Amid Covid-19 protocols, here's how the monsoon session looks like.
For the post of deputy chief minister, the names of Swatantra Dev Singh, Baby Rani Maurya, Brijesh Pathak and Keshav Prasad Maurya are in talks.
The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, trouncing its main rival SP, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
RLD sources said that the party chief was "taken aback" by the SP's delay in announcing his name as the candidate for the Rajya Sabha elections.
Nishad said he will meet senior BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, in Delhi on Monday to finalise the constituencies where the party will field its candidates.
The seat sharing formula reached between the BSP and SP is not on the basis of who emerged stronger in the previous election.
The party will also leave two seats for the Apna Dal, and entered into an electoral agreement with the lesser known Jan Adhikar Party.
Adityanath has earned a new sobriquet "bulldozer baba" due to raging of properties of criminals and mafias built through illegal means.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday held deliberations with Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda amid speculation about a reshuffle in the Union cabinet, an exercise Modi has not undertaken since forming the government for a second time in May 2019.
An opinion poll has projected it is advantage Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana in the Lok Sabha elections while claiming that there is neck-and-neck race in Himachal Pradesh.
How Modi retrieves the situation and how he enlists new allies in the next two years will show if the BJP is fighting fit, report Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
'Congress and BSP are in the fray, but not in the contest.'
Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Narendra Singh Tomar, Prakash Javadekar, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Dharmendra Pradhan and Smriti Irani are also likely to join the second Modi government after being its members in its first avatar.
Mayawati said that in case of a tie-up with the Congress in the past, the party did not benefit.
'If the Opposition does make a dent, it could encourage the efforts of regional parties to come together for the larger battle in 2024 and mark the beginning of a new anti-BJP politics.'
The BJP's rediscovery of its allies, including the PM touching the feet of Parakash Singh Badal, would be interpreted as the party's efforts to keep its flock together if it falls short of the majority mark on May 23.
The BJP campaign highlighted Yogi's persona as a tough-as-nails leader and an incorruptible man with no nest to feather; Modi's charisma which was turned on full blast in the penultimate phases; Amit Shah's ground work; a well-oiled party organisation, and the RSS's back-up.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra appears to have shed the maximum sweat among top leaders for over the last 45 days in the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh assembly elections campaign.
UP now has 16 ministers, the maximum from any state, in an apparent bid to keep the Dalit and other backward class votebank content.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, for whom the temple town sharpened its Hindutva plank, is facing a challenge particularly from the Samajwadi Party in the ongoing state polls.
The SP's bid to dent the BJP's formidable social equation is playing out in a big way in the Poorvanchal or eastern region of Uttar Pradesh as the ruling party is working overtime to keep its caste equation unharmed.
While Yadav began to tour different constituencies and address public meetings to mobilise the SP rank and file, he has concurrently started the tedious process of cobbling up an alliance of smaller outfits representing a mlange of castes and sub-castes, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
He is the fourth chief minister from the saffron party to head the northern state. Before Adityanath, Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta and Rajnath Singh of the BJP had served as Uttar Pradesh chief ministers.
Ahead of the Union Cabinet expansion on Wednesday, several Union Ministers, including Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, Education Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar resigned from their posts.
The broad patterns tell us that to sweep UP, the BJP has to retain its voteshares of the past three elections. But to merely win it, the party can do so while losing some voteshare, and perhaps up to as much as 10 per cent, observes Aakar Patel.
"We got a lot of confidence from our success in Bihar, and we will continue that momentum," Owaisi told reporters after their meeting in Lucknow.
Birla, 57, has been MLA from Rajasthan thrice and MP twice.
Here are how the numbers are stack up in the lower house if the no-confidence motion takes place.
The BJP's bucket list this time includes districts such as Sultanpur, Aligarh, Firozabad, Deoband, Ghazipur, Basti and Mirzapur -- to rename a few. Virendra Singh Rawat reports.
At the meeting attended by 33 parties, the prime minister said suggestions from public representatives, especially from the Opposition, are valuable as they make the discussion rich.
'Today in Uttar Pradesh all big parties like Samajwadi Party, BJP or even Bahujan Samaj Party are out to woo smaller parties as they know the Hindu votes are getting divided.'
The two leaders also discussed the special category status promised to the southern state.
In the backdrop of the ongoing farm protests, back into public consciousness in the aftermath of the recent Lakhimpur Kheri episode, smaller parties are expected to not only enliven the election theatre, but also queer the pitch for the Opposition.
Yogi expands UP Cabinet in attempt to balance caste, regional aspirations head of the assembly polls early next year.
"Everyone is responsible for the loss. A single person cannot be blamed," Mulayamsaid
26 candidates in Amethi fray take away 60,545 votes; the difference between the victorious Smriti Irani and Rahul Gandhi is 55,120 votes.
That would be three more seats than what the BJP won in 2014.
The Bahujan Samaj Party will not contest by-elections for 12 seats in Uttar Pradesh, which would fall vacant due to the legislators being elected as members of Parliament, party supremo Mayawati said on Friday.
Bablu, currently in Bareilly jail, was granted a parole of two hours by the court for the release function.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar briefed the leaders on the latest situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban captured power there last week.
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