Bihar's ruling Janata Dal-United on Friday dropped its three sitting members of Parliament and nominated new faces for the Rajya Sabha polls to be held on February 7.
Actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha, who joined the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha election, lost to Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from Patna Sahib constituency in Bihar by 2.84 votes.
Kumar, who is now heading an alliance government in Bihar which includes the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Congress and the Left, has reached out to leaders like Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, all of whom are opposed to the BJP but not very comfortable with the grand old party either.
Leaders of several like-minded opposition parties are likely to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Karnataka chief minister-designate Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar on Saturday in Bengaluru.
Janata Dal-United MLAs gathered at Nitish Kumar's official residence for the crucial legislature party meeting on Sunday to choose a new leader in the House after the JD-U leader's resignation following the ruling party's debacle in the Lok Sabha elections in the state.
The Ethics Committee of Rajya Sabha headed by veteran Congress leader Karan Singh, decided to give Mallya one week time to explain his conduct.
"(Former PM) Atal Bihari Vajpayee said 'raj dharma' was not followed in Gujarat (during the 2002 riots). Now, 'raj dharma' is not being followed in case of Andhra Pradesh. We have been denied what was rightfully ours," he claimed.
The six suspended MPs were also present at the protest.
All political parties were asked at the dinner meeting on Monday night to suggest names for the alliance and the same would be discussed and consensus would be arrived at during the deliberations.
Consensus emerged on the appointment of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the chairperson of the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), while Janata Dal-United chief Nitish Kumar's name was proposed for the convener's post, pending approval of parties absent at the alliance meeting on Saturday, according to sources.
Senior Janata Dal-United leader Shivanand Tiwari on Tuesday created flutters by praising Narendra Modi at the Janata Dal-United convention in Rajgir, triggering spontaneous protests from the party workers.
Centenarian Janata Dal-United Member of Parliament Ram Sundar Das on Tuesday fainted on stage at the party convention in Rajgir and was rushed to a hospital.
An invitation will also be sent to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, TDP president Chandrababu Naidu and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
Sources said senior leaders of the party have been told to reach out to other leaders of the alliance and talks with some parties have begun.
As the 2019 Lok Sabha election approaches, some rare photographs from the 1996 election campaign, which saw a Bharatiya Janata Party prime minister for the first time in India's history, albeit only for 13 days.
While people voted in a fifth round that will set the tone as this election rounds into the straight, and while Modi on the stump chews the cud of personal grievances and hackneyed promises that have long since passed their use-by date, there is a rogue wave rising -- what damage it will do, we will know 16 days from today, observes Prem Panicker.
Despite facing stiff opposition, two candidates from the ruling party in Bihar, the Janata Dal-United, have won the Rajya Sabha by-polls with the support of the Rashtriya Janata Dal party.
Banerjee feels that as long as Sonia Gandhi is the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party, she should be the undisputed leader of a united front of opposition parties, reports R Rajagopalan.
'If unity is not going to be based on values and principles, how will we achieve it?'
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'.
With numbers on its side -- the ruling NDA has about half the votes of the electoral college -- and the possible support of fence-sitters like the BJD, the AIADMK and the YSRCP, the NDA candidate will likely sail through the contest.
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.
The grand alliance ministry, headed by Kumar, collapsed in July last year after the chief minister resigned over graft charge against his then deputy, Tejashwi Yadav.
Aaditya Thackeray on Wednesday sought to distance himself from the strident "anti-migrant" stance that the Shiv Sena, founded by his late grandfather Bal Thackeray, has often been accused of.
Opposition leaders will also meet the Election Commission and raise the issue of tallying the paper trail of votes with the electronic voting machine figures as directed by the Supreme Court.
Joining hands with his arch rival, Lalu Prasad Yadav, paid off for the Bihar chief minister
Endorsing Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's views against Narendra Modi, the Janata Dal - United on Tuesday said the Bharatiya Janata Party leader was not fit to be the prime minister and his arrival on the national stage has resulted in focus shifting from burning issues to non-issues.
The Congress on Thursday virtually ruled out any grand alliance in poll bound Uttar Pradesh including with Samajwadi Party insisting that Rahul Gandhi wanted to set things right in the state which is in bad shape for past 27 years in non-Congress rule.
Kurien adjourned the House till noon.
JD-U leader Sharad Yadav speaks about the recent crisis in Bihar
But he doesn't want to shut the door completely on the Yadav family as that could create problems for him in 2019.
Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
As BJP leaders went all out to project the event as a moment of national pride, some leaders were directly critical of the ceremony with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, belonging to the Communist Party of India-Marxist, slamming the state's role in the Ram Temple consecration, saying the line that demarcates religion and state seems to be 'getting thinner and thinner'.
The leaders attacked the BJP, accusing it of trying to create "Hindu-Muslim disturbances" to benefit politically and making false claims and promises.
Members from Opposition and treasury benches had a heated exchange of words in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks on foreign soil that he wanted to clean the dirt of 60 years forcing three adjournments in the pre-lunch session.
JD-U on Friday dismissed the Samajwadi Party-driven formation of a 'Third Front' for the Bihar polls and said that there was "only one front" in the state.
The MPs suspended on Tuesday include National Conference's Farooq Abdullah and Congress leaders Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari.
Known for weighing his options carefully before making any move, Kumar, upon a closer look, comes across as a risk taker who has not shied away from going against the tide.
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.
Conceding that the RJS is the "big brother" in Bihar, the Congress said that Rahul was "the face of anti-NDA forces" in the country.
