"Prime Minister Modi is not a leader, he is an actor. It would have been better if Amitabh Bachchan was made the prime minister," she said at an election meeting at the end of her roadshow in Mirzapur.
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.
'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.'
The ruling party seems in far better shape than the Congress, which is yet to finalise seat-sharing agreements in several states.
However, Bajpai ruled out any possibility of an epic battle in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections between Sonia Gandhi and Arun Jaitley.
"You don't change party leadership for losses in one or two elections. The leadership is ideology. They make teams. Our team failed there (in UP)," he said.
Police said the minister's cavalcade was passing Colonelganj area on Saturday. The boy was knocked down by one of the vehicles in the fleet and died on way to hospital.
Results coming out of Lok Sabha polls show that parties like Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party and Tamil Nadu's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam managed to corner a large number of votes but failed to convert them into seats, while parties with lesser vote share have got seats to show in their kitty.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar briefed the leaders on the latest situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban captured power there last week.
Says Make in India could only succeed with Make in UP, given large sized population and market the state offers
A member of the 1983 cricket World Cup-winning squad, Azad was suspended from the Bharatiya Janata Party for openly targeting the then Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over alleged irregularities and corruption in the Delhi and District Cricket Association in December 2015. He joined the Congress in 2018.
Tuesday's exercise underlines Bharatiya Janata Party's attempts at wooing Dalits and OBCs, whose votes would be crucial to its fortunes in key states like UP and Gujarat.
Cook your meat simply and don't overdo the spices. A little extra ghee works miracles.
Mayawati said that the BSP and the SP would not ally with the Congress party in the upcoming elections.
Even as the BJP dithers over what it needs to do, the Congress has stolen a lead by projecting its chief ministerial candidate -- Priyanka Vadra nee Gandhi, says Nazarwala, the man who called the 2012 UP assembly elections right.
From a comedian to Punjab chief minister, Bhagwant Mann has seen a phenomenal rise in a political career of just over a decade.
Modi's NDA is good enough to give a psychological boost to the once 'untouchable' BJP and Modi but if the NDA doesn't get a majority on its own, then walking the last mile will be the greatest challenge of this election for Modi, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Many exit polls predicted that SP-BSP alliance in Uttar Pradesh is likely to trump the BJP in the country's politically most crucial state.
Terming the incident as serious, UP CM Yogi Adityanath has ordered a probe.
At 35 years, April 1981 born Anupriya Patel, who comes from electorally crucial Uttar Pradesh, is the youngest face to be inducted in the Modi government.
The turnout for these seats was 57.92 per cent in the last assembly polls in 2012.
Speaker Om Birla he will hold a meeting with leaders of all parties and then take a decision.
The seat-share progression should worry the BJP. From the previous assembly polls of 2017, through the assembly segments in its favour in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and now in 2022, the BJP's seat-share has come down from a high 312 to 275 to 255. N Sathiya Moorthy reads the political tea leaves after the UP and Punjab election verdicts.
The National Democratic Alliance, led by strong man Narendra Modi secured a whopping 352 of 542 seats, making it evident that his message of muscular nationalism, security and Hindu pride had worked wonders.
Polling will be held in all 13 seats in Punjab and an equal number of seats in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, eight seats each in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, four in Himachal Pradesh, three in Jharkhand and the lone seat Chandigarh.
Yogi Adityanath's aura is no longer limited to Uttar Pradesh. At the age of 49, his journey to the higher echelons in the BJP has well and truly begun, predicts Sudhir Bisht.
Congress hopes to field upper caste candidates to eat into BJP voter base while SP-BSP focuses on consolidating Dalit-OBC votes in their favour.
The polling for the sixth phase on May 12 covers 6 states and one Union Territory.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav lashed out at his one-time ally, the Congress, and said that in the state the BJP is nowhere.
Mulayam laid bare his anger for the first time after the SP's defeat in the UP assembly election fought under the leadership of Akhilesh.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi quit his Vadodara Lok Sabha seat, choosing to retain Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, where the Bharatiya Janata Party recorded a landslide victory bagging 71 of the 80 seats in the recent elections.
Ahead of Cabinet formation, Narendra Modi, prime minister designate on Monday held discussions with his close aide Amit Shah and senior party leader Arun Jaitley even as newly-elected Bharatiya Janata Party members of Parliament met senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionaries at the Sangh office.
Political analysts say that with 32 per cent vote share, the BJP would still be ahead of what BSP had polled in 2007 or SP in 2012.
'If these two parties come together, there could be amalgamation of OBC, Dalits and Muslim votes.'
India will benefit hugely if the representation of women in Parliament is increased to a just level.
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.
Mann, 48, is a two-time MP from Sangrur and is the party's state unit chief.
The MPs from Uttar Pradesh who may be given ministerial portfolios are: Anupriya Patel, leader of Bharataiya Janta Paty's ally Apna Dal; Shahjahanpur MP Krishna Raj and Chandauli MP Mahendra Pandey.
Former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Ajit Jogi on Monday made a formal announcement to float a new political outfit.
Before his legislative assembly debut this time, he has been elected twice as a Member of Parliament from Sangrur.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances