Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Ghulam Nabi Azad's resignation from the Congress on Friday marked the most high-profile exit of one of the "Group of 23" (G-23) leaders, who had written to party chief Sonia Gandhi two years ago for a "collective and inclusive leadership" in the organisation, exposing the faultlines in the grand old party.
The first of the two-phase urban local body polls in Uttar Pradesh will take place on Thursday, a major poll battle in the politically crucial state ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections.
However, the RLD leader gave a terse response. 'Invite those +700 farmer families which you have destroyed, not me,' he tweeted in Hindi.
Opposition parties on Sunday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party after Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar and eight others were inducted into the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, saying the ruling party's 'washing machine' has resumed its operation to clean tainted leaders and it was an 'ED-facilitated power grab'.
Our political history tells us this has never worked. A united Opposition does work in some specific, limited situations, especially in the states. But never as some brilliant pan-national collection of diverse interests with no ideological or political core, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Among the suspended members, six are from the Congress, two each from the TMC and Shiv Sena and one each from the CPM and the CPI.
Singh was arrested by Uttar Pradesh special task force team from a house in Chinni Mill locality.
A Dalit man allegedly faced casteist slurs, was spat upon and beaten up when he went to a home in Aashiyana locality in Lucknow to deliver a food order, the police said on Monday.
Joint Director Ramnish Geer, who led the probe in cases like housing scam allegedly involving the then Union minister Sheila Kaul, Naval war room leak case, kidnapping of an NRI businessman and his release besides other high profile anti-corruption cases, received the coveted President's Police Medal for Distinguished Service.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday over the Muzaffarnagar riots, accusing it of vitiating the atmosphere ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, and promised stern action against all those found guilty.
Consolidating its position, the Bharatiya Janata Party wrested high-profile Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh from the Samajwadi Party and won three assembly seats, including that of Chief Minister Manik Saha, in Tripura in by-election results announced on Sunday.
Reacting to the development, Samajwadi Party leader Sanjay Lathar, who served as the Leader of Opposition in the legislative council before Yadav, said the leader of the second-largest party in the House gets the post.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com tracks Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi's project-launching spree with just about three months to go for the assembly election in India's most populous state.
Several prominent opposition leaders including Nationalist Congress Party's Sharad Pawar, Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar and National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah will share the dais at a rally being organised by Indian National Lok Dal in Haryana's Fatehabad on Sunday.
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.
'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.'
Adityanath on the occasion praised the Centre's 'Agnipath' scheme and highlighted its benefits.
SP and SBSP leaders had shared the dais in Mau on Wednesday and announced that they would together trounce the BJP in the 2022 elections.
Parliament's Budget session has been a washout since the beginning of its second part on March 13, with the BJP demanding an apology from Gandhi.
While the Samajwadi Party largely banks on its Muslim-Yadav support base, the Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to counter it with the Modi-Yogi combo in the state assembly polls.
Several opposition MPs have petitioned President Droupadi Murmu for immediate action over social media trolling of Chief Justice of India Justice D Y Chandrachud while he was deliberating on a case related to the Governor's role in Maharashtra during the last government formation.
Saini said he had resigned from Yogi Adiyanth government because 'for five years Dalits, backward classes were suppressed, their voices were suppressed'.
After sharing the dais with SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav earlier this month, former party leader Amar Singh on Monday had a closed door meeting with the national president again at his residence.
Two months after a 22-year-old Dalit woman went missing from Unnao, her decomposed body was recovered from a vacant plot near an ashram constructed by a former minister in Samajwadi Party government Fateh Bahadur Singh, police said on Friday.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi also decided to convene a 'Chintan Shivir', a brainstorming session from May 13-15 in Udaipur.
There is a strong possibility of opposition parties coming together to fight the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said on Monday, stressing that he has had good talks with them and many will join hands gradually.
Congress veteran Kapil Sibal had on Wednesday filed his nomination as an SP-backed Independent candidate for the Rajya Sabha polls.
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.
A clerical error compounded by callousness of the higher bureaucracy has raised a storm over the already vexed Ayodhya issue.
The 80-year-old leader is admitted to the Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon.
Sources in various parties suggest that two lakh votes of the Patel community, locally known as OBC kurmi, for which mother-daughter led Apna Dal (S) and Apna Dal (K) are competing and over one lakh of OBC Rajbhars would be crucial in deciding the outcome of the assembly seats in Varanasi.
Samajwadi Party founder and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's younger daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav, who contributed Rs 11 lakh to the Ram Temple fund, has refused to 'take responsibility for her family's past actions'.
The municipal house of Delhi failed to elect a mayor for the third time in a month after ruckus erupted over the nominated members being allowed to vote in the election to the post.
The Uttar Pradesh Police is mulling over slapping the stringent National Security Act (NSA) against the six people arrested for the rape and murder of two Dalit sisters in the state's Lakhimpur Kheri.
The nodal officer for EVMs in Varanasi, a returning officer (RO) in Sonbhadra district and an additional election officer in Bareilly district have been pulled out from election duties, a day ahead of the counting of votes in UP.
In Delhi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah assessed the situation in Joshimath and steps taken to ameliorate people's hardship at a meeting attended by Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, R K Singh, Bhupendra Yadav and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and top officials.
Addressing a joint press conference after a meeting of 26 opposition parties in Bengaluru, Kharge said, "This was a very important meeting to save democracy and the Constitution in the interest of the people of the country."
"If you look at newspapers, you will see that Modi Ji was the first to greet Yogij Ji (on birthday). In fact, we are of the view that Yogi ji is the most competent implement to fulfil the dreams of Modijee," he said.
Gandhi is scheduled to visit Amethi from October 4-6.
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