Madhya Pradesh will see 243 candidates with criminal background in the forthcoming elections. Out of the 1,045 candidates analysed by the Association for Democratic Reforms, 243 or 23 per cent of the candidates have a criminal record.
Jailed gangster and former member of Parliament Atiq Ahmad and his wife on Tuesday joined the All India Majlis e Ittehadul Muslimeen in the presence of its chief Asaduddin Owaisi, drawing a sharp reaction from the Bharatiya Janata Party which said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will not allow "Jinnah's jihadi mentality" to flourish in Uttar Pradesh.
The ruling Congress, voted to office in 2018 after 15 years in opposition, and the Bharatiya Janata Party are the main contenders for power in the state, where the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and some regional outfits are also in the fray.
The opposition parties, which have demanded the strictest action including suspension of Bidhuri for his "vile and communal" remarks during a discussion on the success of Chandrayaan-3 in Lok Sabha on Thursday, hit out at the BJP, alleging that it was trying to defend its MP instead of punishing him.
The Nishad Party is headed by Sanjay Nishad, the father of Pravin Nishad who had won the Gorakhpur parliamentary seat on an SP ticket in the 2018 by-polls.
Although it saw a veritable who's who of the Oppostion leadership, the Samajwadi Party stayed away from the Iftar dinner hosted by Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday.
As many as 28 out of 41 sitting women MPs, including Sonia Gandhi, Hema Malini and Kirron Kher, retained their seats in Lok Sabha.
This appears to be a common refrain in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri Lok Sabha constituency where farmers want better prices for their produce and respite from the stray cattle menace and others want political leaders to talk about job creation instead of issues like the Ram temple and Article 370.
Senior Janata Dal-United leader Dhananjay Singh pitched for Opposition unity ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and said party workers in Uttar Pradesh want Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to contest the elections from the state's Phulpur constituency.
Bahujan Samaj Party Member of Parliament Dhananjay Singh, who was arrested along with his wife Jagriti Singh in connection with the murder of their maid, was on Friday denied bail by a Delhi court.
A report filed by the police with the district magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar district recommended filing of first information report against the two leaders and also against Bahujan Samaj Party leader and former Minister Naseemuddin Siddiqui.
Adityanath on the occasion praised the Centre's 'Agnipath' scheme and highlighted its benefits.
The National Testing Agency, under fire over the lapses in the conduct of NEET and UGC-NET, is gearing up to conduct on Sunday a retest for the medical entrance exam for 1,563 candidates who were earlier awarded grace marks to make up for the loss of time at six centres.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Opposition Congress in Madhya Pradesh, where assembly polls are due by 2023-end, are not attaching much importance to the presence of the AAP and the AIMIM citing the largely bipolar politics of the state.
Harivansh, a Janata Dal-United MP, is likely to get the support of 126 members in the Upper House, which has an effective strength of 244 MPs, sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party said.
The April 11 polling will decide the fate of several political bigwigs.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Maneka Gandhi on Saturday indicated that her son Varun Gandhi's writings that were sometimes critical of the government may have cost him the party's Lok Sabha ticket from Pilibhit but asserted that he would do very well even without it.
Amid the raging Israel-Hamas war, a group of opposition leaders, including MP Danish Ali and former parliamentarians Mani Shankar Aiyar and K C Tyagi, visited the Palestine Embassy in New Delhi on Monday to express solidarity with Palestinians.
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Thursday claimed that contrary to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's "false propaganda" that the population of Muslim community was increasing in the country, the number of the minority community members vis-a-vis Hindus was fast declining, and added that he could prove it.
Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra's expulsion from the Lok Sabha triggered a political slugfest on Friday, with the opposition calling it a 'betrayal of India's parliamentary democracy' and the Bharatiya Janata Party asserting that it was an 'apt decision' as there was proof of the allegations levelled against her.
Badal said farmers are braving the cold and waiting at Delhi's borders but the government's "eyes and ears are shut".
Former Bharatiya Janata Party leader Swami Prasad Maurya on Wednesday said he was not going back to the saffron camp and indicated joining Samajwadi Party on Friday.
Yadav struck deals with the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress whenever needed to form or save the governments led by him in Uttar Pradesh.
Often credited with his party's victory in the 2012 assembly polls, now 59, he became the youngest chief of the Shiromani Akali Dal, when he was elevated to the post in 2008.
Besides the national capital, polling for the sixth round of the marathon seven-phase elections will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir.
The BJP tops the list with 43 (80 percent) of 54 MLAs each having declared assets valued at more than Rs 1 crore.
The Congress's share has almost halved, down from 12 in 2014 to six now.
The voting will begin at 7 am and end at 5 pm after the electioneering came to an end on Saturday, 48 hours before the electorate begin casting their votes.
Talking about the brutal killing of Krishnaiah in 1994, G Uma Krishnaiah said her husband was killed for no fault of his.
The seat got vacant after the death of Bharatiya Janata Party's Rajya Sabha MP Madan Lal Saini in June. Rajasthan has 10 Rajya Sabha seats.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
It is likely that small parties would be given very few seats to contest, but these parties believe that they would be able to swing the result in favour of bigger alliance partners by transferring their vote bank.
Only vegetarian dishes were served at the official dinner held at a state-run five-star hotel.
Not everyone in the BJP is happy with the tainted ex-minister entering the party. BJP MP from Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath, blamed the BJP leadership for bringing Kushwaha into the party. Sharat Pradhan reports.
Polling in 70 constituencies began at 8 am and will conclude at 5 pm, except in nine polling booths in the Maoist-affected Bindranawagarh seat in Gariaband district, where voting began at 7 for security reasons, a poll official said.
Siddiqui, who hails from Banda, was earlier removed as the party in-charge of Uttar Pradesh and was appointed as the MP unit in-charge after the assembly poll debacle.
Shah had on Tuesday attended a party event in Lucknow where he said that the Opposition is spreading rumours about the CAA.
The Congress, out of power in Madhya Pradesh for nearly 15 years, has also expressed its willingness to align with like-minded parties to take on the BJP.
The Samajwadi Party on Thursday announced Dimple Yadav as its candidate for Mainpuri parliamentary seat, which fell vacant after the death of party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Newly-elected Bahujan Samaj Party Member of Legisative Assembly from Dholpur B L Kushwaha, wanted in a chit fund fraud case, was detained by police at the assembly here when he had gone to take oath.
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