Gujarat, Himachal election result LIVE: BJP leads; Rupani wins Rajkot West

The BJP is leading in 95 seats while the Congress nominees are ahead in 68 seats, as per the latest trends available for 169 seats after two hours of counting for the Assembly polls in Gujarat. Election Commission figures show the NCP, the Bhartiya Tribal Party and an independent candidate are leading in five seats together.

Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, who earlier trailed behind his Congress rival Indranil Rajyaguru after the counting of postal ballots, is now leading in Rajkot West seat. Rajyaguru secured 1,258 votes while Rupani got 491 votes after the end of first round of counting, as per election officials at the counting centre.

The elections for 182-seat Assembly were held on December 9 and 14, after an acrimonious campaign, which was dominated by a face-off between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi. In the 2012 elections, the BJP had won 115 seats while read more

Nitish and Modi’s love-hate relationship: Meet the frenemies in Indian politics

When Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi expressed his angst at Janata Dal (United) president and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar simply walking out of the mahagath bandhan or grand coalition, which he had so assiduously stitched together in the state ahead of the assembly elections in 2015, his pain was understandable – for the grand old party has of late being making overtures to all ‘secular’ parties to put up a united front against the BJP.

There can be no better example of this than the love-hate-love relationship shared by Nitish with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There relationship is best describes as that of a ‘frenemy’ or a person with whom one is friendly, despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry.

Once holding Modi in high esteem, Nitish changed his views in the wake of the 2002 Gujarat riots, even going so far as to end his 17-year alliance with the NDA after it chose Modi to lead its charge in the 2014 general elections and then becoming a bitter critic in the prime READ MORE

Breaking: Nitish Kumar quits as the chief minister of Bihar

Amid differences with alliance partner Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Nitish Kumar on Wednesday resigned as the chief minister of Bihar, citing inability to work because of the strains within the coalition.

“I have resigned for the sake of Bihar. Given the changing circumstances in the state, it has become impossible for the alliance to work. I never demanded that anyone in the government should quit. But if there have been allegations, it is imperative for the person concerned to make a statement and come out clean,” Kumar said.

The development follows the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad’s firm stand earlier in the day that his son and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav would not resign.

Prasad’s RJD is in the government in the state in alliance with Kumar’s JD(U) and the Congress Party. After the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) recently lodged a first information report (FIR) against Tejashwi Yadav in the land-for-hotels case, there had been demands for read more