On the ground, rural medical infrastructure and more crucially, women's access to reproductive health services is practically non-existent in Uttar Pradesh, reports Geetanjali Krishna.
They were all fielded by the Samajwadi Party and its alliance partners.
The blast took place at the shop in Rohta Bazaar, which was run by Kaliyar Mansoori. His son was running a carpet factory behind the shop and its workers could be among those trapped under the debris, District Magistrate Rajendra Prasad said.
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.
613 candidates are in the fray on 54 seats, including those falling in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary segment Varanasi.
Over 56 per cent turnout was recorded on Monday in 54 assembly seats, including in Varanasi, in the seventh and last phase of Uttar Pradesh polls, marking the end of the voting process spread over two months in the crucial state.
Voting for the seventh and final phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections covering 54 seats, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency Varanasi, will be held on Monday to decide the phase of 613 candidates.
Director General of Police O P Singh said that two people lost their lives in Bijnor and one each in Meerut, Sambhal and Firozabad. But officials reported a death in Kanpur as well.
The two parties named the seats distributed among them in a statement signed by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.
She has alleged that in the run-up to the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, she was kept at a hotel for a month by Tiwari.
The BJP and the Nishad Party will contest the upcoming assembly polls together in Uttar Pradesh and will work towards forming the next government in the state, Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Friday.
Shamsheer Ustaad refused to become collateral damage when his industry modernised, discovers Geetanjali Krishna.
Voting for the seventh and final round will be held on March 7 for Varanasi and its eight adjoining districts.
Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi said on Wednesday that the conditions in Uttar Pradesh always make him angry.
The elections are being seen as a semi-final to the 2022 assembly election.
Sources in various parties suggest that two lakh votes of the Patel community, locally known as OBC kurmi, for which mother-daughter led Apna Dal (S) and Apna Dal (K) are competing and over one lakh of OBC Rajbhars would be crucial in deciding the outcome of the assembly seats in Varanasi.
In a series of tweets, she attacked the SP accusing it of being an expert in "narrow politics".
She couldn't get a seat on the bus and neither could her son Sahab Lal, who worked as a construction labourer, and the rest of the family, all waiting to return to their village in Bhadohi. The disappointment was almost too much to handle for the elderly woman, perhaps in her 70s, who had come to Gurgaon a few months ago from the village and is now desperate to leave.
The curtain came down on rumbustious electioneering over the last two months when assembly polls were also held in four other states - Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur.
With the Yogi Adityanath government taking credit for cracking down on criminals and making it an election issue, political parties are now having a rethink on aligning with those who have a criminal background but also enjoy influence in their areas.
Migrants hailing from Gonda, Ambedkar Nagar, Unnao and other parts in Uttar Pradesh were looking forward to reach their homes.
'Publicity looks good, but the reality is different... all sections are feeling harassed'
The Congress is a dismal third in 17 of the 19 constituencies where the party's general secretary (east) campaigned in Uttar Pradesh.
Six migrant workers were killed and 95 others injured in separate road accidents in Uttar Pradesh when they were returning home during the ongoing lockdown to combat the coronavirus outbreak, the police said on Friday. The accidents have taken place in Barabanki, Jalaun, Bahraich and Mahoba districts since Thursday evening, they said.
An Mi-17 Helicopter had landed at a field in jungle area in the midst of an active encounter area to evacuate the jawans and brought them to Raipur.
Just like the Congress, SP and BSP, small pro-Muslim parties are focussed on UP's 20 per cent Muslim voters, knowing that it could make the difference between defeat and victory. But many in the Ghazipur-Bhadohi-Azamgarh-Jaunpur belt insist that there is no such thing as the 'Muslim vote'.
Expelled leader Amar Singh has said he was associated with the Samajwadi Party for 14 long years and if he would open his mouth, SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav would land in jail.
The party also declared sitting MP Praveen Nishad as its candidate from Sant Kabir Nagar
Around 400 to 500 people gathered near the city Eidgah to protest against the amended Citizenship Act amid a bandh call, he said.
Traders and weavers in Uttar Pradesh's Bhadohi district, which is famous for hand knit carpets and hand tufted carpets, said they wanted the government to help them regain markets lost due to recession. In the wake of the global economic slowdown, small exporters are being wiped out while large exporters are striving to survive. The traders also said that the government should reconsider the taxes levied on them.
Maneka Gandhi will contest from Sultanpur and Varun Gandhi from Pilibhit.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) defeat in the Bhadohi Assembly by-election in Uttar Pradesh last month was a big blow. Not only was this the first major setback for the Mayawati-led BSP, but also showed the flaws in the first-Lucknow-next-stop-Delhi project.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh might have succeeded in saving a few thousand jobs in corporate India when he met industry captains last week, Jet Airways may well have retained its 1,900 employees, but here in the hinterland of Uttar Pradesh -- famed as the carpet hub of India -- the poor are being retrenched in thousands.
Virendra Singh said he went to the embassy on Wednesday for the purpose of visa and was asked to remove his pagdi.
Playing for Mumbai in the Vijay Hazare competition in October, 17-year-old Yashasvi Jaiswal scored 203 off 154 balls, which included 12 sixes and 17 fours against a Jharkhand attack that included out-of-favour India pacer Varun Aaron and Shahbaz Nadeem.
SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav termed it as a 'ghaatey ka sauda' (loss-making deal) for the saffron party.
Yadav, a former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, was slated to travel to Kannuaj, around 125 km from the Uttar Pradesh capital, for a tractor rally as part of the 'Kisan Yatra' in support of farmers protesting against the Centre's new agri laws and the 'Bharat Bandh' called by them on Tuesday.
During her three-day visit, Priyanka will cover a distance of 100-km by boat in Ganga from Prayagraj to Varanasi.
Only traces of rainfall were recorded in a few areas of the national capital on Thursday which continued to experience sultry weather.
Other parts of north India also continued to face plummeting temperatures.
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