Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will start the party's general election campaign in Uttar Pradesh next month from the Congress bastions of Kanpur, Jhansi and Bahraich.
The Samajwadi Party released its list of 40 star campaigners in which there was no mention of Mulayam Singh Yadav.
In the 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly, the actual strength of the house at present is 228 as two seats are lying vacant. With the resignation of 16 more MLAs, the strength of Congress has come down to 92 from 108.
Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav died in Medanta hospital of Gurugram on Monday. He was 82.
The Congress is a dismal third in 17 of the 19 constituencies where the party's general secretary (east) campaigned in Uttar Pradesh.
Plummeting to its lowest ever tally of winning only one seat in the current Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Mayawati said it was the media's aggressive propaganda showing the BSP as the 'B team of the BJP' that drove away Muslims and anti-BJP voters from it.
With this, the ruling BJP has so far declared candidates for 136 seats. Earlier, the BJP had announced 79 candidates, including two lists of 39 each, and another list of one nominee.
The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, trouncing its main rival SP, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
Some parties, including the Congress, also demanded immediate sacking of Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Kumar Mishra, following Samyukt Kisan Morcha's allegation that his son was travelling in one of the vehicles involved in the incident.
Anil Singh, the Unnao MLA, said, "I am with Maharaj-ji (Adityanath)."
"We are going to contest assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh," All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi said.
With their high-decibel campaigns so far, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party may appear to be locked in a direct fight in Uttar Pradesh.
Samajwadi Party has won the Gunnaur assembly seat by defeating Bahujan Samaj Party while the BSP has wrested the Swar Tanda seat from the SP in the by-polls held on August 31.
Joining hands with smaller parties with a political base in different castes was a part of the BJP strategy as it won big in Uttar Pradesh in the 2017 assembly polls and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
"The over-confidence and inability to comprehend the electoral understanding between the SP and the BSP led to the defeat," Adityanath stressed.
Ahmad, a former Uttar Pradesh MLA and Lok Sabha MP, was brought back to the high-security jail in Gujarat in a UP police van after a nearly 24-hour-long road journey from Prayagraj.
Besides the national capital, polling 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. Simultaneously, polling will be held for 42 assembly constituencies in Odisha.
Political parties were bracing for the assembly election results on Thursday in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and politically volatile Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, sending out feelers for possible post-poll tie-ups.
According to sources, the Uttar Pradesh police had arrived in Ahmedabad most likely to take Ahmed, who is a key accused in a high-profile killing that took place in February, to their state.
Elections will be held on June 10 to fill 57 Rajya Sabha seats from 15 states falling vacant due to the retirement of members on different dates between June and August, the Election Commission said on Thursday.
An Uttar Pradesh government spokesperson said a formal order for all eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route in the state was likely to be issued soon.
The meeting also discussed possibilities of forming a non-BJP government including regional parties with the support of the Congress.
According to the results announced on Thursday, 25 Samajwadi Party candidates were defeated by less than 5,000 votes while a similar fate awaited three nominees of the Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Her name figures among the 40 star campaigners that the Congress has finalised and forwarded to the Election Commission on Tuesday for the first phase of Uttar Pradesh polls.
"I am a five-time legislator and it has been allotted to me as a senior member of the state assembly," he said.
A Samajwadi Party MLA and a Bharatiya Janata Party leader too joined Mayawati's party, BSP General Secretary Naseemuddin Siddiqui told a press conference in Lucknow.
The Samajwadi Party is unwilling to cede ground to the BJP, especially in Amethi, since the Congress is too weak to counter the BJP's well-oiled election machinery.
"Will wait and watch for results, as of now not thinking of alliance with anyone," BSP sources told ANI.
Muslims have been given tickets in 36 of the 100 seats.
The BSP chief alleged that Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party considered the Dalits as lowly.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has ridiculed the move as 'hypocrisy' saying Congress leaders had termed Lord Ram as an imaginary character.
Few in Varanasi expect the result to be different from 2014 and 2019. The only point of interest is whether Narendra Modi will increase his winning margin against his rivals.
To repeated questions, the SP chief asserted that the Congress was 'very much in the alliance'.
With the 2024 Lok Sabha elections less than eight months away, the SP is experimenting with yet another template of combining a soft Hindutva tenor with its time-tested Muslim-Yadav combination to reclaim its lost political capital vis-a-vis the BJP.
How many seats would the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance have got had they fought the 2014 elections with their current alliance partners? Our RediffLabs team has devised an Election Sentimeter to how the swing in votes affects the election outcome.
Close to half of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats are bracing for multi-cornered fight this time, making the contest way more interesting and intense than it was in the 2019 elections.
Banda chief judicial magistrate Bhagwan Das Gupta appointed Garima Singh, additional chief judicial magistrate (MP-MLA Court Banda) as the investigating officer in the case, the official said.
Ahead of the last Assembly polls, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had promised to implement a farm loan waiver scheme in the state if the party came to power.
With this, the Congress's strength in the house has come down to 89 now.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party took a swipe at the Congress, with its leader Ravi Shankar Prasad saying forging a coalition was not in its DNA and it only gives importance to the Gandhi family.
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