Amid the political push and pull, the Centre's decision to allow sugar exports and remove the 50 per cent duty on molasses exports has rekindled hope in the industry that more relief may follow.
The BJP got the benefit of a split in Muslim votes in some seats of western UP, and its candidates registered wins from Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, Meerut, Bulandshahr, Baghpat and Aligarh Lok Sabha seats.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has decided to cut short his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Uttar Pradesh by skipping western part of the state and saving five days, a party leader said on Monday while citing board exams.
A fast track court in Muzaffarnagar, India, has acquitted 16 people due to lack of evidence in connection with the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case. The prosecution failed to prove its case against the accused, who were charged with murder and attempted murder. The riots, which occurred in August and September 2013, resulted in the deaths of over 60 people and displaced more than 40,000 in Muzaffarnagar and neighboring areas.
Uttar Pradesh Women Welfare Minister Baby Rani Maurya has proposed renaming the Mughal-era Shahjahan Garden in Agra after the Malwa Kingdom queen Ahilyabai Holkar, citing her contributions to women's empowerment. The proposal has sparked debate, with opposition parties criticizing it as a tactic to divert attention from pressing issues. The UP government has already renamed Allahabad as Prayagraj and Faizabad as Ayodhya.
Ambedkar argued that smaller states would allow citizens to have more control over public spending and governance.
Even as Priyanka is gaining traction among the electorate and the media, her counterpart for the western UP region, Jyotiraditya Scindia, has been low key and perceptibly missing from the 'heat and dust' of elections in UP, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's Uttar Pradesh vice president Arvind Kumar Sharma will be reaching out to residents of western UP with public meetings in Noida, Greater Noida and Bulandshahr from Friday.
'BSP will remain a player, but only a marginal player, as long as the BJP is extremely dominant in North India politics.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party faces an uphill task of repeating its performance of the last assembly election of winning 53 out of 58 constituencies in western Uttar Pradesh where polling will be held in the first phase on February 10.
BJP leaders from a dominant farming community in Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh held separate meetings on Wednesday to chalk up an outreach to members of the Jat community and caste councils (khaps) to counter the narrative against the Centre's three farm laws.
While the RLD has fought the just-concluded polls in tie up with the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party, the office-bearers of the BKU, which was part of the anti-farm laws protest against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre, insists it is an 'apolitical' group.
73 constituencies will vote on Saturday.
The BJP, which romped to power in 2019 on the back of an unequivocal mandate from UP, winning 62 of its 80 seats, was cut to size this time and had to be content with only 33 seats.
The Rajputs here held a 'mahapanchayat' and decided to boycott the Bharatiya Janata Party candidates in Muzaffarnagar, Kairana and Saharanpur Lok Sabha constituencies for allegedly neglecting the community while distributing party tickets, a leader said on Wednesday.
These are the top buyers of the scrapped electoral bonds, the data for which was released by the Election Commission on Thursday.
'Politics is about caste in Eastern UP and religion in Western UP.' Rediff.com's Archana Masih gets a sense of the fault lines in this election's most volatile region -- that can make or break the future of political parties in UP.
For the party's traditional vote bank -- traders -- demonetisation was a 'political betrayal.'
'In Western UP, last time a lot of Dalits voted for the BJP.' 'This time, there is a rethink among Dalits about the extent of their support for the BJP.'
Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited was the top donor to the Bharatiya Janata Party at Rs 584 crore and the Bharat Rashtra Samiti at Rs 195 crore.
The BSP has not entered into any alliances and has also been keen to shed the tag of being a 'B-team' of the BJP.
Firozabad has been the worst hit district, with nearly 50 casualties. It has also gripped Agra, Mathura, Mainpuri, Etawah and Kasganj in the past few days.
While conditions have improved over the last decade in western UP, there are still unfulfilled needs.
Noida was conceived in the 1970s and went on to transform the Western UP's landscape for good. Akin to the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (Noida), the Yogi Adityanath government has instituted the Bundelkhand Industrial Development Authority (BIDA) with its epicentre in Jhansi.
Future Gaming and Hotel Services whose director is the lottery magnate Santiago Martin is the top purchaser of electoral bonds having purchased bonds worth Rs 1,368, according to data uploaded by the Election Commission of India on its website on Thursday.
In the past five years, UP's Opposition remained passive and defensive against the BJP, a trend that does not augur well for the impending battle.
The flood situation worsened further in the western districts of Uttar Pradesh with the death of four more persons in rain related incidents even as around 177 villages of Bareilly, Badaun, Pilibhit and Shahajanpur were inundated.
With a rise in the clout of Muslims in western Uttar Pradesh, fearful Hindus are being radicalised.
Chief Minister Mayawati conducted an aerial survey of the flood-affected areas after which western Uttar Pradesh was declared a disaster-hit zone. The chief minister also sought a flood relief package of Rs 2000 crore from the Centre.
'You are one of the drops that make that ocean, but when you leave it makes no difference to the ocean.'
If Saudi Arabia, with just two Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, can create a huge tourism-based ecosystem beyond oil, Ayodhya is sure to become the world's hottest religious tourism site in less than a decade, predicts R Jagannathan.
The Hindu-right group carried out its demonstration despite the imposition of CrPC Section 144 in the city.
According to the police, a Special Task Force team retaliated when the gangster, recently released from prison on bail, opened fire at them after being cornered. His car had crashed into a pole.
The BJP has dropped C T Ravi, a leader from Karnataka, Dilip Saikia, a Lok Sabha MP from Assam, as its general secretaries, and Vinod Sonkar, Harish Dwivedi, both Lok Sabha MPs from Uttar Pradesh, and Sunil Deodhar as secretaries.
The letter was received two days ago and warns of bombs in trains.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday appointed Uttar Pradesh cabinet minister Bhupendra Chaudhary as the party's chief in the state.
In UP and Bengal, it is willing to sacrifice its interests to stop the BJP and would work towards ensuring the BJP did not win incremental seats in Odisha and Telangana.
Both the BJP and Congress understand that coalitions and alliances are not just about numbers, but have symbolic value.
The situation was tense but under control on Tuesday in parts of western Uttar Pradesh hit by farmers' unrest over land acquisition as police released sketches of 24 troublemakers who incited violence in Agra and maintained a strict vigil.
Singh said the lumpy skin disease has spread to animals in 14 states of the country and it is "fatal to animals like coronavirus" is to human.
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