The Lok Sabha, India's lower house of Parliament, will debate the contentious Waqf (Amendment) Bill on Wednesday. The bill has been met with strong opposition from several parties who claim it is unconstitutional. The government, however, insists the bill aims to improve the management of Waqf properties in India by bringing transparency and efficiency.
Several opposition parties have claimed that the mandate of 2024 Lok Sabha elections was against the ruling haratiya Janata Party, even though it was able to form the government with support of other parties.
Once rolled out, theaterisation will be the biggest military reform in the country. It will see the creation of unified theatre commands within the 1.7 million-strong Indian armed forces.
Upset over not getting a Lok Sabha ticket, former Bihar Congress chief Mehboob Ali Kaiser could join Lok Janshakti Party, led by Ram Vilas Paswan, in a couple of days.
'The possibility of Nitish Babu continuing at least for some time is very much there, but don't rule out the artistic possibility of a leadership change executed very elegantly.'
As the election nears, political positions on prohibition are shifting.
The National Democratic Alliance was set to sweep the Bihar assembly polls, surging ahead in over 200 of 243 seats on Friday with the Bharatiya Janata Party emerging as single largest party with about 90 per cent strike rate, reaffirming the popularity and campaign clout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the face of the ruling alliance through the poll battle in the highly sensitive political state.
Shah pulled no punches in lambasting the RJD supremo for alleged nepotism, accusing him of making his wife the chief minister, getting his daughter elected to Parliament and "now both his sons want to become the CM".
The members of the cabinet committees included Union ministers from the Bharatiya Janata Party and its National Democratic Alliance partners like Janata Dal-United, Telugu Desam Party, Janata Dal-Secular, Shiv Sena and Lok Janshakti Party-Ram Vilas.
While the BJP went back to the drawing board to recraft its political and governance outreach and regained momentum by notching up surprisingly big wins in a string of assembly polls, the burst of fresh optimism in the main opposition Congress and other INDIA bloc parties fizzled out.
In the morning, he offered prayers at the Dashashwamedh Ghat and the Kaal Bhairav temple in Varanasi.
Sons-in-laws of prominent politicians are rising against their in-laws, observes M I Khan
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.
'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.
Left to its machinations, the BJP would have loved to cut Nitish down to size, but it can't afford to do so as the JD-U is in alliance with the BJP at the Centre, and cannot form a government on its own in Bihar. For now, both need each other: Nitish for legitimacy, the BJP for numbers, points out Ramesh Menon.
'When our forefathers were fighting for Independence from British rule, Jinnah was pushing for the creation of an Islamic state'
However, Nishant has made it clear several times that he has no interest in politics like the children of other prominent politicians of the state.
An analysis of the upcoming Bihar elections, focusing on the key players, alliances, and issues that will shape the outcome. The article examines the strength of the ruling NDA coalition led by Nitish Kumar and the challenge posed by the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan, as well as the potential impact of Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party.
'Rahul Gandhi's problem is that he doesn't think big.' 'He looks more like an activist, while politics is like a game of chess. You attack and then defend and have a game-plan.'
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.
Nitish Kumar wants to assure the BJP leadership that he will continue to be a part of the NDA. But he also wants to secure a larger number of seats for his party in the 2025 assembly elections in Bihar.
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.
Signalling both change and continuity, India's new government, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a third consecutive term, got into work gear on Tuesday with cabinet ministers and ministers of state filing into their respective offices to assume charge.
Narendra Modi will take oath as the prime minister for a third consecutive term on Sunday evening as President Droupadi Murmu has invited him to form the government.
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.
A day after the by-election results in Bihar, though leaders of the Rahtriya Janata Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party claimed victory after the RJD and BJP retained the Mokama and Gopalganj assembly seats respectively, the fact that both seats were won with a reduced margin indicates that there is nothing to celebrate for either party.
"NDA is a beautiful rainbow of regional aspirations... So nation's development through the development of states... At a time when we are working for a developed India, NDA is taking the lead in showing the spirit of sabka prayas," he said.
"Our organisation in Uttar Pradesh will lend support to the alliance," he said.
How Modi retrieves the situation and how he enlists new allies in the next two years will show if the BJP is fighting fit, report Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
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.
In a significant move, the Centre on Wednesday announced that caste enumeration will be part of the next population census, with the inclusion of caste details for the first time since independence hailed by the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies as a historic step to help design truly equitable and focused policies.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday took a major step to implement its key plank of "one nation, one election" as the Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the constitutional amendment bill to roll out the concept of simultaneous Lok Sabha and state assembly polls, sources said.
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 nominee Om Birla was elected as Lok Sabha speaker on Wednesday after a motion moved by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was adopted through voice vote, capping intense debate on the issue with the opposition in a rare move proposing its own candidate.
Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi on Sunday called on party patriarch L K Advani after holding consultation with a number of party leaders including his key aide Amit Shah in New Delhi ahead of the formation of the next government headed by him.
The BJP's MoSha leadership are past masters in encouraging defections from their allies if it helped their party capture the chief minister's chair. In Bihar, they are not sure if JD-U MPs and MLAs would be willing to cross over to the BJP if the Nitish leadership came on top -- and the NDA crossed the halfway mark together, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
If he cannot do it this term by using his bureaucracy and experts from different fields, it will be a tragedy, asserts Ramesh Menon.
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.
Opposition members tried to corner the government in both the Houses over the Supreme Court decision that states are not bound to provide reserved seats for the SCs, STs and OBCs in appointments and promotions.
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