It was curtains down on the high-decibel campaigning for the fourth phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls as sparring among political rivals intensified during the last-minute canvassing on Monday.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is headed for a big win in the Uttar Pradesh legislative council polls, bagging Barabanki and Ayodhya and leading in several other places. But it lost Varanasi to an Independent candidate.
In a letter to the prime minister, the MP from Pilibhit in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh also asked him to take action against Union minister Ajay Kumar Mishra 'Teni' for the violence in Lakhmipur Kheri without taking his name.
Eleven deaths have been reported in Saharanpur followed by 10 in Meerut, six in Agra, four in Mainpuri, three each in Muzaffarnagar and Kasganj, two each in Amroha, Bareilly, Baghpat and Bulandshahr and one each in Kanpur Dehat, Mathura, Ghaziabad, Hapur, Rae Bareli, Jalaun, Jaunpur, Pratapgarh, Banda, Firozabad, Amethi, Kanpur and Pilibhit, they said.
Varun Gandhi adds that communists always joke with him and say he is a "communist in the BJP".
'Over-eating.' 'Haan bhook lagi ho to over-eating ho hi jaati hai, na?' 'I came to Mumbai because I wanted to act and if a role sounded good, I signed on.' 'Ab bahut ho gaya hai.' 'I don't have to work like that anymore.'
'In the last decade, Parliamentarians had sought for an increase of 400 per cent for their compensation.' 'Have we really earned this massive increment?'
The panchayat polls or those for district panchayat chiefs are not held on a party symbol but candidates enjoy the tacit support of various parties.
Fadnavis said preliminary reports made available to him stated that the tigress was shot after she attacked the forest staff trying to tranquilise her.
The Pilibhit administration, after receiving the report from Forensic Science Laboratory in Chandigarh on the CDs of Varun's alleged inflammatory speeches that Varun's voice was not tampered with, had sought permission from the government to file the chargesheet against the BJP MP, sources said.
A court in Pilibhit has framed charges against Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament Varun Gandhi for his "provocative" speech during the campaigning preceding the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. Varun was booked under various sections of Indian Penal Code and the People's Representative Act in 2009 -- for promoting enmity and disturbing harmony -- through provocative speeches in Pilibhit.
Largest in area among the 75 UP districts, Lakhimpur Kheri, known for sugarcane cultivation, with nine sugar mills in the district, is home to three or four lakh Sikhs.
Krishna chants gained more currency when Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav invoked the deity.
A charge sheet has been filed in a local court in neighbouring Pilibhit district against Bharatiya Janata Party MP Varun Gandhi and 12 others in connection with a 2009 case of alleged attack on a police team.
Hitting out at actor Kangana Ranaut for describing India's Independence in 1947 as bheek or alms, the Congress on Thursday said her remarks amounted to 'treason' and demanded the government take back the Padma Shri bestowed on her recently as she has 'insulted' the country's Independence movement.
She was attending a meeting on Friday in Baheri area of the district which falls in her constituency Pilibhit.
The third phase of Lok Sabha elections scheduled for Tuesday will see the maximum number of seats going to the polls in a single phase -- 117 across 15 states and Union Territories. It will also be a test for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which will aim to defend the maximum number of seats at 62. This time the BJP will be tested in its bastion Gujarat -- where polling will be held for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state -- apart from Karanataka, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, where the party had done well in 2014. Here are some of the big political leaders' who await their fate on Tuesday.
Ashish Mishra, son of Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra, was produced before a court here late on Saturday night, which sent him to 14-day judicial custody in connection with the October 3 Lakhimpur violence.
'Everybody knows Mayawati sells party tickets and even her party members take pride in telling this'
'...if elections were to be held today.' 'The problem is Akhilesh is not very aggressive.' 'Had he started his campaign aggressively six months ago, the picture in UP would have been very different.'
Haider, a journalist in the electronic media, has claimed that he was attacked as he had reported stories which had not gone down well with the accused.
