Taking potshots at the Bharatiya Janata Party, some opposition leaders also wondered if Goel resigned to contest the Lok Sabha polls on its ticket like former Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay.
Mulayam said his son had promised to leave the post of party president after staying at the helm for three months, but he did not do so.
According to insiders, their lack of enthusiasm is showing on the ground. There is nothing to suggest that their enthusiasm will return in the final four phases of polling, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
'Laluji is like my father and I am like his son.'
The ruling SP declared the candidates for nine assembly seats besides changing the candidates of 14 constituencies ahead of the 2017 UP polls.
He came to power with a huge mandate in 2012, but Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has now forfeited the voters' trust.
Home to several Yadav family bastions, Phase III of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections is especially crucial for the Samajwadi Party.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday said the National Population Register and the National Register of Citizens were against the poor people and minorities of the country, while asserting that he will not fill up the NPR form. Addressing a press conference at the Samajwadi Party headquarters, he said, "Be it the NPR or the NRC, these are against the poor people, minorities and Muslims of the country."
The notable names in the BJP's first list include Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Hema Malini from Mathura, Ajay Mishra Teni from Kheri, Smriti Irani from Amethi, Lallu Singh from Faizabad (Ayodhya) and Mahendra Nath Pandey from Chandauli among others.
The police on Wednesday detained the father and uncle of the accused. The other accused, Sajid's brother Javed, is absconding, the police said.
People had also started gathering at Mukhtar Ansari's residence in Ghazipur and there was a large deployment of security personnel around the house.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
The sources said the Congress is the binding force for the opposition bloc and the stronger the Congress emerges the better for the alliance.
The June 23 meeting of opposition parties, called by Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar, will see anti-BJP players chalk out a strategy for the Lok Sabha polls.
Kumar also asserted that his efforts should reap benefits for the younger generation, "for people like (his deputy) Tejashwi Yadav".
Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav and warring uncle Shivpal were conspicuous in their absence.
With the assembly poll results in three states being a disappointment for the Congress, some rumblings have begun among the constituents of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) ahead of their meeting on December 6, with many leaders alleging that the grand old party ignored others, but was unable to win elections on its own.
Harping on putting up a united front, the Congress alleged that democracy is being "mercilessly murdered" and MPs who raise people's issues are suspended from the House.
A voter turnout of 60.19 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in 93 constituencies spread over 11 states and Union Territories on Tuesday with sporadic incidents of violence in West Bengal.
Prayers were performed in a cellar of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi on Wednesday night following court orders allowing the resumption of a practice said to have been discontinued three decades back, Kashi Vishwanath temple trust president said.
This is the first full-scale review of VIP protectees by the Union home ministry after the Modi 2.0 government took charge.
"The government is afraid of oath ceremony of a student leader and is stopping me at the airport to prevent me from visiting Allahabad," the SP chief claimed.
Soon after getting formally installed as Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav has got down to giving shape to his core team of bureaucrats, many of whom were known to have been loyalists of his father and Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The war in Samajwadi Party was far from over on Sunday with a defiant Ram Gopal Yadav declaring Akhilesh Yadav as party president at the national convention in Lucknow which was declared as "unconstitutional" by supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Discarded Indian pacer Praveen Kumar has joined Samajwadi Party on Sunday ahead of the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. Kumar, who has represented India in six Test matches and 68 ODIs, said that he met UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and took the decision to join his party. "I have met CM and decided to join the party. I will do whatever is possible for the party," Kumar told reporters after meeting the CM, who is also state president of SP.
Party sources said the UP CM was "upset" over sacking on Friday of his two close aides -- Sunil Yadav alias Sajan and Anand Bhadauria.
If there is one lesson that should be heard by every political party it is that both candidates and campaigners need something more than a famous surname to push them over the winning line. T V R Shenoy lists the lessons of Election 2012.
Amid the raging feud in Mulayam Singh Yadav's family, Samajwadi Party leader Ramgopal Yadav on Thursday said the leadership had committed a "mistake" by removing Akhilesh Yadav as party's UP president and that "differences" had arisen due to some "misunderstanding".
Asthana was sent on a forced leave after the CBI registered a case of corruption against him. His plea to quash the FIR was rejected by the Delhi high court.
Besides Yadav, the CBI is likely to question Gayatri Prajapati, who was arrested in 2017 following a complaint of rape by a woman residing in Chitrakoot.
The Super 30 initiative took shape six years ago as an experiment. Today, it has exceeded all expectations.
Three MLAs of Uttar Pradesh's ruling Samajwadi Party, including Mahendra Singh who was arrested from a dance bar in Goa, were suspended from party membership for their alleged involvement in anti-party activites.
'He should not come to Kerala and fight against the CPI which is an integral part of the INDIA alliance'
Through the yatra the UP CM would try to send the message that he was in the driver's seat, notwithstanding all the hue and cry within the party.
Udayveer Singh, a Samajwadi Party MLC and one of the closest aides of Akhilesh Yadav, was on Saturday expelled from the party for "undignified" conduct days after he wrote to SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav suggesting him to elevate the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister as the party's national president.
'Kejriwal could have easily deputed someone to step in as chief minister, but being the authoritative and self-centered personality that he is, he chose not to do it.' 'If the AAP loses Delhi, where it has a huge majority, the only one to blame would be Kejriwal,' asserts Ramesh Menon.
Ahead of the day-long Opposition meeting on Friday, Samvad Bhavan, Rajkiye Atithisala and Sadaquat Ashram have got a facelift.
The announcements were made as per the compromise formula worked out by SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav who asserted that "There can be no division in the party."
Hitting out at the SP-led Uttar Pradesh government, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Friday said the episode is a 'stark reminder of deteriorating law and order situation in the state'.
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