Paswan, supporting the 50 % reservation in Aligarh Muslim University, said those opposing it were out to weaken the country's integrity.
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.
Yadav vowed to dislodge the government headed by Nitish Kumar, whom Congress leader Avinash Pandey in his address accused of "apharan" (hijacking) of the mandate in the previous elections.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday announced income tax relief for the middle class, a Rs 2 lakh crore outlay for job creation schemes over the next five years and a spending splurge for states run by her party's new coalition partners as she unveiled the Modi 3.0 government's first budget after the general elections.
Modi also berated the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress combine in Bihar, calling it an alliance of "double-double yuvraj" (two crown princes) whose sole concern was to protect their "respective thrones".
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani on Wednesday said there was all possibility of the National Democratic Allaince getting a chance to form the next government at the Centre, but remained non-committal on whether he was still in the race for prime ministership.
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav on Friday claimed that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had 'begged for forgiveness for past betrayals' before his parents, party supremo Lalu Prasad and ex-CM Rabri Devi, before they allied with the Janata Dal-United president in 2022.
Speaking to the media, Paswan said, "I am beginning Ashirvad Yatra from Hajipur because it was my father's karmbhoomi. We will hold this yatra in every district. Our only aim is to take everyone's blessings.
In a indication of growing strife between National Democratic Alliance allies in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday said any Janata Dal (United) leader was free to quit the party and join the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Faced with a challenge to his traditional Other Backward Class-Muslim vote base from the ruling National Democratic Alliance in poll-bound Bihar, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad appears to be making inclusion of caste in census and opposition to women's reservation bill his major planks to woo the electorate.Strongly pitching for incorporating caste in census, he said opposing it could spark a 'mass agitation'.
Will numbers 1 to 8 in the BJP pull together so that it is a strong and formidable BJP which makes for a BJP-led NDA and not an NDA where the multiple docked tails are wagging the dog, asks Radha Rajan
Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah on Thursday launched his party's high-tech 'Parivartan Rath' campaign for the upcoming Bihar assembly polls and appealed to people to vote for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance for development of the state and to end the 'jungle raj'
The Bharatiya Janata Party's lone Muslim Member of Parliament Syed Shahnawaz Hussain has lost from Bhagalpur Lok Sabha constituency in the state.
Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien said the situation in Bihar is one of the reasons behind the Parliament session being cut short by the government.
Tejashwi accused the Nitish Kumar-led government of meting out "step-motherly" treatment to migrant labourers.
The RLSP and the HAM, the two other NDA allies, went unrepresented.
As in the past, many of the exit polls gave a clear majority to the BJP-led NDA going way off the mark in ground realities while those that predicted victory for the 'grand alliance' did not anticipate the sweep.
AAP chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar said its top leadership will take a call on attending the Mumbai meeting of the opposition bloc INDIA, following the statement by Lamba.
Anwar, an AICC general secretary, came out with a flurry of tweets calling for 'urgent and deep introspection' over the debacle of the party, the second largest constituent of the opposition coalition, which contested as many as 70 seats but returned with a tally of just 19.
The BJP's quest for dominance over the states political scene, evident from a seat-sharing deal as part of which it clinched nearly as many constituencies as the Janata Dal-United its senior partner so far- resonated during the election campaign.
Kumar, who chose not to react when the 31-year-old Rashtriya Janata Dal leader made a series of personal attacks and allegations in his nearly an hour-long speech, erupted in anger when the latter sought to interject during a statement made by Janata Dal-United leader and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary.
Terms of the two dozen seats had expired last year though elections were deferred because of a delay in Panchayat polls which could not be held in time on account of the COVID 19 pandemic.
Dissent in BJP grows stronger as more leaders question party's poll strategy in Bihar.
In a bid to lift the sagging mood and morale of its party workers over the developments of the last one month, including the crushing defeat in Bihar, the Congress party and the government have suddenly woken up to the need to effectively and aggressively counter the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance's campaign against the party.
A statement issued by his party said'NDA will achieve spectacular success in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls in Bihar if these are fought projecting Kushwaha as the leader of the coalition.'
Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha, who was a minister himself in the previous National Democratic Alliance government, was visibly shaken at the disdain shown towards the Chair by Samrat Chaudhary who holds the Panchayati Raj portfolio.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has not officially declared anyone as its prime ministerial candidate for the next Lok Sabha polls and the Janata Dal-United being a key National Democratic Alliance partner would officially be informed of any decision on the issue, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said on Monday refusing to be drawn into any controversy.
As part of the efforts to bring several opposition parties together on a common platform to defeat the BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Pawar met Kharge on Thursday evening.
The probe panel, constituted by Bihar's National Democratic Alliance government, on Tuesday confirmed that Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh's kin had engaged two child labourers for tilling an agricultural land at Shahpur village in Vaishali district on December 9. The finding dealt a severe blow to Singh's assertion that some TV channels had stage-managed the story.
Other prominent candidates among the 904 in the fray are Union minister Anurag Thakur, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad's daughter Misa Bharti.
There is little doubt that the prime minister's own charisma exceeds that of his party, but 2024 is proof that no party can ultimately depend on one person to deliver victory all the time, points out R Jagannathan.
In a poor village of daily wage earners in Siwan, Bihar, people speak about their hard lives and why they vote.
BJP heavyweights Smriti Irani, Arjun Munda, Ajay Mishra Teni and Kailash Chaudhary were among the 13 Union ministers who tasted defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, as stunning losses in three Hindi heartland states forced the BJP to rely on allies to form the government.
Former National Democratic Alliance convenor George Fernandes is no longer in the Janata Dal (United), Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has said.
Doctors at government hospitals in the Bihar capital were left in a daze when they realised that a young man knocking at their doors past midnight was none other than Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav.
Left to distance itself from NDA's 'aggressive' stance in Winter session
JD(U) does not agree with the BJP's stand on seats.
The LJP will also be given a Rajya Sabha berth and Paswan is likely to be its candidate.
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