'This will be a close election. At least now, it appears that the NDA has an edge.'
Tejashwi Yadav and Prashant Kishore claim that a group of senior Janata Dal-United leaders and retired bureaucrats, locally dubbed the 'Bhunja Party', manages the state administration on Nitish Kumar's behalf.
'If the RJD loses it would be out of power for nearly 25 years. Meanwhile, the JD-U will have survival issues if it gets less number of seats.'
Articulate segments of Muzaffarpur have been at the the forefront of all anti-establishment mobilisation, which makes their silence over the atrocities in a shelter home in the town puzzling. Could it be that if those accused of horrific crimes belong to dominant castes and if the victims belong to the vulnerable groups, then the middle classes become mute, asks Mohammad Sajjad.
A string of welfare schemes and promises tests the state's budget, which is already heavily dependent on central support and spends little as capital outlay.
Women workers of the NDA in Bihar enforced a bandh to protest alleged abuse directed at PM Modi's mother during a Congress event. Protests were held across the state, with BJP leaders participating in sit-ins.
Several places in Bihar were jolted by a 5.5-magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal early on Friday, with tremors felt in Muzaffarpur, Samastipur and other bordering districts, officials said.
'Stalin's intention is plain and simple.' 'The DMK wants to convert what is an 'incumbency-centred' election for the party-led alliance into one more 'Modi/BJP election' after Stalin's successive success in 2019 and 2021, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Rahul Gandhi's problem is that he doesn't think big.' 'He looks more like an activist, while politics is like a game of chess. You attack and then defend and have a game-plan.'
Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan criticized Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and RJD's Tejashwi Yadav for alleged abuses directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mother during a political rally in Bihar. The BJP accused the opposition leaders of crossing 'limits of insult' with their remarks.
If women voters are mobilised in big numbers to the voting booths on November 6 and 11 by the Nitish Kumar-led NDA, then it will be quite difficult for the Tejashwi Yadav-led Mahagathbandhan to defeat the incumbent government, points out Sheela Bhatt.
'Bihar's voters' electoral memory is long, and their evaluations are relational; who came to the village, who followed up, who resolved a problem.'
The government, every year, hides behind the mystery of the disease, linking it with litchis, and does not confess malnutrition as the prime cause, points out Mohammad Sajjad.
The BJP's MoSha leadership are past masters in encouraging defections from their allies if it helped their party capture the chief minister's chair. In Bihar, they are not sure if JD-U MPs and MLAs would be willing to cross over to the BJP if the Nitish leadership came on top -- and the NDA crossed the halfway mark together, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Both NDA and INDIA are racing to woo marginalised groups with Assembly polls fast approaching.
A surge in violent crimes, including targeted killings, has raised concerns about law and order in Bihar. Police attribute the rise to the widespread availability of illegal firearms and ammunition.
The accused hospital staffer arrested in flight steward sexual assault case watched porn videos before and after committing the crime, Gurugram police said on Saturday.
A complaint was filed against Congress leader Sonia Gandhi in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, for her 'poor thing' remark on President Droupadi Murmu. The complaint, filed by a lawyer, seeks registration of an FIR against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra for allegedly disrespecting the country's highest constitutional authority. The court will hear the matter on February 10.
For nearly two decades, Nitish Kumar has cultivated women as a distinct constituency. 'To create a broader vote base, he thought it would be better to bring women to electoral politics.'
Kumar, who had been away in New Delhi since Saturday, returned to the state capital on Monday evening and held an emergency review meeting on the AES situation with officials.
'I am alive, I have not died. Look, I am standing and speaking,' says Imarti Devi who is listed as deceased and whose name has been deleted from the voter's list. M I Khan reports from Dharaichak, a village in Bihar where 200 voters have been removed from the voter's list.
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav escaped unhurt as a speeding truck hit two vehicles of his convoy, injuring three security personnel in Bihar's Vaishali district early on Saturday, police said.
Like his father Karunanidhi and AIADMK rivals MGR and Jayalalithaa, Stalin would like to confine his real political work to Tamil Nadu, and not want to take after the late Congress leader K Kamaraj and take up a national role, even if to create greater political space for son Udhayanidhi, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The National Human Rights Commission sent notices to the Union health ministry and the Bihar government over reports of increasing number of deaths of children in Muzaffarpur.
Wednesday's joint protest march in Patna marked a significant moment, with Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and Tejashwi Yadav, the Leader of Opposition in the Bihar assembly, leading a unified demonstration -- perhaps a first in the state's recent political history.
The accused has been identified as Deepak (25), a native of Bihar's Muzaffarpur, who had been living in Gurugram for some time, they said.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday snubbed the Rashtriya Janata Dal, headed by his arch-rival Lalu Prasad Yadav, stating that he had forged alliances 'by mistake' with the opposition party which 'did nothing' while in power.
'These children are wards of the State. They were exploited because the state government and its officials didn't do their jobs.'
'Nobody in our team had any idea that these things will come out.' 'We need to do a social audit of all the shelter homes across the country.'
'The horrific episode of January 18 in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, is quite different from what happened in Muzaffarnagar, UP, in September 2013. The Akhilesh Yadav-led administration in UP and riot-mongers among our political formations need to learn lessons from the response of the state and society in Bihar's Muzaffarpur,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'Brajesh Thakur spoke to half a dozen Union ministers, some Bihar ministers and Manju Verma's husband between the process of lodging the FIR against him on May 31 and his arrest on June 2.'
Brajesh Thakur, the main accused in the child sexual abuse case, has been resting it out for the past 40 days.
At least 6 persons, including a women, died after consuming illicit liquor in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district and another five were admitted to a government hospital in critical condition , the police on Monday said.
All the officials, suspended with immediate effect, have been charged with "failure to take adequate legal action" with regard to "assault.
Several girls were allegedly raped and sexually abused at an NGO-run shelter home in Muzaffarpur and the issue had come to light following a report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
District Collector Alok Ranjan Ghosh said that the Sector Officer Awadesh Singh's driver had expressed his desire to vote. According to a primary reply by the officer, he had taken the EVM machine and VVPAT into a private hotel. A formal reply by the Sector Officer is awaited.
The CBI had on Friday raided nearly 12 places in four districts of Bihar, including residences of Verma in Patna and her in-law's place in Begusarai.
Verma reached the court of the additional chief judicial magistrate Prabhat Trivedi in an auto rickshaw.
According to Muzaffarpur District Registration Officer Sanjay Kumar, the orders to freeze the bank accounts and ban the sale or purchase of any movable or immovable assets of the Seva Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti were passed by District Magistrate Mohammad Sohail on August 7 and 8.
