Adityanath has earned a new sobriquet "bulldozer baba" due to raging of properties of criminals and mafias built through illegal means.
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.
There is also a buzz about Shah joining the government. About 60 ministers may take oath.
Polling across 55 assembly constituencies assembly in nine districts got off to sluggish start at 7 am due to the cold and fog at several places.
As many as 586 candidates are in the fray in this phase with the seats spread across Saharanpur, Bijnor, Moradabad, Sambhal, Rampur, Amroha, Budaun, Bareilly and Shahjahanpur.
The party also declared sitting MP Praveen Nishad as its candidate from Sant Kabir Nagar
According the latest CNN-IBN-CSDS-Lokniti post poll survey, the National Democratic Alliance is projected to win 274 to 286 seats, and the Bharatiya Janata Party is projected to win 230 to 242 seats on its own, it best ever poll tally.
The consolidation of the Muslim vote behind Lalu Yadav in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh may have forced Modi to spin Priyanka Gandhi's neech rajniti statement as a insult to his OBC status, says Dharmendra Singh.
'Congress and BSP are in the fray, but not in the contest.'
The names of a host of leaders, including some sitting MPs are doing the rounds in political circles.
Mayawati appeared to be opting for a wait-and watch-policy till the Lok Sabha election results are announced on May 23.
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.
Legislators from Bahujan Samaj Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal, Apna Dal jumped into the Well of the House with placards and banners even before the assembly proceedings started.
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.
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.
Though there was no official word from both the parties, the sources claimed that two Uttar Pradesh-based political outfits will contest 37 Lok Sabha seats each.
The bill seeks to provide Indian citizenship to non-Muslims from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Dharmendra Kumar Singh explains the importance of getting 28 percent of the vote in Uttar Pradesh, which is witnessing a five-cornered contest.
Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister and former state BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya had also dropped a hint in a recent tweet, saying Yaduvanshi (Yadavs), Ravidasiyo (Jatavs) and Pasmanda Muslims will be brought closer to the BJP so that the lotus 'blossoms' in every booth in UP.
As the Prime Minister hit the campaign trail in his Lok Sabha constituency, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Varanasi on Saturday charged the administration with "selectively" pulling down its posters in the name of implementing the poll code.
Government on Thursday claimed that it had Congress "cornered" on the penultimate day of the Monsoon Session of the Parliament.
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.
That day is not very far when farmers will get double their present income, says PM.
In UP, the BJP focused carefully on the sub-caste divisions within the Dalits and also gave a large number of tickets to SC candidates from sub-castes.
Rattled by Samajwadi Party's rout in Lok Sabha polls, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday sacked 36 leaders having status of minister of state in his government but ruled out his resignation.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday held a meeting with the party's unsuccessful Lok Sabha nominees to find out the cause of its dismal performance in Uttar Pradesh, where it bagged only five of 80 seats.
Sheela Bhatt visits a large urban basti a mere 20-minute drive from the prime minister's home to discover a story of grim struggle in the time of lockdown.
Could a grand alliance between the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress -- built along the lines of the successful Bihar mahagatbandhan of 2015 -- have changed the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh election?
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.
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.
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.
The reshuffle had politics at its heart, so the biggest complement of new ministers, both Cabinet rank and below, came from UP, which will see assembly elections in a few months.
The Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal MPs, including his daughter Misa Bharti and Manoj Jha, also staged a protest at Mahatma Gandhi's statue inside the Parliament complex and contended that despite being the chief opposition party in Bihar and the single largest party in the Assembly, it was not invited.
Yogi expands UP Cabinet in attempt to balance caste, regional aspirations head of the assembly polls early next year.
Counting of votes will be held on Thursday for 51 assembly seats and two Lok Sabha constituencies spread across 18 states where by-elections were held two days ago.
With Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections, results for 51 assembly and two Lok Sabha bypolls spread across 18 states were declared on Thursday. Here are state-wise results of the bypolls.
Doubts are being raised in the Bharatiya Janata Party about its fate in the prestigious constituencies of Lucknow (East) and Noida by-poll, where the voting percentage was as low as 34 and 32 respectively.
Mayawati added that the BSP's relationship with the SP is never going to end and she will try to ensure that their relationship stays intact.
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.
