Jitin Prasada has replaced Varun Gandhi in Pilibhit.
Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole claimed Thackeray had selected a candidate finalised by Congress for the Nashik Teachers' constituency without consulting coalition partners.
The BJP's outreach to Paswan, son of late stalwart Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan, underscores its push to bring him back into the NDA's fold after he walked out of the alliance in Bihar in the 2020 state assembly polls to campaign against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who was then the BJP's biggest ally.
Addressing a joint press conference after a meeting of 26 opposition parties in Bengaluru, Kharge said, "This was a very important meeting to save democracy and the Constitution in the interest of the people of the country."
'The water crisis is so obvious that people see no point begging for it from politicians.'
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state for the recent leak of a government competitive examination question paper and subsequent cancellation of the test, Chaudhary said because of such incidents youngsters are not getting appointments, and they have to migrate and work in other places.
The Akali Dal, an ally of the BJP, has written to the parliamentary committee opposing certain clauses in the land acquisition bill. A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com speaks to Akali Dal MPs to find out why they oppose the controversial legislation.
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.
Sources said senior leaders of the party have been told to reach out to other leaders of the alliance and talks with some parties have begun.
In a veiled attack on Modi, Rahul said he has never come across a senior public representative who has constantly chosen silence in the face of untold violence against women.
Amid speculation that he may do yet another volte face and return to the National Democratic Alliance, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday visited Buxar district, bordering Uttar Pradesh, to attend a function where senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Union Minister Ashwani Kumar Choubey was also present.
The suspension of 49 Lok Sabha MPs came a day after, a total of 78 -- 33 from the Lower House and 45 from the Upper House -- lawmakers were suspended from Parliament for disrupting proceedings.
The INDIA bloc has 95 MPs in Rajya Sabha of which 45 were suspended on Monday.
Gupta, along with some other leaders, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in the presence of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri and the party's national general secretary Vinod Tawde.
As many as 10 ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government failed to win their seats in the 2022 assembly elections, despite the BJP registering an impressive victory.
Besides the national capital, polling will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir. Simultaneously, polling will be held for 42 assembly constituencies in Odisha.
The leaders attacked the BJP, accusing it of trying to create "Hindu-Muslim disturbances" to benefit politically and making false claims and promises.
'Episodes of targeted attacks on Muslims established that for a section of people and, sadly, even officials of the State, the election results conveyed no lessons.' 'Opposition parties must not be hesitant in speaking out whenever the mob with tacit State support targets Muslims,' asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
Forty-two of the 102 Lok Sabha seats going to polls in the general election's first phase are constituencies that have three or more candidates facing criminal cases, according to a poll rights body.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies on Tuesday welcomed the Union Budget and said it focussed on youth, farmers, women, and has 'substantial allocations' for Maharashtra, but the opposition slammed the annual financial statement, claiming it neglected the western state and only seeks to please the saffron outfit's partners in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.
