Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday insisted that nothing much should be read into his recent meeting with an MP of the Lok Janshakti Party, which is headed by his bete noire Chirag Paswan, since members of Parliament and the state legislature call on him regularly over matters relating to their constituencies.
Lalu Prasad's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav on Friday turned up at a function hosted by Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras, triggering speculations about the maverick RJD leader, who wears his religious fervour on the sleeves, cosying up to BJP-led NDA which his father has always fought tooth and nail.
The BJP MLAs, who had staged a demonstration outside the assembly during the first half and marched to the Raj Bhavan during the lunch hour, were summoned by the speaker when the House reassembled at 2 pm.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has raised the number of "difficult" Lok Sabha seats it is eying to win in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to 160 from 144, with a big chunk of additions coming from Bihar where it is set to contest most of the constituencies on its own following its split with the Janata Dal-United.
'The main characteristic of Bihar politics is that it has always affected Delhi.'
An LJP parliamentary board meeting chaired by its president Chirag Paswan instead passed a resolution in favour of an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and said its MLAs will work to strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
'We had the option of either crossing over to the opposition or fighting on our own with a focus on seats being contested by the JD-U as its reluctance was the main reason the LJP was offered only so few seats'
Anti-incumbency against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's 15-year-old rule in Bihar is stronger that what Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD regime faced in 2005, LJP president Chirag Paswan said on Monday, asserting that he walked out of the ruling alliance in the state so as not to have any 'guilt' of playing a role in continuation of the current dispensation.
Seven Bihar police personnel, including Circle Inspector, Manish Kumar, were suspended in Kishanganj Bihar on Sunday on the charges of dereliction of duty.
Paswan headed a meeting of the party's parliamentary board from Bihar in which the state government was criticised for its over reliance on bureaucracy, with some LJP leaders claiming that Kumar is no longer a popular face, sources said.
'Chirag Paswan wanted my help to become a star.' 'I tried to explain to him that becoming a star was not in my hands.' 'He insisted that I had the power to do it.'
Rebel Lok Janshakti Party MP Pashupati Kumar Paras appeared to have scored a point on Thursday when he was unanimously elected as the new national president even as the faction headed by his cornered nephew Chirag Paswan dug in its heels and vowed to teach the 'traitors' a lesson.
Two government school teachers, including a woman, were shot dead by terrorists in the Eidgah area of Srinagar on Thursday.
The seat had fallen vacant following the death of Lok Janshakti Party founder and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan.
"Is it any surprise that the new Parliament is being consecrated with typically false narratives from WhatsApp University? The BJP-RSS distorians stand exposed yet again with maximum claims, minimum evidence," Congress general secretary communications Ramesh said in his tweet.
Never a leader with a big base of his own, Sharad Yadav depended on state bigwigs like Lalu and Nitish to enter Parliament but enjoyed the aura and political weight which made him a strong presence at the high table of national politics in Delhi.
'BJP has achieved its aim by making him a regional leader dependent on them.'
The open buggy was seen as a security threat by the security agencies then, following which the traditional carriage was replaced by bullet-proof cars.
There was a delay in sowing of kharif onion because of late arrival of monsoon and later floods in many states damaged the crop.
The LJP, though, itself looked to have paid a big price in the process, as the Election Commission data showed that it could win just one seat while drawing around 5.7 per cent of votes. Paswan's party has, however, been instrumental in the JD-U's loss in at least 30 seats.
Kumar banged his table at Patna's Indian Coffee House as he announced this to an audience that was discussing alleged corruption in Bihar in 1977, writes Sankarshan Thakur in his biography of Kumar -- The Brothers Bihari.
"The price cap has been imposed taking into account the sharp increase in prices of raw materials used in making of face masks and hand santiser," Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said.
"Every person who wants development in Bihar, wants unemployment and corruption to end in the state and wants migration to stop is voting for the candidates of BJP and LJP. "This time the people have voted for change and development. The feedback I am getting from my party candidates and workers clearly indicates that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar won't be able to retain his position after November 10. "BJP-LJP will form a new government in Bihar," Paswan said.
'Maybe the BJP believes, in the post-poll scenario, it will have the might to foist, anybody endorsed by the RSS, upon Bihar,' observes Mohammad Sajjad.
Kumari, a lion-hearted 15-year-old, cycled all the way from Gurugram in Haryana to Bihar's Darbhanga district with her incapacitated father Mohan Paswan seated on the carrier. Now the father-daughter duo is at a quarantine centre near their village Sirhulli under Singhwara block of the district.
An interplay of Modi government's outreach in Bihar and the sequence of events in Chirag Paswan's life could make Bihar a game of musical chairs when the results are out.
"The majority is very thin and anything can happen. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's party -- JD-U finished third and if anyone is celebrating the win, it's a joke. The BJP has done well, for which it had to do a lot of political strategising," he said.
"If the current Chief Minister again wins this election by mistake then our state will lose. Our state will again stand on the verge of getting ruined. "I wonder how he promotes casteism. It is not appropriate to imagine the development of Bihar under the leadership of a person who promotes communalism," Paswan said while launching the party's manifesto for the Bihar assembly polls.
The LJP will also be given a Rajya Sabha berth and Paswan is likely to be its candidate.
Bihar school girl Jyoti Kumari, who cycled 1200 km with her injured father from New Delhi to Darbhanga, will appear for Cycling Federation of India trials once the lockdown ends even though finishing matriculation is her primary aim. Rendered jobless and penniless because of the extended coronavirus lockdown, the 15-year-old was forced to ferry her father who was unable to walk properly after a surgery to his left knee following an accident.
'Chirag Paswan's game plan would be to push out Nitish Kumar from this alliance, but that is only possible if the BJP wins about 90 seats and the LJP wins between 25-30 seats.'
Unless controlled and contained, given the untested belief that the north Indian labour support and follow the Hindutva kind of political ideology, there is a potential in terms of ideological clashes with their Dravidian brethren in the local neighbourhoods, and it all escalating into violence, especially during election time, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
A part of the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat, Raghopur assembly segment in Vaishali district will vote in the second phase on November 3. The 31-year-old, the younger son of Lalu Prasad, had taken the electoral plunge from Raghopur in 2015, when he had barely reached the qualifying age of 25 for fighting polls.
He reaffirmed that parties opposed to the BJP can win with a "huge majority" in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls if they agree to join hands.
'When our forefathers were fighting for Independence from British rule, Jinnah was pushing for the creation of an Islamic state'
The petition sought setting aside speaker's June 14 circular showing the name of Paras as leader of Jan Lokshakti Party in the Lok Sabha.
Gandhi, then a newly appointed Congress chief, had staked claim to form the government at the Centre after the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had lost the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha on April 17, 1999.
The BJP at 43 is a work in progress, with total ideological continuity and much substantive change in political method and style, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The NDA has retained Bihar with a wafer-thin majority of 125 seats in the 243-member assembly, paving the way for a fourth term for CM Nitish Kumar.
