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.
A deafening bang and a powerful tremor flung sleeping passengers off their berths as the Delhi-bound Seemanchal Express jumped the tracks.
'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.
About 2.34 crore voters, spread across 78 assembly segments of the 243-strong assembly, will decide the fates of 1,204 candidates, including the Speaker and 12 members of the state cabinet.
As per the two party leaders, they held wide-ranging talks on the current political situation in Bihar and the NDA's strategy for contesting the 40 seats in the state in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Owaisi's five seats in Bihar's Muslim-majority Seemanchal region ought to ring alarm bells, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM, which is going to contest next year's Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls on the promise of creating leadership among Muslims, has created unease in the political parties that so far considered the members of the minority community as their core "vote bank".
"We got a lot of confidence from our success in Bihar, and we will continue that momentum," Owaisi told reporters after their meeting in Lucknow.
The final phase of polling on Saturday will cover 78 constituencies spread across 19 north Bihar districts.
This phase will decide the fate of senior minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav of Janata Dal-United, Rashtriya Janata Dal legislature party leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui and RJD chief Lalu Prasad's 'Man Friday' Bhola Yadav among others.
Anwar, an AICC general secretary, came out with a flurry of tweets calling for 'urgent and deep introspection' over the debacle of the party, the second largest constituent of the opposition coalition, which contested as many as 70 seats but returned with a tally of just 19.
Official figures say 1.8 lakh workers have returned home to Bihar. Unofficially, however, that figure is said to have crossed 3 lakhs. Can Bihar cope?
'When our forefathers were fighting for Independence from British rule, Jinnah was pushing for the creation of an Islamic state'
The Mahagathbandhan, or grand alliance, on Saturday reached a consensus on seat distribution with the JD-U and the RJD to contest 101 seats each while Congress will put up candidates in 41 seats for the October-November Bihar assembly poll.
Left behind after elections will be the Biharis with their stagnant conditions of poor education, poor health infrastructure, poverty, unemployment, division of society and the aftermath of coronavirus. What will remain is the Bihari tenacity, observes Asmita Bihari.
The BJP urged the EC to take 'suo motu cognisance' and take suitable action.
We should be ready beforehand and I agree that if we have to go for alliances then the formalities of those alliances should be completed as soon as possible
With more than 21 lakh migrant workers returning to the state as per official data, the Nitish Kumar government faces an enormous challenge in providing jobs for them.
Curtains came down on Tuesday evening on campaigning for 57 seats going to poll in the fifth and last phase of bitterly-fought Bihar assembly elections on November five, with acrimonious exchanges provoking showcause notices from the Election Commission to top leaders of rival alliances.
Hundreds of RSS cadres are helping the Saffron party counter Lalu-Nitish's campaign on the reservation issue in Bihar polls, observes M I Khan
This was a difficult election to win, but the Modi card, the caste divide and the division in the Opposition vote bank helped overcome many challenges.
The parties failed to make an impact with their voteshares getting restricted to 2 per cent or below.
'Did the government learn any lesson from the disasters of 2008, 1987, 1975?' 'Certainly not!' 'They are making people believe that the 2017 flood was unexpected, so no preventive effort towards reducing the loss of human lives was to be expected from the government,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
The Manduadih-Rameswaram Weekly Express tops the list of latecomer trains, with the highest average delay time of 11.5 hours!
Asserting that Bihar will see a tsunami of development if the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance was voted to power in the state, party chief Amit Shah on Sunday hit out at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar saying he was just a mascot for the "corrupt" Congress and "symbol of jungle raj" Lalu Prasad.
The toll in the killer nor'wester in Bihar rose to 54 as reports of 12 more deaths came from the 12 ravaged districts on Thursday.
Nitish Kumar will be the chief minister only till the time the BJP wishes, points out Ramesh Menon.
Speaking at a rally in poll-bound Bihar, Modi said that the Congress has no right to talk about tolerance after the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
A 7.8 per cent increase in votes for the JD-U-RJD-Congress alliance over BJP-led NDA's tally fetched it another 120 seats catapulting the Nitish Kumar-led coalition to a landslide two-third majority.
With Wednesday's Parivartan rally considered crucial to reassert the popularity of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad, the party has booked 13 trains to transport people to the event to Patna.
'Nitish Kumar's government has proved during these floods that it is a helpless government.'
Two deaths due to heart attack were also reported from polling stations in Madhubani and Darbhanga districts.
EC in its fresh advisory said despite the direction certain advertisements of "offending nature" have been brought to its notice.
Nitish 'sent his emissary, Prashant Kishor, to me on five different occasions.' 'Kishor seemed to indicate that if I were to assure in writing my party's support to the JD-U, the latter would pull out of the BJP alliance and rejoin the Mahagathbandhan.' A revealing excerpt from Lalu Prasad Yadav's Gopalganj To Raisina: My Political Journey.
Contrary to that the BJP would give tickets to more Muslim candidates to contest the upcoming Bihar assembly polls, the saffron party has fielded only two Muslim candidates.
The Bhartiya Janata Party along with the Lok Janshakti Party are all set to fight a pitched political battle against the ruling Janata Dal-United and also the Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal combine in Bihar. But there's one thing in common between the five major parties of the state -- all of them have fielded bahubalis, criminal-turned-politicians and their wives in the upcoming Lok Sabha election.
The Samajwadi Party on Thursday pulled out of the 'grand alliance' in poll-bound Bihar, saying it felt "humiliated" as it was not consulted while deciding seats and would contest the assembly elections in the state on its own.
Counting of votes in the high-stakes close-to-call Bihar assembly elections, billed as a hot battle between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will take place on Sunday.
'The BJP should realise that a very large number of people -- from the 'perfumed liberals' to the 'illiterate' masses of Bihar -- is trying to tell them that this is not the 'development' they wanted.' 'Stop telling people what to eat, what to wear, what to read, who to love and how not to show dissent.'
Asaduddin Owaisi opens up to T S Sudhir on his party's plans for the elections in Uttar Pradesh next year and why he thinks both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party have vitiated the secular atmosphere in the state.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances