Chief ministers and other senior leaders made last-minute appeals to voters for their support in Mokama and Gopalganj of Bihar, Adampur of Haryana, Manugoda of Telangana, Gola Gorakhnath of Uttar Pradesh and Dhamnagar of Odisha.
Loss of power in Bihar has upset the Bharatiya Janata Party's calculations for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls but a section of its leaders also see a chance for the party to break the dominance of regional parties in the state, like it has in Uttar Pradesh.
Shatrughan Sinha won't attend, citing 'important personal engagements.' Will L K Advani be present? M I Khan reports on a swearing-in ceremony the likes of which Patna may not have seen before.
Ignoring strong reservations by some senior party leaders and members of Legislative Assembly, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad on Wednesday announced his party's support to the ruling party's two candidates in the Rajya Sabha bye-election.
Former Bihar CM Nitish Kumar was elected as leader of the JD-U legislature party.
Gandhi claimed that Dalits, tribals, and Other Backward Classes were made bonded labourers and their participation was lacking in big companies, hospitals, schools, colleges and courts.
They joined their nine colleagues, already in Srinagar, to foil any bid by the BSP-BJP coalition to break their party.\n\n
Allies since the 1990s, the JD-U and the BJP have in the recent past squabbled on issues ranging from Agnipath, caste census, population law and ban on loudspeakers.
Ending days of speculation, senior Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar on Sunday said that Bihar's Jitan Ram Manjhi would continue as chief minister. "All speculations about Manjhi's removal were wrong," the former CM told the media soon after his return from New Delhi on Sunday.
The jovial RJD chief, known for his earthy humours, apparently could not digest that his party drew a blank in its stronghold Bihar and also in the neighbouring Jharkhand.
Opposition parties on Sunday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party after Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar and eight others were inducted into the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, saying the ruling party's 'washing machine' has resumed its operation to clean tainted leaders and it was an 'ED-facilitated power grab'.
The opposition hit the roof and likened rulers of the state to Hitler, Mussolini and Kim Jong Un, though the department came out with a clarification that the controversy was stemmed from 'wrong interpretation' of a paragraph in the missive that ran into many pages.
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has alleged that the BJP was conspiring to poach the MLAs in order to destabilise his government, a charge denied by the saffron party.
It was soon after that call that Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav spoke to each other.
On the eve of the counting of votes in Rajasthan, both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have started reaching out to independent candidates, including rebels, and smaller parties.
In a protests against the decision of Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala to invite BJP to form the government despite falling short of the required numbers, the Congress has been demanding they be called to form the government in Goa and Manipur as it had emerged as the largest party in the 2017 assembly election.
Addressing party workers, Thackeray claimed Mufti told him that the BJP's alliance with the PDP was on the condition that Article 370, which provided special status to Jammu and Kashmir, won't be abolished.
In a jolt to Lalu Prasad ahead of Lok Sabha polls, the Rashtriya Janata Dal split on Monday as 13 of the 22 party MLAs in Bihar announced they have quit the party but six of them later claimed they are not part of the breakaway faction.
Kumar remarked that the Congress could have done the needful while the United Progressive Alliance, led by it, ruled the country for two consecutive terms.
A total 14 ministers, including 3 Rashtriya Janata Dal defectors, were inducted into the 12-day old Jitan Ram Manjhi cabinet in Bihar on Monday.
Mauled in the Lok Sabha elections and facing dissidence within, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar resigned on Saturday but interestingly did not seek dissolution of the assembly injecting a dramatic turn in the state politics.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday called for a "main front" of all non-BJP parties to take on the ruling alliance in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and asserted that the decision on its leadership can be taken later.
The BJP is far more prepared than the Congress as their pool of prospective candidates is much bigger, reports Prakash Bhandari.
'Bihar, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Bengal can be the game changers of 2024.'
The Janata Dal-United, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress legislators on Wednesday created ruckus in both Houses of Bihar legislature over recovery of Rs 1.14 crore, $600 and ornaments stolen from the house of Bharatiya Janata Party MP Giriraj Singh and demanded his arrest and termination of Parliament membership alleging it as "black money".
Congress and RJD are single largest parties in Goa and Bihar respectively.
The formula of Lok Sabha polls this year wherein JD-U and BJP had both fought 17 seats each, leaving six for Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party, which joined the National Democratic Alliance in 2014, a year after Kumar's exit, could not serve as the basis for the assembly polls, said the poll strategist.
A statement issued by his party said'NDA will achieve spectacular success in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls in Bihar if these are fought projecting Kushwaha as the leader of the coalition.'
Could a grand alliance between the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress -- built along the lines of the successful Bihar mahagatbandhan of 2015 -- have changed the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh election?
In the last six assembly elections, the state voted the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress to power alternately.
Political observers are keen to see if the BJP will now be guided by its more firmly entrenched ideological dominance in picking a face solidly identified with its core planks, or if it will choose a person tilted more to its electoral calculations. Or, whether its pick will be an ode to its core supporters or a outreach to relatively new groups of votaries.
As the ruling alliance starts feeling the tremors, discussions on new equations have also started, reports Satyavrat Mishra.
While the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Janata Dal-United are busy fighting each other, the BJP is trying not to repeat the mistakes it made the last time out, says Satyavrat Mishra
'The Congress has indeed become overly dependent on the RJD.' 'A few Congress leaders have successfully convinced the national leadership about the benefits of maintaining ties with the RJD.'
Sharad Yadav came out all guns blazing against Jitan Ram Manjhi for causing damage to the party.
The warming up of ties became apparent after the Centre announced the country's highest civilian honour Bharat Ratna to his grandfather and former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh.
Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday night released the first list of 43 candidates for the high-stakes Bihar polls, giving about 60 per cent representation to those from SC and backward castes in an apparent attempt to target the base of rival Janata Dal-United-Rashtriya Janata Dal combine.
In his letter to Kumar, the veteran leader has made a series of suggestions including an amendment in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act, bringing Lord Buddha's begging bowl from Kabul and hoisting tricolor at Vaishali, the land of world's first Republic.
Buoyed by the exit polls projections, the party has sent its senior leaders including general secretary Randeep Surjewala and Avinash Pande, chairman of the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee screening committee, to Patna for proper coordination with the allies and possibly also to keep its flock together after the results are declared.
The RJD chief also hailed the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance in Uttar Pradesh.
