Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) chief Shivpal Yadav on Monday said that his party's priority is to form an alliance with the Samajwadi Party for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections and that it should be allotted 100 seats.
Samajwadi Party leader Abdullah Azam on Sunday said the property given to the Rampur Nawabs for 'being loyal to the British' should be confiscated and that a movement in this connection will be launched soon.
Azad said electoral laws make it clear that the ruling party should have no advantage during elections and both the Opposition and the ruling side should be on an equal footing.
UP chief minister has little to showcase as achievements, save keeping a few promises by his Samajwadi Party, notes Virendra Singh Rawat.
BSP president Mayawati on Monday said her party will not contest the zila panchayat chairpersons' elections so that it can focus on next year's assembly polls, drawing accusations from the Congress that she is pulling out to help the ruling BJP.
"I came in between" Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Tuesday, taking a dig at the leaders of the Congress and the Samajwadi Party who had formed a coalition to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party.
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.
With the Samajwadi Party, Akali Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party emerging victorious in the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Goa respectively, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday called up their leaders to congratulate them.
While Modi had a party and an organisation that supported him, all Mulayam, a self-made man with no inheritance in politics, had was a set of (fairly flexible) beliefs.
Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Monday said that the Congress and Samajwadi Party are the main contenders in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, as the ruling "BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) is involved in corruption, while BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is nowhere in the picture."
Extensive arrangements have been made due to the COVID-19 pandemic including personal protective equipment kits for election staff, more polling booths, thermal screening, sanitisers, masks and gloves for voters and markings to ensure social distancing, officials said.
Former Union minister Beni Prasad Verma on Friday quit the Congress and rejoined the Samajwadi Party, a move which is likely to shore up the SP's prospects in the 2017 assembly polls.
Ahead of the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Keshav Prasad Maurya, Deputy Chief Minister announced that roads would be constructed in the state after the name of 'kar sevaks' who died in 1990 during Ram Mandir movement in Ayodhya.
To repeated questions, the SP chief asserted that the Congress was 'very much in the alliance'.
A Samajwadi Party member of Legislative Assembly's son, who was accused of misbehaving with a female teacher, was rusticated from the Amity University, official sources said in Lucknow.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday sought to defend his widely criticised statement equating Muhammad Ali Jinnah with Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru and saying they helped India get freedom even as an Uttar Pradesh minister suggested a narco test for him for 'glorifying' the founder of Pakistan.
The Congress has no love lost for Amar Singh's Samajwadi Party in Madhya Pradesh despite the two striving for an electoral alliance in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress has a wafer-thin majority in the Madhya Pradesh assembly whose current effective strength is 228.
Bhupesh Chaubey from Robertsganj constituency in Sonbhadra district secured 84,496 (or 40.29 per cent) of the total votes counted, defeating his nearest rival, Avinash Kushwaha of the Samajwadi Party by over 5,600 votes, according to the Election Commission website.
According to some of those present in the meeting, Mayawati also referred to the family feud in the Yadav clan, saying after Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav's younger brother Shivpal decided to contest separately the community votes were not transferred to the BSP, and the SP could not even save its "family seats".
"Will wait and watch for results, as of now not thinking of alliance with anyone," BSP sources told ANI.
Accompanied by party leaders Dimple Yadav, wife of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, Rajendra Chowdhury and Kironmay Nanda, besides businessman Subrata Roy Sahara, Jaya Bachchan, who turns 70 next month, filed her nomination at the Central Hall of the state assembly.
No sooner than the campaign for the recently concluded 2007 state assembly elections started in Uttar Pradesh, two sons rose up from rival camps -- Rahul Gandhi, referred widely by both friends and foes as Congress 'yuvaraj' and Samajwadi Party pointsman Akhilesh Yadav, who was now awaiting his coronation as the state's youngest ever chief minister. Sharat Pradhan reports.
'If there is any possibility, then the BJP has to accept our conditions. There should be caste census in the country, the report of the social justice committee should be implemented, the CM should be from backward caste and also the poor must be provided a uniform, mandatory and free education as well as free medical treatment.'
'It is not just about numbers. Sometimes coalitions and alliances have symbolic value.'
"Owaisi is an old friend of mine. As far as I know, he was 'Kshatriya' (Hindu) earlier. He is a descendent of Lord Ram, not the one belonging to Iran," said Singh.
If her mother anoints her as the Congress's chief ministerial candidate for the UP assembly election, it could be Game On! in Lucknow.
The ruling party appears to have worked to a plan, beginning with the weaning away of Congress MLC and MLAs.
The Nishad Party also demanded 160 seats for the 2022 state elections.
'It is not his doing, but Rahul Gandhi is forced by circumstances.' 'In taking political decisions, everything has to get his clearance.'
Voting was held on Sunday on 117 assembly seats in Punjab and 59 assembly constituencies spread across 16 districts of Uttar Pradesh.
'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.
Congress' poll strategist Prashant Kishor on Tuesday held a two-hour meeting with Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is trying to cobble together an alliance of like-minded parties ahead of Uttar Pradesh assembly polls due early next year.
The Congress continues to decline and BJP's regional rivals are making their presence felt, even in Uttar Pradesh where Samajwadi Party consolidated anti-BJP votes to a large extent.
The bypolls are termed as a 'rehearsal' for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by CM Yogi Adityanath.
The decision of Mulayam not to dispute the numerical strength claimed by Akhilesh enabled the Election Commission deliver the final verdict in the case after a single hearing.
On November 26 last year, the Allahabad High Court had rejected the bail pleas of Azam Khan and his son after which they moved the top court.
The Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh will be reduced to its 2012 tally of 47 or thereabouts as the wind is blowing in favour of the Akhilesh Yadav-led coalition this election, says Swami Prasad Maurya who left the saffron party to join the Samajwadi Party last month.
"Krishna was born in Uttar Pradesh but made Gujarat his karma bhoomi. I was born in Gujarat but Uttar Pradesh has adopted me," the PM said in Hardoi.
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
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