The Congress will contest the Bihar assembly election as part of the Opposition bloc INDIA, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi said at the party’s office in Patna today.

Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a member of the Opposition bloc, had said the INDIA grouping was meant to focus only on Lok Sabha elections.

“BJP and RSS have to be defeated in Bihar. We will defeat them by standing united with the bloc INDIA,” Rahul Gandhi said. “You are the lions and tigers of the Congress. Get ready to fight,” he told party workers.

The Bihar assembly election will be held this year.

Tejashwi Yadav, who in today’s RJD executive meeting was authorised to take big decisions along with his father Lalu Yadav, has not yet spoken on Rahul Gandhi’s comments that the Congress would fight the Bihar election with the INDIA bloc.

The RJD will amend its party constitution to give the right to Tejashwi Yadav to change the party name or symbol. The amendment will be presented in the upcoming state council meeting.

Rahul Gandhi later today went to Lalu Yadav’s Patna home and met his family.

Attacking the Nitish Kumar government, the Congress MP said the education system in Bihar has been “completely sold out”, depriving young people of the opportunity to secure jobs.

“Youth cannot get employment in Bihar. Inflation is skyrocketing, and poor people are being crushed,” he said, signaling a focus on addressing economic and social challenges.

Nitish Kumar leads a coalition government in Bihar with the Janata Dal (United) and the BJP being the key constituents.

Rahul Gandhi also met a delegation of aspirants who have been protesting against alleged irregularities in the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) exams. The delegation asked him to visit Gardani Bagh where several aspirants have been on a round-the-clock protest seeking cancellation of the Combined Competitive Exam held last month.

“We urged Rahul Gandhi to visit Gardani Bagh which is our ‘dharmabhoomi’ and ‘karmabhoomi’. He said he will take some time off. As the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, he is known to the entire nation and his support means a lot to us,” Suman Saurabh, a student from Sitamarhi, told news agency PTI.

US immigration authorities will carry out mass arrests of undocumented immigrants across the country on Tuesday, a top border official in the incoming administration of Donald Trump has said.

The move would be among the first by Republican Trump, who returns to the White House on Monday, to uphold a campaign pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants from the United States.

The remarks on Friday by Trump’s incoming “border czar” Tom Homan to Fox News came in response to reports in the Wall Street Journal and other US outlets that Trump’s new administration planned to carry out an “immigration raid” in Chicago beginning Tuesday.

“There’s going to be a big raid across the country. Chicago is just one of many places,” said Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who oversaw a policy that separated migrant parents and children at the border under the first Trump administration.

“On Tuesday, ICE is finally going to go out and do their job. We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE and let them go arrest criminal aliens,” he said in the interview.

“What we’re telling ICE, you’re going to enforce the immigration law without apology. You’re going to concentrate on the worst first, public safety threats first, but no one is off the table. If they’re in the country illegally, they got a problem,” Homan added.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the “large-scale immigration raid” in Chicago was expected to start on Tuesday, a day after Trump’s inauguration, would “last all week” and would involve 100 to 200 ICE officers, citing four unnamed people familiar with the operation’s planning.

Don Terry, a Chicago police spokesman, told the New York Times that the department would not “intervene or interfere with any other government agencies performing their duties.”

But he said the department “does not document immigration status” and “will not share information with federal immigration authorities.”

Midwestern Chicago is one of several Democrat-led US cities that have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for migrants — meaning they will not be arrested solely for not having legal immigrant status.

A Trump representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A 42-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, starting Sunday, aims to halt Gaza’s conflict. The deal includes a significant prisoner-hostage exchange. Israel will release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in return for 33 Israeli hostages. Mediators will monitor compliance with the ceasefire terms, with hopes for long-term peace.