The situation is worse in the Gandhi family pocket borough -- Amethi and Raebareli.
Mulayam had slammed the SP-Congress alliance and said that the SP was capable of contesting elections alone.
The by-elections are being held to fill the vacancies caused by the disqualification of 17 rebel Congress and Janata Dal-Secular MLAs, whose rebellion led to the collapse of the H D Kumaraswamy-led coalition government in July and paved the way for the BJP to come to power.
The MLAs, who are seemingly unhappy with their leadership, arrived in Surat on Monday night and are camping at the Le Meridian Hotel, they said.
cution' of the Brahmins in the regime of Adityanath, a Rajput, accused of pandering to his caste's interests. Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
Shivpal loyalists have been denied tickets.
The Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party are using communal violence to polarise the voters in the state with an eye on the 2014 general elections, reports Sharat Pradhan
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati on Friday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of targetting her for raising a voice against alleged electronic voting machines tampering and said she was not averse to shaking hands with other parties in her fight against the saffron party on the issue.
'If Yogiji has to run this government without any problems, he has to remain in power, and if he has to keep the BJP bosses in Delhi and the RSS happy, then he has no option but to do it.'
On Friday, he clarified that he was referring to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh where no such incident had taken place. "We do not justify anarchy and hooliganism," he said, adding that the incident in Alwar did take place and an FIR has been registered against six persons.
Throughout the governor's 35-minute address, Samajwadi Party legislator Rajesh Yadav blew a whistle.
'The disquiet in the Sangh is, of course, over demonetisation.' 'But more than that, it is about the growing centralisation in the running of the government and party,'
The Bharatiya Janata Party is in no hurry to engineer a split or woo legislators from other parties at this juncture, though it is short of numbers in the Maharashtra assembly.
Though today he is treading the path alone with no bigwig coming over for campaigning, the support of his elder brother Mulayam, who started his campaign with a rally for him, has re-established the bonding in the family.
Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said the police had initiated action in the case.
As the Uttar Pradesh assembly election battle hits new lows, Rediff.com's Aslam Hunani walks you through all you need to know about the fifth phase of polling on February 27.
Congress leaders say the party is willing to accommodate Ajit Jogi to some extent but will not be bullied or blackmailed by him, reports Anita Katyal
Controversial Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sakshi Maharaj on Sunday declared the Ram temple at Ayodhya will be built under the Centre's BJP government, which has "four more years to go", drawing sharp criticism from opposition Congress party.
"The BJP tried every trick to defeat the BSP candidate and indulged in malpractices," the BSP supremo alleged.
Elections for 19 Rajya Sabha seats spread across eight states will be held on Friday with the contest in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan promising to be a close affair between the BJP and the Congress.
Kamal Nath said that the Bharatiya Janata Party was perturbed as its "corruption over its 15-year rule is going to be exposed"
Muslims constitute 20% of UP's electorate. Currently, Muslim voters are divided between Akhilesh's SP and Mayawati's BSP. What will tilt the balance? Can Muslims back the winning party? Mohammad Sajjad explains the mysteries of UP's Muslim politics.
The ruling coalition had held out the threat of using the Whip against the wayward MLAs, citing the disqualification provision under the anti-defection law.
This phase of voting was crucial for the state's ruling Samajwadi Party and main opposition Bahujan Samaj Party.
Led by Raman Singh, the Bharatiya Janata Party has ruled Chhattisgarh for three consecutive assembly terms ever since a resounding victory by his party ousted the then Congress leader Ajit Jogi's three-year-old government in 2003.
The 288-member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly constitutes the electoral college Rajya Sabha elections, scheduled on June 10, and a candidate needs 42 votes to win a seat.
Yogi Adityanath on Monday completed 100 days in office as Uttar Pradesh chief minister but it was a low-key anniversary with no big event to showcase the achievements of the government.
Three MLAs abstained, while 20 legislators, most of them from Congress and the NCP, including Congress's Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar, both former ministers, were absent during the trust vote.
'The Mallahs may remain divided between the two competing coalitions in Bihar,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
UP now has 16 ministers, the maximum from any state, in an apparent bid to keep the Dalit and other backward class votebank content.
Ahead of the 2019 elections, the race for consolidating the Dalit vote-bank has intensified among all the political parties, more so in Uttar Pradesh, where the community comprises almost 21 per cent of the population.
'From 10 am on Tuesday to 3 am this morning, we must have made not less than a thousand phone calls.' 'We kept fighting till the end and we did not leave the room till we got 113 certificates.' 'Two-three losses would have changed the game and the BJP wanted to become the largest party which they did not become.'
Despite his ministers on shaky ground, Chouhan -- at the helm for three consecutive terms -- is holding the fort. He is being aided by a capable team for public relations and the RSS, which has deployed its workers to bolster the BJP's campaign, reports Sandeep Kumar.
The magic figure for simple majority was 105, equivalent to the strength of the BJP, which also commanded the support of an Independent.
Here is the lowdown of the each state and parties.
The UP CM didn't deign to attend the actor's nomination.
'Dalits are not going to vote for the BJP in 2019.'
Yediyurappa said he would decide on members to be inducted into the ministry after consulting party president Amit Shah.
Mayawati was outmanoeuvred by the BJP in the race for the Rajya Sabha in Uttar Pradesh just days after she helped the Samajwadi Party snatch two Lok Sbaha seats from the saffron party in bypolls.
Ravi Kishan, the BJP's candidate, is an outsider. The BSP-SP candidate is from the powerful Nishad community. Yogi faces a tough task in ensuring that the Gorakhpur seat, which he represented from 1998 to 2017, stays with the BJP.
