UP and Bihar contributed 105 seats to the BJP's tally in 2014. It has now lost 8 Lok Sabha by-polls in the last four years, including three successive losses in UP and two seats in Rajasthan.
With the Congress down in the dumps and the BJP juggernaut on a roll, 'secular' parties are attempting to revive the Janata Parivar coalition to fill the vacuum.
As many as 48 ministers of National Democratic Allaince government were in the fray in the general elections.
Singh also said that lynching incidents have been happening for years and mentioned that the biggest lynchings happened in 1984.
'The brutal violence of the UP government's first response to the anti-CAA protests suggests that the BJP will test drive the NPR/NRC in UP, where it has both a massive majority in the assembly and a chief minister whose instinct for Hindutva extremism and whose appetite for punitive policing allows a prime minister as darkly majoritarian as Modi to appear statesman-like,' notes Mukul Kesavan.
Why has Lalu Prasad picked his youngest child, Tejashwi Yadav, as his political heir.
Cracks in the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar is frittering away the ground gained in social justice and contributing to increasing polarisation in the state, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The foundation of the 2014 triumph was Narendra Modi's appeal to voters in the Hindi belt. The Bihar Vidhan Sabha polls will demonstrate if he continues to appeal to them,' says T V R Shenoy.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar Thursday did not rule out emergence of a Third Front, which was also favoured by the Samajwadi party, after the Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal-United face-off triggered the possibility of a non-Congress, non-BJP grouping to fight the next Lok Sabha polls.
'For the BJP, development is nothing more than a jumla,' says Tejaswi Yadav.
Bharatiya Janata Party senior leader Sushil Kumar Modi talks to Satyavrat Mishra about the prospects of the party in Bihar. Modi says only the assembly elections or general elections are the true barometers of popularity. Edited excerpts:
Allegations of electronic voting machines malfunctioningreturned to haunt the Election Commission as four Lok Sabha seats and nine assembly constituencies went for bypolls on Monday across 10 states with moderate-to-heavy voting amid prestige at stake for the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as opposition parties ahead of the 2019 general elections.
Saradha scam accused Matang Sinh, who was recently arrested by the CBI, too will continue to enjoy Z-plus security.
A down-to-the-wire contest is likely in some of the seats in the high-stakes Rajya Sabha elections in seven states, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Haryana, where the fate of candidates including senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal and senior lawyer R K Anand is being decided on Saturday.
'The BJP has replaced huge portraits of the two BJP leaders from Gujarat with very small portraits of many leaders from Bihar. Much is being read into this changed tactic of hoardings and banners,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Congress received donations worth over Rs 66 crore and NCP garnered about Rs 14 crore from individuals and business entities in fund contributions of over Rs 20,000 in the last financial year while BJP was among the parties which did not disclose such details to the Election Commission till the November 30 deadline.
As many as 20 new faces are expected to be inducted into the Union Council of Ministers on Sunday in the first revamp exercise which is likely to bring in BJP leaders Manohar Parrikar, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Bandaru Datttatreya while elevating a few.
Slamming as "fascist" Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's pitch for a "Congress Mukt Bharat", Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Monday reached out to all non-BJP parties on the plank of secularism.
BJP leaders said the party will take corrective measures, while its long-time ally Shiv Sena appeared taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Shah also said that the parties in power in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka were answerable for the incidents cited by protesting writers.
Unfazed by the absence of leaders of the Left, the Janata Dal-United, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee along with some regional parties on Tuesday sought to put up a united face raising the pitch against demonetisation by demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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