Along with Modi, senior BJP leaders including Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, all ministers in Modi 2.0 Cabinet, took oath as cabinet ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In all, 71 ministers were sworn-in along with Modi, taking the strength of the Union council to 72.
The alliance leaders are getting together for the third round of the brainstorming session in Mumbai, after Patna and Bengaluru, to chalk out their common campaign strategy to take on the NDA in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Without revealing details of the proposed programmes, the leader of the Janata Dal-United, a constituent of INDIA, said that a decision in this regard was taken at the just concluded conclave of the opposition alliance in Mumbai.
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.
In a memorandum submitted to the EC, the INDIA party leaders submitted a list of recent instances of central agencies targeting Opposition parties and alleged an absence of a level playing field for the opposition.
All political parties were asked at the dinner meeting on Monday night to suggest names for the alliance and the same would be discussed and consensus would be arrived at during the deliberations.
"Public does not who 'Kharge Pharge' is. Even I don't know he was the president of Congress. Nobody knows him. Masses don't know him. The public knows Nitish Kumar. Nitish Kumar should become prime minister. He is popular all over India," Mandal said.
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.
Social distancing norms would be ensured at the rallies with people having to wear face masks, besides arrangement for sanitisers being made, Fadnavis said.
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.
However, as the region with the state's highest concentration of Muslims readies for polls on November 7 in the last phase of the elections, it is the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress-Left alliance that draws considerable support from the community amid sporadic voices in Owaisi's support as they weigh their choices.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav on Wednesday met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in New Delhi in the presence of Rahul Gandhi.
