Aside from the 36 MPs, the meeting was also attended by BJP president J P Nadda and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi, they said.
The Uttar Pradesh government has withdrawn the 'Y-category' security cover provided to Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, saying it was not needed, even as his party decried the move as "unfortunate."
BJP president JP Nadda, Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh were among those who attended the meeting.
Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray president and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has been sent an invitation by speed post for the Ram temple consecration ceremony to be held in Ayodhya on Monday.
The Janata Dal-United will contest all 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, party chief Sharad Yadav said on Wednesday after failure of talks with National Democratic Alliance ally Bharatiya Janata Party for a tie-up.
It also includes Maharashtra deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, BJP leader Manoj Tiwari and MP home minister Narottam Mishra.
The SBSP can impact around 10 Lok Sabha seats and 40 assembly seats in 7-8 districts in Uttar Pradesh, according to poll analysts.
The aunt of the minor girl, who was allegedly raped by former block head Nawab Singh Yadav at a private college in Kannauj, has been arrested, police said on Wednesday.
Ansari said the Muslim community is now shedding the 'illusion' created by opposition parties like the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress.
Priyanka Gandhi on Monday committed a faux pas naming Madhya Pradesh, ruled by arch rival Bharatiya Janata Party, as one of the fast developing states, a 'slip of the tongue' she corrected immediately.
There is a proposal from the BJP camp that they would resort to a proportion-based increase in the number of Lok Sabha seats for individual states, based on what they now have. On the face of it, this sounds like a fine argument that those demanding a 'freeze' now cannot oppose without reasons and justification, avers N Sathiya Moorthy.
Robert Vadra indicated that he will also join politics and said there is an atmosphere of change in the country. His entire family is working diligently on this, he added.
The Bhojpuri superstar and Gorakhpur MP was in Noida on Sunday to campaign for BJP's sitting MLA Pankaj Singh, who is again contesting the election as the party's candidate.
The widely expected development underlines the party's preference for continuity as it gears up for the all-important Lok Sabha polls next year, expected in April-May.
On the occasion, Gandhi said their campaign was against hatred, violence and fear being spread in society.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
Early trends from counting of votes on Tuesday threw up disappointing results for the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha elections, which appears to be losing heavily in its strongholds of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan although it is expected to form the government with about 290 seats.
A man, who threatened to behead former Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Nupur Sharma, was arrested in Bareillay on Thursday, the police said.
The plan to relieve NSG from VIP security tasks has been in the making since 2012 when NSG commanders foresaw an event where simultaneous terror attacks could be witnessed at one time on multiple centres in the country and the commandos will have to be rushed in different directions.
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure, the little-known Hyderabad-based firm that in recent years won the prestigious Zojila tunnel deal among other projects, forayed into city gas and acquired a media group, was the second largest donor to political parties using electoral bonds.
Those joining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers for the first time include three former chief ministers -- Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana) and H D Kumaraswamy (Karnataka).
There are no riots and curfew in Uttar Pradesh now and all is good, he asserted.
From invoking the 'Saptarishi' (Ursa Major) constellation, seven basic notes of Indian classical music to 'saat phere' (seven circumambulations) -- parties give different reasons and logic to claim that they will emerge victorious in the polls.
Launching her party's election campaign in a poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Wednesday trained her guns more pointedly towards the Congress party, blaming it for anything and everything that she could not deliver to the masses during her five years rule over India s most populous state. Sharat Pradhan reports.
The Uttar Pradesh police on Thursday arrested five people, including a man who they claimed to be the personal secretary of former minister Swami Prasad Maurya, for allegedly duping unemployed youth on the pretext of giving them government jobs.
A visibly upset Shivpal Yadav said, "I was never called to any meeting (of the SP) and no information was given to me."
Farmers' protest over land acquisition in Uttar Pradesh derailed proceedings in Parliament on Monday with both the Houses adjourning twice over the issue which saw Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal, Shiv Sena and Janata Dal-United members storming the well in the Lok Sabha.
The opposition fear that it could burnish the BJP's image ahead of the forthcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.
'The Aam Aadmi Party will cut into our votes, but it won't affect our final tally in Uttar Pradesh,' a senior BJP strategist tells Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt in this brilliant report on the coming electoral wars in UP.
A handsome victory for the BJP in UP would act as confirmation of its recent political choices. The UP chief minister would be cemented in the popular mind as Mr Modi's chosen heir within the Hindutva fold, and presumably as his successor in New Delhi, observes Mihir S Sharma.
The SP chief said no MLAs or ministers quitting the BJP will be taken into his party anymore.
With the Samajwadi Party, Akali Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party emerging victorious in the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Goa respectively, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday called up their leaders to congratulate them.
The seats held by the non-BJP parties in the state are Bijnor, Amroha, Moradabad, Sambhal, Raebareli, Ghosi, Lalganj, Jaunpur, Ambedkarnagar, Ghazipur, Shravasti, Mainpuri, Saharanpur and Nagina. Of these, Raebareli is held by Sonia Gandhi of the Congress.
His remarks come amid BJP ministers and legislators quitting the party in UP ahead of the crucial Assembly polls in the state.
Sharing the dais for the first time in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and daughter Priyanka on Tuesday lambasted the Mayawati regime for lack of development alleging large-scale corruption in implementation of central schemes worth Rs 1 lakh crore.
Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Monday said that the Congress and Samajwadi Party are the main contenders in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, as the ruling "BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) is involved in corruption, while BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is nowhere in the picture."
The manifesto release programme was scheduled at the BJP office in Lucknow at 10.15 am.
Electoral setbacks and thwarted ambition can have an unpredictable effect on leaders,, observes Aditi Phadnis.
The Maharashtra Assembly elections are taking place today, with the ruling BJP-led Mahayuti alliance seeking to retain power and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) hoping for a comeback. The campaign saw prominent leaders like Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra crisscrossing the state to garner votes. The Mahayuti is banking on popular schemes while the MVA focuses on issues like caste-based census and social justice. The elections have also seen a significant rise in the number of candidates and voters.
Addressing an election meeting on what once was the home turf of slain gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday appeared to invoke nature as a great leveller -- a force that delivers justice.