Nitish Kumar

BJP's Kedar Prasad Gupta defeated JD(U) candidate Manoj Kushwaha with a margin of 3,645 votes after all the 23 rounds of counting. Kedar Gupta managed to obtain 76,648 votes while Manoj Kushwaha got 73,016 votes. At the end of 22 round counting, Manoj Kushwaha left the centre.

Every time deaths due to spurious liquor is reported in Bihar, leaders of opposition parties as well as intellectuals jump the gun to target the Chief Minister. The latest deaths due to alleged consumption of spurious liquor were reported from Vaishali district of the state where three persons died in three different villages.

This 'vote katwa' politics has significantly elevated the importance of smaller parties in the state, especially after the Gopalganj bypoll, and the same strategy would likely to be replicated in Kurhani Assembly bypoll and probably in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as well. The talks about 'vote katwa' politics gained momentum after BJP leaders started claiming that the candidate of VIP Nilabh Kumar will help JD-U's Manoj Kushwaha by cutting the upper caste vote of BJP in Kurhani.

"Due to the liquor ban, the Bihar government is losing a big chunk of revenue and it is directly affecting the common people. The developments of public welfare works are not taking place in Bihar. The roads of rural areas are having pathetic shapes. Hence, Nitish Kumar should leave his obstinacy on liquor ban. He should lift the ban to improve excise tax collection in state exchequer," Singh said.

"When I was studying in Engineering College Patna, there were only male students studying there. Whenever a girl of a family came to the campus, the entire students went there to see her. There was no co-education at that time. When I became the Chief Minister of the state, I promoted girls students with various schemes to empower them. Our special focus is on female students and a number of them are studying in engineering colleges now," he said while addressing students and teachers on the occasion of Education Day ceremony in Sri Krishna Memorial Hall at East Gandhi Maidan.

"Congress and Trinamool Congress would be part of the anti-BJP alliance led by Nitish Kumar," Ajmal, also a Lok Sabha member, told the media adding that his party would also join the front. Ajmal earlier said that he has no problem if Congress joins the alliance in a bid to defeat the BJP in 2024 polls.

"I gave great respect to Ram Vilas Paswan and also supported him in the early part of our politics. I had been meeting him in Delhi when he was alive. Our relationship was very old. It is extremely unfortunate that he is no longer with us. After his departure, his son is saying anything he wants to me," Nitish Kumar said.

The internal security meeting was held for two days on Thursday and Friday in New Delhi where Chief Ministers and Home Ministers of all the states were invited. Besides Nitish Kumar, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Benerjee, Odhisa's Naveen Patnaik, Tamil Nadu's M.K. Stalin and Jharkhand's Hemant Soren maintained distance from it.

"I have an injury in my stomach due to a boat accident in the Ganga river a few days ago and I am not fully fit. Once I recover from the wound, then I will think about it. For now, I am not going to these two places. The leaders of our party are going to Mokama and Gopalganj," he said as he went to attend Chitragupta Puja in Gardanibagh locality here.

Janata Dal-United (JD-U) put a poster on the streets of Patna wherein it said the new full form of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is "Bech (kar) Jayenge Puri Rashtriya Sarkari Sampati (will sell-off all national government assets)". The poster further advocates Nitish Kumar as Prime Minister.