In a poor village of daily wage earners in Siwan, Bihar, people speak about their hard lives and why they vote.
Polling for 16 Rajya Sabha seats in four states will be held on Friday amid allegations of attempts at horse-trading by rival parties which have corralled their MLAs in hotels and scenic resorts, prompting the Election Commission to appoint special observers and order videography of the entire exercise.
The Janata Dal-United supremo, however, also appeared annoyed with parliamentary board chief Upendra Kushwaha who had recently jumped the gun with the insinuation that the RJD could be trying to 'further the Bharatiya Janata Party's agenda' by refraining from taking action against the minister.
Seeking to steal a march over Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar-led Janta Dal-United announced on Thursday that its five Lok Sabha members from Bihar will resign on Friday to protest the attacks on North Indians in Maharashtra.
The announcement comes a day after the opposition's Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) allotted just one seat to the Left parties in Bihar.
Deriving from Narendra Modi's continuing charisma, the proposed scheme, if and when implemented, can cut both ways. That is to say, if Modi can win, he can lose. Or, someone else in his place, later on, could lose as much as he could win in his time, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Five days before the Big Opposition rally in Patna, one of the Mahagathbandhan's allies will walk out of the ruling alliance.
The rumours have primarily been about the impending resignation of JD-U national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh 'Lalan', for alleged proximity towards ally Rashtriya Janaat Dal at the expense of loyalty to his own party.
The meeting at Gandhi's 10 Janpath residence was seen as very crucial in forging an Opposition unity with efforts on to reconcile differences between the Congress and some regional parties that have been at loggerheads traditionally.
The ceremony on Friday will be attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and chief ministers of Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states.
Kushwaha retorted saying that he could not leave the party without his share in the "paternal property".
'The BJP will use Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha to check Nitish Kumar.' 'They will not allow him to function freely as before.'
Union minister Giriraj Singh on Saturday claimed that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United and its ally Rashtriya Janata Dal, founded and headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav, were heading for a merger.
With the reality of coalition politics staring the BJP in its face, this was inevitable, points out Ramesh Menon.
The National Conference is a part of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) and will continue to be, party leader Omar Abdullah clarified on Thursday and said it is in talks with the Congress for an arrangement in three of the six Lok Sabha seats in Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
The Congress has not released a poll manifesto but a declaration of appeasement.
'Singh was forced to submit his resignation to Nitish Kumar few days ago and convinced to announce his offer to resign at the party meeting.'
The meeting of the 14-member all-important panel of the opposition will take place at the residence of Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar in New Delhi on September 13 evening.
While the wrestlers braved tough weather conditions, cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu demanded custodial interrogation of WFI President.
Madhaw Anand, the party's principal national general secretary and chief spokesperson, resigned from the posts as well as the primary membership stating that the party ran the risk of being "finished" on account of the "inconsequential" move.
RJD members reacted angrily to allegations against their leader, Lalu Prasad.
A basic outline and roadmap for Opposition unity are likely to be deliberated upon with the contentious issue of seat sharing and leadership questions to be avoided for now.
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.
The details of the seats would be announced by SP national president Akhilesh Yadav.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra appears to have shed the maximum sweat among top leaders for over the last 45 days in the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh assembly elections campaign.
Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) supporters stayed put on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway on Friday as the crowd swelled there, notwithstanding the Ghaziabad administration's ultimatum to vacate the UP Gate protest site where security force in large numbers was re-deployed.
Else, warns rebel party MLA, the RJD will split.
Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav had thrown barbs at the prime minister over his having no family.
An interim report on the action has also been sent by the field investigation wing of the income tax department to the Central Board of Direct Taxes in Delhi, the administrative body for the department.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
The leaders attacked the BJP, accusing it of trying to create "Hindu-Muslim disturbances" to benefit politically and making false claims and promises.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered cases against six sitting and former members of Rajya Sabha in connection with the LTC scam in which travel reimbursement was allegedly claimed by them through purportedly forged bills.
Both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have refused to meet Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was an experienced leader and it would be great if a proposal came to make him the convenor of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.
The party also nominated six others, including former Union minister Beni Prasad Verma, an influential Kushwaha leader who recently quit Congress and returned to the Samajwadi Party, and realtor Sanjay Seth for the biennial polls scheduled next month.
Accompanied by his son Santosh Suman, Manjhi met Shah at his residence in New Delhi.
While Yadav began to tour different constituencies and address public meetings to mobilise the SP rank and file, he has concurrently started the tedious process of cobbling up an alliance of smaller outfits representing a mlange of castes and sub-castes, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
The rising price of pulses has become a hot issue during the Bihar assembly polls.
Within four years of winning a single party majority in the Lok Sabha with 282 seats -- the first time it has happened in 30 years -- the BJP has lost it.
Banda chief judicial magistrate Bhagwan Das Gupta appointed Garima Singh, additional chief judicial magistrate (MP-MLA Court Banda) as the investigating officer in the case, the official said.
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