Dalits constitute nearly 16 per cent of the vote and 38 seats are reserved for them in the assembly, reports Satyavrat Mishra
In a season of political deal-making, it would seem the BJP is not only keener to win new friends but is ahead of rival Congress in the game. Its only competition, if at all, has come from regional satraps and the Left parties, which on Tuesday resolved to fight the elections together against both the Congress and BJP.
Rashtriya Lok Samata Party MLA Lallan Paswan has stirred a controversy by purportedly asking objectionable questions to girls of a residential Dalit school in Bihar's Vaishali district where he had gone in connection with death of a Class X girl allegedly after being raped.
Lok Janshakti Party president Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday said that the President's rule in Jharkhand was a temporary solution and elections were the only way out if no party or combination was able to form a government soon.
'In Bihar, the Dalits are not a consolidated socio-political constituency,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
The 71-year-old remained Sonia Gandhi's most trusted lieutenant for most of her tenure as the longest serving Congress president, standing by her side through sun and shade.
Meraj Khalid Noor, who is popularly known as Bihar's Osama bin Laden for his uncanny resemblance with slain most-wanted Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, has said that he will contest the Lok Sabha polls against the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi from Varanasi.
A group of first time voters who run 10 km everyday to prepare for fauji recruitment rallies, tell Rediff.com's Archana Masih they need two things: quality education and jobs.
The series of meetings are being seen as an attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party to reach out to allies who have either been criticising or expressing their dissent with the party and also to strengthen the National Democratic Alliance ahead of the Lok Sabha polls next year.
More than two crore voters in Bihar will decide the fate of 1,066 candidates on Wednesday across 71 assembly segments in the first phase of elections.
JD-U MP Harivansh filed his nomination as the ruling NDA candidate to the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman's post and is likely to be elected, even as the Opposition is working to field a joint candidate against him to force a contest.
Two Rajya Sabha MPs from Gujarat -- BJP president Amit Shah, now Home Minister, and Smriti Irani, who has got the women and child development ministry -- have won the Lok Sabha polls, thus creating two vacancies in the Upper House of Parliament from the state.
"Where did we make any statement against the party? We wanted to draw the attention of the party high-command to the fact that we were not able to deliver on things promised in the manifesto for which the public elected us," Vishvendra Singh said in a video message.
In its sway over national politics now, the Modi-Shah BJP is what the Congress was under Indira Gandhi. Why would they indulge coalition partners, their greed and egos now, asks Shekhar Gupta.
The National Democratic Alliance in Bihar which so far had BJP, JD-U and the LJP as its constituents will now have another dalit-centric party HAM as a member.
"Our organisation in Uttar Pradesh will lend support to the alliance," he said.
The prime minister may go for new faces with an eye on grooming younger leaders while also factoring in caste and regional balances
Counting's underway and the fate of the candidates is awaited. As we wait for the results with bated breath, here's how your heavyweights are faring for now.
Inarguably the biggest gainer in the Grand Alliance, the CPI-ML, often working in the margins of mainstream politics, had 19 candidates in the fray, most of them students and youth leaders.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday assured at the all-party meeting that the government is ready to discuss all issues.
Lalu Prasad Yadav's wife Rabri Devi and daughter Misa Bharti lost from Saran and Pataliputra seats respectively in Bihar to BJP candidates. MI Khan reports.
Paswan said his Ministry has acquired 55,000 tonnes of pulses.
'It is true that Nitish Kumar had shown reluctance to continue as chief minister after the assembly polls and said the BJP should stake claim for the top post'
This is the first full-scale review of VIP protectees by the Union home ministry after the Modi 2.0 government took charge.
In the caste ridden politics of Bihar, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad's two sons and daughter and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan's son, are star campaigners for their party.
The statements made by the opposition parties after the preemptive air strike on terror camps have made only people of Pakistan happy, he claimed.
National Democratic Alliance allies on Monday put up a united front amid vocal demands being made by some parties on their share of seats in Bihar polls but the crucial issue of seat-sharing was not discussed at their maiden joint meeting chaired by Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah.
Other NDA allies, including the Lok Janshakti Party and the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, will get due representation in the seat sharing formula, Shah said.
The second round of the voting was held in the 17 districts amid tight security and strict coronavirus guidelines in place. The voting percentage at 10.30 pm was 54.64, according to the Election Commissions Voter Turnout Apps provisionally data.
Leaders of the BJP-led NDA told Bihar Governor that law and order is deteriorating in Bihar and demanded imposition of President's rule in the state.
The former Deputy chief minister made the sensational assertion on his twitter handle, sharing a mobile number which, he claimed, Prasad was having access to despite serving sentences in fodder scam cases.
A meeting of opposition leaders from many anti-Bharatiya Janata Party parties, most of them regional forces, hosted by the veteran leader and Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Tuesday is being seen by political pundits as a beginning of an exercise by them to join forces to put up a more cohesive challenge to the saffron party.
A 14-member council of ministers was sworn in Patna by Governor Phagu Chauhan on Monday and the BJP bagged seven berths.
I am not here to play negative politics in the name of Muslims, says the leader of yet another electoral front in Bihar.
'We are allies and equals. We have to run Bihar collectively'
The Bihar assembly election results appeared to belie predictions made by most exit polls which had given a clear edge to the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Mahagathbandhan.
Ivanka, who is advisor to President Trump on job creation, has visited India twice, most recently in February this year along with her father. In 2017, she led the US delegation at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in India.
Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said whenever BJP came to power, prices of essential commodities saw a fall.
The Food and Security Bill will be implemented after few months.
Two government school teachers, including a woman, were shot dead by terrorists in Eidgah area of Srinagar amid increasing attacks on civilians in Jammu and Kashmir, police said.
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