Having received the forensic science laboratory report on the recordings of Varun Gandhi's hate speeches during his election campaign in Pilibhit , the Uttar Pradesh police were determined to cut down any further delay in proceeding against the newly elected Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) MP in each of the three criminal cases pending against him for those speeches he delivered during his election campaign in Pilibhit parliamentary constituency at the recently concluded Lok
The Manikarnika actor, known for provocative and often inflammatory statements, was once again the centre of debate -- and ire -- with politicians across the spectrum, including Bharatiya Janata Party MP Varun Gandhi, among the host of social media users and others who reacted with outrage for her comments at an event on Wednesday evening.
The move came after the Uttar Pradesh government on July 3 gave the green signal for filing of the chargesheet.
Counting of votes began on Sunday for lakhs of panchayat seats in Uttar Pradesh, a process expected to take two days across 829 centres. There were scuffles involving the supporters of candidates in three districts and social distancing to fight the spread of coronavirus went for a toss at several places, reports said.
The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), an umbrella body of the agitating unions, is meeting on Sunday to decide on the next course of action, including on the MSP issue and the proposed daily tractor march to Parliament during the upcoming Winter Session, SKM core committee member Darshan Pal said.
'Economic issues do not matter during elections; it is the emotional connect that helps swing votes.'
The Uttar Pradesh government grappled on Monday with the aftermath of violence during a farmers protest in Lakhimpur Kheri, lodging a case against Union minister Ajay Mishra's son, promising a probe by a retired high court judge and stopping opposition leaders from reaching the trouble spot.
The Sikhs, especially in Punjab, are already angry and frustrated, cautions Shekhar Gupta.
'Why did Varun Gandhi run away from Pilibhit? He leaves the constituency which he wins by a 300,000 margin and remembers his father's constituency in the second election?' 'A person who goes by the Gandhi name would stand with the Congress. All Varun Gandhi's ancestors were with the Congress. He left the legacy a long time ago,' the Congress's Ameeta Singh, the national badminton player-turned-politician who is contesting the Sultanpur seat against Varun Gandhi, tells Swarupa Dutt/Rediff.com
Pitching for her son and Sultanpur member of Parliament, Union Minister Maneka Gandhi has said that Uttar Pradesh would have benefited had there been a Bharatiya Janata Party led government in the state with Varun Gandhi as its chief minister.
Bahujan Samaj Party Member of Parliament Shafiqur Rahman Barq, who had walked out of Lok Sabha while Vande Mataram was being played, has been dragged to court by a social activist for "showing disrespect" to the national song. Pradip Tewari, in his petition filed in the Chief Judicial Magistrate's court of Pilibhit district on Monday, has also accused Barq of passing derogatory remarks against Vande Mataram, his counsel Sant Ram Rathore said.
Bharatiya Janata Party MP Varun Gandhi was on Wednesday acquitted by a local court in Pilibhit district in connection with a hate speech case lodged against him during Lok Sabha elections in 2009.
Priyanka Gandhi's charge were the key seats of Lucknow, Amethi, Raebareli, Sultanpur, Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Phulpur, Allahabad, Barabanki, and Kushinagar.
At least 28 people have so far lost their lives in rain related incidents in Uttar Pradesh whereas a population of five lakh in some 600 villages of the state has been affected because of it.
Under the partnership, IOC's rural petrol pump outlets -- Kisan Seva Kendras -- will act as the bank's Business Correspondents, HDFC Bank said in a statement.
Mystery shrouds the death of three tigers in a row in the Terai forests of Uttar Pradesh over the past few days.
After a sustained attack on the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party over the last three days, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi on Thursday trained his guns on the Bharatiya Janata Party. Significantly, his first major attack on BJP came in parts of Pilibhit, the political turf of his first cousin and BJP member of Parliament Varun Gandhi. He accused BJP of making only "false and hollow promises" with the sole intent of serving its short-term political gains.
More than 20 months after Bhartiya Janata Party Member of Parliament Varun Gandhi spewed communal venom during his election campaign in Pilibhit, the Uttar Pradesh government on Friday gave its mandatory sanction for his prosecution.
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.
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