The opposition parties on Sunday slammed the move to hire public servants through lateral entry, claiming it will snatch reservations from SCs, STs and OBCs, but the Bharatiya Janata Party hit back stating the National Democratic Alliance government was bringing transparency to this mode of recruitment started by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.
The best-case scenario is that the BJP will top out at around 50 seats in UP -- a drop of 12 from the 62 it had won in 2019. Taken in tandem with Maharashtra and Karnataka, this is what is likely to put paid to the BJP's ambitions of a third term for Modi, argues Prem Panicker.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh to the kin of each of the deceased and Rs 50,000 to the injured.
'Although Rahul's energy and commitment are to be acknowledged, there is no alternative to good party organisation at the grassroots, and this the Congress lacks. If they set their organisational house in order, combined with an enlightened leadership, the Congress will go far in many states.'
The Samajwadi Party on Monday struck a defiant note on the issue of suspension of IAS officer Durga Sakhti Nagpal, saying officials are punished whenever they do something wrong and the Centre can withdraw IAS officers from the state.
Rumours of a live power line having snapped triggered the stampede. The injured have been rushed to a local hospital, a BSP spokesperson said.
The electoral battle in Varanasi, according to locals and political experts, is not about whether the PM will win for a third successive occasion, but if he will increase his share of the votes polled and his win margin.
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.
"The BJP tried every trick to defeat the BSP candidate and indulged in malpractices," the BSP supremo alleged.
Nath, a nine-time MP from Chhindwara seat and currently president of state Congress unit, will take oath at a grand function to be held at Jamboree Maidan in BHEL area instead of Lal Parade Ground as announced earlier.
The two parties named the seats distributed among them in a statement signed by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.
Leaders of several like-minded opposition parties are likely to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Karnataka chief minister-designate Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar on Saturday in Bengaluru.
'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.'
It is, now, more or less certain that in the ongoing election the SP is emerging as the main challenger to Mayawati's power in Lucknow. The combination of an experienced Mulayam Singh Yadav and his young, untested son Akhilesh Yadav is working, reports Sheela Bhatt from Lucknow
The New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (NOIDA) will soon have to return a huge chunk of prime land along the UP-Delhi border, to Uttar Pradesh irrigation department from which it was transferred to NOIDA during the previous Bahujan Samaj Party regime headed by Mayawati.
What has come in the way were the rich heritage monuments - Taj Mahal to top it all, together with the Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Sunday cautioned voters that neither an Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance nor a united SP can check Bharatiya Janata Party and that only her party would render a crushing blow to Modi government by defeating the saffron party in Uttar Pradesh so that it does not take "immature" steps like the note ban.
'If Muslims who are 20 percent of UP's population feel the SP has no future they will go with the BSP. Even if 10 percent Muslim vote goes to the BSP every equation will change.'
As questions remained whether the killing of a police officer in which Raja Bhaiya has been booked was planned, a postmortem showed the victim was beaten up before being shot dead.
The Uttar Pradesh government on Friday decided to withdraw a proposed amendment bill which was intended to give immunity to panchayat heads from no-confidence motion for two years and also scrap the post of cabinet secretary.
He said it's an alliance between two families, one of which 'looted' the country and the other UP.
Naidu met Congress president Rahul Gandhi and discussed with him the possibilities of all opposition parties uniting and forging a joint opposition alliance.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday claimed that the Congress and Samajwadi Party will run a bulldozer over the Ram temple if elected to power, and asked them to take 'tuition' from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath 'where to run bulldozers'.
The body of the 22-year-old woman, who had gone missing two months ago, was recovered from a vacant plot near an ashram built by Fateh Bahadur Singh, a minister in the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government, police had said on Friday.
'The unusual aspect of this election is that this time there is a triangular fight.' 'Previously, the fight used to be between two parties.'
Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi also joined Bharat Jodo Yatra in Seelampur.
Conscious that he will have to rely on the bureaucracy to deliver, Adityanath is changing the faces and rejiging the administration.
Even as the Akhilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh sits pretty over large scale irregularities committed by the Mayawati government in cash-rich Noida and Greater Noida, the Congress party has demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the allotment of prime commercial and group housing land in that neighbourhood of Delhi.
Realising that his first appeal to his cabinet colleagues for voluntary declaration of their assets had fallen on deaf ears, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has now issued a code of conduct for all his ministers. He has urged them not to accept any gift worth more than Rs 5,000.
Fifty-seven-year old Chitra Swaroop made history in Uttar Pradesh after she was appointed the first ever engineer-in-chief of the state's public works department by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.
She joined the SP the day Rajnath Singh filed his nomination papers, hoping to retain the seat he won in 2014.
Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Amar Singh on Tuesday shared the dais with Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav for the first time in four years after bitter parting of ways with the party, even as he insisted that political connotation should not be attached to this gesture.
The meeting of opposition parties has been called by Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar to chalk out a joint strategy to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Mukhtar Ansari's Quami Ekta Dal's merger with the Samajwadi Party last year had triggered turmoil in that party.
The meeting at SP headquarters was attended by Akhilesh, his uncle Shivpal Yadav, senior leader Azam Khan and party office bearers.
People had also started gathering at Mukhtar Ansari's residence in Ghazipur and there was a large deployment of security personnel around the house.
Umesh Pal's family thanked Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the police.
Many political watchers give their prediction quite confidently of a coalition government. But nobody's certain on the nature of the coalition.
Yogi Adityanath, who has been declared BJP candidate from Gorakhpur will be the second leader to contest from the district as a chief minister after Tribhuvan Narayan Singh, who lost in 1971.
As the Opposition on Wednesday held its first meeting on the presidential election, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice for the top constitutional post with senior party leader Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Naveen Patnaik, sources said.
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