'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.'
'If people don't see you, they might be hesitant, but once they see you, they are confident that this is the person they will vote for,' says political debutant Shambhavi Choudhury, 25, alumnus of the Lady Sriram College and the Delhi School of Economics.
There are also over 10 million voters in the 18-29 age bracket. Winning them over could be Nitish Kumar's biggest challenge, reports Aditi Phadnis.
'They are not ready to take the vaccine.' 'They fear that if they do, they will die.'
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 defence minister, however, said the matter is under the domain of the Union home ministry and it will take appropriate decisions.
The JD-U also accused the ruling BJP of having "authoritarian" tendencies and destabilising non-BJP governments in several states, including Delhi and Jharkhand besides Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra earlier.
'It is for the people of that state to decide whether what has happened is appropriate or not. But normally a party does not lose its support base just because of some MLAs jumping ship'
'Rahul Gandhi is raising the issue of a caste census though his party has been doing injustice on this front from the 1950s.'
It is now a different time in Bihar. It is a different place -- one in which Raghuvansh Prasad Singh's options are very limited, notes Aditi Phadnis.
Gohil, who is also one of the party's national spokespersons and a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat, made the disclosure on his official twitter handle. 'Due to personal reasons, I have requested our party high command to allocate me lighter work for next few months and to relieve me ASAP as #Bihar in charge,' Gohil tweeted, tagging his party, its units in Bihar, Gujarat and Delhi besides a number of colleagues.
Development economist Jean Dreze said the Indian democracy is currently navigating a crisis that is not only limited to the 'recent wave of authoritarianism' but also suppression of opposition voices by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The UNICEF said an estimated 2.4 million children have been affected by the recent floods in the country.
'What's sad today is that there are so many people who cannot find work, not because the country is devoid of that opportunity, but because we are not doing enough in the country.'
Few finance ministers announce any taxation measure that could upset the stock market. Ms Sitharaman decided to take that risk, observes A K Bhattacharya.
Akhilesh Yadav's stock rose dramatically on Tuesday with his Samajwadi Party cutting the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party down to size in Uttar Pradesh.
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.
The states and union territories where the elections are being held in this phase are Assam (4), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (7), Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu (2), Goa (2), Gujarat (25), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (11), Madhya Pradesh (8), Uttar Pradesh (10) and West Bengal (4). The BJP has bagged the Surat seat unopposed.
Stepping up his attack on the Bihar government, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday questioned the claims of development by the ruling Janata Dal-United saying if it had indeed taken place why were people migrating from the state in search of jobs.
Bharatiya Janata Party's National Democratic Alliance partners have got five cabinet ministerial berths in the third term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as against none in the outgoing government, given the party's dependence on allies for a majority in the Lok Sabha.
The Vedanta Group is aiming to invest $20 billion across all its businesses in India over the next four years, its chairman Anil Agarwal said on Wednesday. The group will sell the steel business only at the right price, and is committed to continue running it if it does not get the right price, Agarwal told PTI on the sidelines of a company event. "At the moment, we have a plan to invest $20 billion across sectors in four years time," Agarwal said.
'it's not just youth in India who are left behind because of their inability to find jobs; nearly two-thirds of Indian women of working ages do not participate at all in the paid labour force.'
The development highlights worsening of the ties between the two BJP allies in the state.
After a dream debut seven years ago when he was sworn in as deputy chief minister after being elected MLA for the first time was followed by a slump in his political fortunes, Tejashwi Yadav has finally come back to center-stage as the kingmaker and deputy to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
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.
'In this election, the only thing that is going to matter is which caste aligns with which coalition.'
'Sonia did not visit this place once since she won. Who's to say they won't lose this one, too?'
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.
How Modi retrieves the situation and how he enlists new allies in the next two years will show if the BJP is fighting fit, report Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
The crowds were stunned into silence for a few seconds, after which they erupted in applause for the 69-year-old leader who has ruled the state for nearly 15 years.
'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 maximum 80 companies, as per an official order, will be drawn from the Central Reserve Police Force followed by 70 from the Sashastra Seema Bal, 55 from the Border Security Force, 50 from the Central Industrial Security Force, 30 from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police force and 15 from the RPF.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
Ten to 20 days of heatwave are expected against the normal of four to eight days in the entire April-June period.
Actor-politician Kamal Haasan on Wednesday said discussions were on for his party Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM)'s political alliance and stressed it would support any bloc that would 'selflessly' think about the nation but desist from being part of 'feudal politics'.
Party's chief spokesperson K C Tyagi said Kumar has agreed to take over the mantle from Lalan Singh.
Signalling both change and continuity, India's new government, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a third consecutive term, got into work gear on Tuesday with cabinet ministers and ministers of state filing into their respective offices to assume charge.
Launching a veiled attack on Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad, who he did not mention by name, Modi said Bihar has come out of an era when rail, road and internet connectivity were made light of and people used to say of what use roads are for those who walk on their feet.
A lacklustre show by the Congress in Bihar seems to have proved costly for the opposition grand alliance, as it dragged down the RJD too from government formation in the Hindi heartland state.
Owaisi's five seats in Bihar's Muslim-majority Seemanchal region ought to ring alarm bells, observes Virendra Kapoor.
