The marathon meeting, spread over two sessions and kept under wraps, came a day after top leaders of socialist-leaning parties attended SP's silver jubilee meet here -- a move seen as an attempt by Mulayam to forge an alliance ahead of the assembly polls hardly a few months away.
Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley feels the JD-U and SP, the prime movers behind the idea of Third Front, are 'potential losers' in their areas of influence, and are no match to Narendra Modi-led NDA.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday said he was neither a claimant for the prime minister's post nor desirous of it, his assertion coming amid speculation that his visit to the capital is to claim leadership of the opposition parties.
P Chidambaram and Rajeev Shukla of the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party's Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar, former Congress leader Kapil Sibal, Rashtriya Janata Dal's Misa Bharti and Jayant Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal were among the 41 winners declared elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha.
The Left parties, Janata Dal (United), and two other Opposition members on the committee opposed raising the foreign direct investment limit in the insurance sector from 26 per cent to 49 per cent.
Election watchdog Association of Democratic Reforms also reported that Janata Dal-United's Mahendra Prasad was the richest with assets worth Rs 4,078 crore.
The opposition on Friday created ruckus in Rajya Sabha over the issue of regional language aspirants having disadvantage in Civil Services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission leading to two adjournments during Question Hour.
Sources said the opposition parties would look to avoid the prickly leadership question as of now and emphasise on building a common ground.
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.
The decision of some key regional parties like the Biju Janata Dal, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and the Aam Aadmi Party to skip a key opposition meet called by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the presidential poll has cheered the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as it believes that their absence has only highlighted the faultlines and one-upmanship among its rivals.
Nitish Kumar's unanimous election to the top post at the party's National Executive meeting brought an end to the decade-old tenure of Sharad Yadav, who had ruled himself out for a fourth term.
As the Opposition held its first meeting on the Presidential polls and names of Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi also cropped up, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice with senior party leader and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress), Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal).
A two-day meet of Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo began in New Delhi on Sunday amid attempts to bring all non-Congress, non-BJP parties on a common platform ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
The contentious bill will be tables in RS on Wednesday. The BJP hopes to get up to 130 votes in a 240-member upper house.
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.
Amid the raging Israel-Hamas war, a group of opposition leaders, including MP Danish Ali and former parliamentarians Mani Shankar Aiyar and K C Tyagi, visited the Palestine Embassy in New Delhi on Monday to express solidarity with Palestinians.
The move is being seen as an attempt to forge opposition unity to defeat the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
The meeting saw archrivals TMC and CPI-M coming together on a common platform against the government.
Ending a weeklong logjam, Rajya Sabha on Monday resumed normal functioning during the Question Hour after government and opposition leaders agreed to a compromise formula to end protests over Union Minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti's controversial remarks.
Amid efforts to form a Third Front, several regional parties including the Left, the Janata Dal-United, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Bharatiya Janata Dal and United Progressive Alliance ally Nationalist Congress Party on Wednesday came together at a convention in New Delhi with their leaders pitching for unity among them to defeat the "threat" from fascist and communal forces.
The opposition on Friday created ruckus in Parliament over the issue of regional language aspirants having disadvantage in Civil Services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission.
A resolution to this effect was passed at the party's general body meeting in Hyderabad, party sources said.
Rashtriya Janata Dal President Lalu Prasad on Thursday invited former Bihar chief minister Jiten Ram Manjhi, a known detractor of Nitish Kumar, to join the process of uniting parties against the Bharatiya Janata Party for the upcoming assembly polls in Bihar.
With the all-party meetings called by Rajya Sabha Chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla producing no breakthrough to end the deadlock in Parliament, Union ministers Piyush Goyal and Pralhad Joshi accused opposition parties of repeatedly 'insulting' Dhankhar.
The issue of black money created uproar in Lok Sabha on the first working day of Winter session with Opposition asking the government to fulfil its promise of bringing it back from abroad.
Cash collections accounted for a whopping 63 per cent of total funds or over Rs 2,100 crore garnered by various political parties during all state assembly polls between 2004 and 2015, a study showed on Monday.
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?
This after most of the Opposition including the Congress, Left parties, the Trinamool Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Nationalist Congress Party decided to boycott House proceedings in protest against the suspension of eight MPs for the remainder of the session for unruly behaviour.
Both the BJP and the Congress have banked on new and young faces, some of whom have been nominated by the parties for the first time.
The crowd at the mosque was larger than usual, unsurprisingly because it happened to be the last "Jumma" (Friday) of the holy month of Ramzan.
The imbroglio in Parliament over a joint parliamentary probe into the alleged irregularities in the 2G spectrum allocation continued for the ninth day, with the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha adjourning till noon following uproar by the opposition parties. Even before Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar could take her seat, opposition members including those from the Bharatiya Janata Party, Shiv Sena, Biju Janata Dal, Janatal Dal United and Samajwadi Party trooped to the well.
Parliament proceedings were adjourned amid ruckus and sloganeering by the Opposition members over the Adani issue.
Vishwa Hindu Parishad's controversial Ayodhya yatra rocked Parliament on Monday with both Houses being disrupted repeatedly due to clashes between Samajwadi Party and Bharatiya Janata Party as demands were made for dismissal of the Uttar Pradesh government.
Over 56 per cent turnout was recorded on Monday in 54 assembly seats, including in Varanasi, in the seventh and last phase of Uttar Pradesh polls, marking the end of the voting process spread over two months in the crucial state.
BJD MP Baijayant Jay Panda has written that 'reforms must reduce the Rajya Sabha's power to block the popular mandate'
Raising the communal temperature in riot-affected western Uttar Pradesh going to polls on Monday, Narendra Modi's close aide Amit Shah has spoken of the current election being an opportunity to take "revenge for the insult" during the violence in Muzaffarnagar last year.
The opposition on Tuesday termed as an 'election jumla' the women's reservation bill brought by the government with many leaders raising questions over the proposed legislation, contending it doesn't account for reservation for OBC communities and that it will be effective at the earliest by the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
The Congress top brass staged a dharna in Parliament for the 2nd day in protest against suspension of its MPs.
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.
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