Top Opposition leaders, including Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Sunday lashed out at the Narendra Modi government for "doing nothing other than 'show-baazi'" by slashing allocations to all major social security schemes like MGNREGA.
Yadav vowed to dislodge the government headed by Nitish Kumar, whom Congress leader Avinash Pandey in his address accused of "apharan" (hijacking) of the mandate in the previous elections.
The assembly election results on May 19 altered India's political landscape and with it dented Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar's prime ministerial ambitions.
Misa Bharati is fighting to win back Patliputra, the seat her father lost in 2009, in a contest that is a do-or-die battle for Lalu Yadav and the RJD.
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.
Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi sharpened his attack on Nitish Kumar, saying the Janata Dal-United leader's "arrogance" and "ambition" to become prime minister drove him to split from BJP, and compared the socio-economic conditions of Muslims in Gujarat and Bihar to claim he practised "true" secularism.
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.
Singh had on Saturday called on the jailed activists, one of whom was arrested recently in connection with a communal flare-up that took place last year
'Nitish is now a helpless junior ally of Hindutva.' 'He just cannot think of reining in the hoodlums raging, marauding and killing in the mohallas,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
Releasing the manifesto titled 'Badlav Ka Sankalp' (commitment to change) in the presence of All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala and other Mahagathbandhan leaders, Tejashwi Yadav said their government, if elected, would first approve the process for appointments on about 10 lakh jobs in the government.
Opposition parties now recognise that the king on one side of the chessboard, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is ensconced, and unlikely to be shaken, although on his side there are no identifiable kings, queens, rooks, bishops or knights.
Searches are being conducted on Friday at 12 locations including Delhi, Patna, Ranchi, Puri and Gurgaon.
Kumar, who chose not to react when the 31-year-old Rashtriya Janata Dal leader made a series of personal attacks and allegations in his nearly an hour-long speech, erupted in anger when the latter sought to interject during a statement made by Janata Dal-United leader and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary.
In a protests against the decision of Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala to invite BJP to form the government despite falling short of the required numbers, the Congress has been demanding they be called to form the government in Goa and Manipur as it had emerged as the largest party in the 2017 assembly election.
Modi deplored "the thinking of many political leaders" that projects like roads were not meant for the poor.
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 Bihar CM will have make good on his poll promises of a clean administration, providing piped water, toilets, pucca roads and unemployment allowance
'Anything other than a complete, 2014-style victory will be far more devastating for him then it would be for anyone else.' 'Disciplining restive party members, and taming recalcitrant allies will then be far more difficult for him,' says Mihir S Sharma.
Asking the people of Bihar to bring their own government to power, the post made a veiled reference to the alleged high handedness of bureaucracy under the JD(U)-BJP rule but fell shy of a frontal attack on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his arch rival, or the near hegemonic saffron party which considers him a bete noire.
Rahul Gandhi is behaving as if he has come from planet Mars, Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi said on Monday taunting the Congress leader for levelling accusations on others, instead of accounting for his party's 10-year rule at the Centre.
All the drama from inside Bihar's legislative assembly.
Rs 28,117.23 crore has been made available so far by the Centre for 30 schemes out of special package of Rs 1.25 lakh crore for the state announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
'Your achievements are many, Nitish babu, but it needs a sustained campaign to remind us, the good people of Bihar, what we may have forgotten,' points out Asmita Bihari.
Nitish Kumar had a week's time to prove his majority, but Laloo Yadav made full use of Siwan don Mohammad Shahabuddin. A revealing excerpt from Rajesh Singh's Baahubalis Of Indian Politics: From Bullet To Ballot.
Nitish Kumar has spotted a secular trend in Bihar and with the minority's support he could trump Lalu Prasad, says Aditi Phadnis
'The BJP has sent out a message that its allies are at its mercy.' 'The allies cannot pressurise or bargain with the BJP any more,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'Vaghela has said he is with the Congress.' 'The controversy that he may switch to the BJP is a creation of that party to create confusion in the Congress.'
Two crucial bills, forming part of NDA government's reforms agenda, got approval of Parliament within minutes today after a number of non-NDA parties backed the legislations in Rajya Sabha where the ruling coalition is short in numbers.
'It is the RJD, otherwise known for misgovernance, which has offered a candidate of clean and performing credentials, rather than the NDA,' points out Mohammad Sajjad.
"Governance, governance, governance," was what Nitish Kumar said were his three priorities when he took the helm of Bihar in 2005.
She said Modi has the mandate to take bold decisions on the lines of Atal Bihari Vajpayee for the resolution of the problems in and around Jammu and Kashmir.
Slamming the government over the situation in Kashmir, Opposition in the Rajya Sabha on Monday pressed for holding an all-party meet to discuss the issue and pitched for a political solution rather than using "barrel of the gun" while dealing with the unrest.
'The horrific episode of January 18 in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, is quite different from what happened in Muzaffarnagar, UP, in September 2013. The Akhilesh Yadav-led administration in UP and riot-mongers among our political formations need to learn lessons from the response of the state and society in Bihar's Muzaffarpur,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'AAP's real value must be measured not by the number of Lok Sabha seats it wins in the election -- which may not exceed 10 or 15 -- and not even by the number of votes it takes from the BJP, but by its ability to deflate Modi's superhuman '56-inch chest' image and the charisma so assiduously manufactured around him by the corporate-controlled media.'
'They gave Nitish their votes to bring progress. But he forgot this and got involved with his own political interests. That is not done. So he was rejected.' 'Lalu is a symbol of anarchy. He is the symbol of regressive politics.' BJP General Secretary Dharmendra Pradhan discusses Lalu, Nitish, and his strategy to bring Bihar in the BJP's fold, with Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com
'I have never seen anybody disliked more as prime minister than Modi.' 'What is interesting is in his prime ministership, no matter whatever happens in any corner of India, Modi is blamed for it.' 'Modi has not suspended any Constitutional liberties. No Opposition leader has been put in jail... Modi is not Hitler.'
Kickstarting the National Democratic Alliance's poll campaign in Bihar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday focussed his attack on former Bharatiya Janata Party ally and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, accusing him of "back-stabbing" the people of the state and alleging that there is some problem with his "DNA".
Narendra Modi was both conciliatory and mocking towards the Opposition, particularly Congress, during his hour long reply to the debate on the motion of thanks to the President's address in the Upper House.
More than predicting the nature of elections, a closer scrutiny of seat and vote share difference yields an important tool to assess the value of our democratic process, say economists Yugank Goyal and Arun Kumar Kaushik
Faced with the prospect of yet another embarrassment in Rajya Sabha, Government on Tuesday night bowed to the opposition demand for sending the Mines and Minerals bill to a Select Committee after hours of battle of wits between rival sides.