No answer for the time being, will see later, Vadra said.
As the Opposition on Wednesday held its first meeting on the presidential election, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice for the top constitutional post with senior party leader Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Naveen Patnaik, sources said.
A day after OBC leader Swami Prasad Maurya resigned from the Uttar Pradesh cabinet citing apathy towards the backward classes, Dara Singh Chauhan too resigned as minister in the Yogi Adityanath government.
The RLD has aligned with the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in UP and is attacking the state government on farm distress and the outstanding sugarcane dues.
Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh on Wednesday attacked Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party for continuing their support to the "scamster" Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and said his party will not stake claim to form a government in case both withdrew support to it.
The meeting of opposition parties has been called by Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar to chalk out a joint strategy to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Perhaps unwittingly, young Samajwadi chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has forgotten that it was the media campaign against Mayawati's undemocratic and despotic ways that helped him to romp home with a clear majority. Sharat Pradhan reports
The ruling Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal combine swept the Zilla Panchayat chairmen polls, elections for which were held Saturday, winning 50 of the 65 seats.
Priyanka stressed on the importance of the UP polls for the party, calling it a "do-or-die" situation.
The BJP is far more prepared than the Congress as their pool of prospective candidates is much bigger, reports Prakash Bhandari.
'The central BJP has worked out an arrangement -- Yogi manages the state while Modi manages the Centre.'
The two parties named the seats distributed among them in a statement signed by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.
'How can Netaji forget Amar Singh called him names? He has come back to Netaji because he failed to gain entry in any political party.'
Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati has decided to support the government on FDI as she does not want to destabilise the government, reports Renu Mittal
The government had on Tuesday pegged GDP growth at a higher-than-expected 7.1 per cent for 2016-17 despite the cash blues.
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".
UP minister of state for minority welfare Danish Azad Ansari told PTI on Wednesday that the decision was taken at the state cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath a day earlier.
"We small parties, like the Apna Dal-S, want some respect to be shown to us. We, our leaders and workers feel hurt if due importance is not given to us," Ashish Patel told mediapersons
Gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari's alleged aide Sanjeev Maheshwari Jeeva was shot dead on Lucknow court premises on Wednesday, the police said.
The broad patterns tell us that to sweep UP, the BJP has to retain its voteshares of the past three elections. But to merely win it, the party can do so while losing some voteshare, and perhaps up to as much as 10 per cent, observes Aakar Patel.
The parties also said that the decision has come in late and had the Modi government shed its 'arrogance earlier' and repealed the laws opposed by farmers, a number of precious lives lost during the nearly year-long agitation could have been saved.
Among the notable absentees were Congress president Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's M K Stalin, Telugu Desam Party chief K Chandrashekhar Rao, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and Delhi chief minister and Aam Admi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal.
BJP's loss of power in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattigarh means that it will have to face a resurgent Congress in the three states where it had emerged victorious in 62 of 65 Lok Sabha seats.
The Congress has a wafer-thin majority in the Madhya Pradesh assembly whose current effective strength is 228.
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.
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.
The four-day old Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government will face the floor test on July 4 during the special two-day session of the Legislative Assembly beginning on Mumbai Sunday.
The run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election is witnessing a parallel mobilisation apart from the campaigning for votes -- a movement to make the political parties realise the power of women who constitute 49 per cent of the population in the country. Sadly, it seems the 'Power of 49' movement has made no difference to the political parties in Rajasthan -- a state run by a woman chief minister and woman governor -- as far as giving tickets to women candidates is concerned.
The incident took place outside the district hospital in Akbarpur where the hospital's fourth class employees staged a dharna by putting locks on the OPD on Thursday, Kanpur Dehat SP Keshav Kumar Choudhary said.
Scindia also said that as far as talks for alliances are concerned, "like-minded parties should also think in a like-minded way".
The seat sharing formula reached between the BSP and SP is not on the basis of who emerged stronger in the previous election.
Bracing for an opposition onslaught in Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will host a dinner for United Progressive Alliance leaders on Friday to firm up a joint strategy on various issues like Foreign Direct Investment that are expected to come up during the session beginning next week.
Gearing up for the upcoming state assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Partyon Wednesday named its organisational spearheads for the elections, putting Union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan, Pralhad Joshi, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Bhupender Yadav in charge for the contest in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur respectively.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday said the party will welcome the support of anyone in national interest, even as most exit polls and its own predictions give a majority to the National Democratic Alliance led by it.
Yadav fought hard, but his party was well behind the BJP.
Armed with out-of-the box manifestos that promise abolition of income tax and unemployment allowance to educated youth, 48 Lok Sabha candidates of 21 lesser known parties have jumped in the poll fray in Gujarat.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday said his party would pull off a spectacular victory in the state assembly elections, but evaded a direct reply to a question whether he would be the chief minister for the fifth time, as he just said 'Bharatiya Janata Party Zindabad'.
Anger cannot be an end in itself to Rahul Gandhi's politics -- it must instead catalyse a new political strategy, argues Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
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