SP president Akhilesh Yadav and ally RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary are unlikely to participate in the Yatra due to "preoccupation" with their party programmes, their party leaders said.
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.
The Congress will conduct a caste census in Madhya Pradesh after winning the assembly polls and establish a university in the name of Sant Ravidas, said party president Mallikarjun Kharge, accusing the regime at the Centre of wishing to change the Constitution.
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.
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 first of the two-phase urban local body polls in Uttar Pradesh will take place on Thursday, a major poll battle in the politically crucial state ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections.
Targeting the Congress, the PM said those who ruled Madhya Pradesh for a long time did nothing else other than corruption and crime.
Reacting to Yadav's statement that he wanted her to become the prime minister and that the SP had forged an alliance with the BSP for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls for this, Mayawati, in a tweet in Hindi, said, 'When the SP chief could not fulfil his own dream of becoming the chief minister (of Uttar Pradesh) even after securing the votes of Muslims and Yadavs and forming an alliance with several parties, how can he fulfil the dream of others to become the prime minister.'
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.
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.
'I want Atiq Ahmed's empire to end, I don't want him to be alive'
Some of it was squandered on a futile opposition, the youth rooted for Modi's promise. But a recent statement from minority affairs minister questioning the minority tag may damage BJP's prospects.
Mulayam Singh Yadav wrote to Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari informing him about the expulsion of Ramgopal Yadav.
Sources said the opposition parties would look to avoid the prickly leadership question as of now and emphasise on building a common ground.
Voting began on Thursday in the by-election to seven assembly constituencies in six states -- a contest symbolic of the fierce turf war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties.
"Will wait and watch for results, as of now not thinking of alliance with anyone," BSP sources told ANI.
In the recent past, Adityanath and the RSS seem to have come closer. The warmth is more on the part of the RSS. And even now, not all requests from the RSS are accommodated by the UP government, points out Aditi Phadnis.
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.
'It's the same problem with all six of us. Behenji (Mayawati) is not to be blamed, but the coordinators have acted in a manner which has depressed us and we thought what is the use of remaining with such a party'
S P Singh Baghel and B L Verma who made it to the Union council of ministers on Wednesday are two prominent Other Backward Classes leaders from Uttar Pradesh.
"I can say with confidence that the BJP will form the government in the state," he reiterated.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati, who had drawn flak from the Supreme Court for wasting taxpayers' money by building parks and installing her statues, on Saturday warned the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh that any move to make changes in the memorials erected during her regime could create law and order problem.
In an email about its executive editor's death, NDTV said, 'It is a terrible, terrible day for NDTV. We have lost Kamal Khan; he was 61 and the heart and soul of our Lucknow bureau, an NDTV veteran who had boundless time and kind words for anyone who encountered him.'
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.
'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
A bench comprising Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Amitava Roy, while allowing the plea of the Pooja Pal, wife of slain leader, asked the probe agency to conclude the probe in the case preferably within six months.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati termed PM's programme 'ridiculous and a betrayal of national sentiments'.
Meanwhile, the Congress said that that it is ready to go it alone in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha election.
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.
'I will make Akash join the BSP movement and give him a chance to learn,' she said in a statement.
Mulayam Singh and Mayawati fell out after their ruling coalition in Uttar Pradesh crashed in 1995, two years after they came together along with smaller parties to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party out of power.
To clear doubts over EVMs, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi will soon call all-party meet.
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
In elections for the 230-member assembly last year, the Congress won 114 seats and the BJP coming a close second with 109. The Bahujan Samaj Party has two seats, the Samajwadi Party one and the Independents four seats.
The third phase of Lok Sabha elections scheduled for Tuesday will see the maximum number of seats going to the polls in a single phase -- 117 across 15 states and Union Territories. It will also be a test for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which will aim to defend the maximum number of seats at 62. This time the BJP will be tested in its bastion Gujarat -- where polling will be held for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state -- apart from Karanataka, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, where the party had done well in 2014. Here are some of the big political leaders' who await their fate on Tuesday.
The Kumbhkarna has woken up and the prime minister can now rest easy. Sheela Bhatt presents the ten new trends set by the Uttar Pradesh elections
Claiming that the BJP's government's works in the three holy cities are only follow-ups of her government's initiatives, Mayawati went on to promise, in what is being seen as a subtle shift towards soft Hindutva ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, to complete all those work on time.
Her tone and tenor was clear and unflinching as she vowed to storm back to power in 2017,
Top leaders of Opposition parties will brainstorm at a meeting in Patna on Friday to chalk out a roadmap for the formation of an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party front for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, with sources saying that they would look to avoid the prickly leadership question and emphasise on common ground.
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