All India Congress Committee general secretary Rahul Gandhi appears to be really needling the opposition.
"Commando training should be imparted to all three wings of ATS by November," Mayawati said during a review meeting with top bureaucrats and police officers held in Lucknow on Wednesday evening. The CM also directed the Director General of Police for immediate improvement in crime investigation by ensuring necessary arrangements are being made to use forensic lab and other methods of scientific investigation.
The Congress has kicked off the Uttar Pradesh assembly election campaign against state Chief Minister Mayawati with the party signaling in no uncertain terms that Rahul Gandhi would be at the centre stage of the fight for UP, a battle which is set to last for the next one year as Hindi heartland's biggest state becomes the battleground.
Rahul Gandhi was arrested on Wednesday night by the Uttar Pradesh police after he joined the land war here, pledging full support to farmers fighting against acquisition while lambasting Chief Minister Mayawati.
The Election Commission on Monday said that the range of comments on its direction to cover statues of Mayawati and elephant are not based on substance and are misleading and suggest "a lack of understanding of facts".
Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Saturday backed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's demand for inclusion of a Dalit representative in the Lokpal drafting committee while Justice Santosh Hegde does not seem to find any merit in it.
"What was even more shocking that even someone like Anna Hazare, who was spearheading the movement against rising corruption in the country, did not care to ensure inclusion of a Dalit on the committee. After all he hails from Maharastra which gave birth to the greatest Dalit icon Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, who led several movements for the upliftment of the downtrodden dalits," Mayawati said.
Opening a new front with the Congress, the Mayawati government on Thursday created a new district named after Dalit icon Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj that would include Amethi, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's Lok Sabha constituency.
Addressing a press conference shortly after ensuring the approval of the resolution in an unprecedented manner, Mayawati said, "Well, we will now forward this resolution to the centre and it is not for them to get an approval of the parliament to see that Uttar Pradesh is divided into four smaller states in the larger interest of the people."
It dismissed a petition filed by the UP government challenging an Allahabad high court order staying investigations into cases against him.
Umesh Pal's family thanked Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the police.
Training her guns at the Central Bureau of Investigation, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati claimed in the Supreme Court that the disproportionate assets case filed against her was untenable on Wednesday.
The alleged gang-rape and illegal confinement of a minor girl by ruling Bahujan Samaj Party Member of Legislative Assembly Purshottam Naresh Dwivedi in Banda district did cast its shadow on the mega celebrations organised to mark the 55th birthday of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati in Lucknow on Saturday.While the entire BSP machinery was busy with Mayawati's birthday celebrations, the Allahabad high court sprung a surprise.
Mayawati was severely criticised both inside and outside Parliament as the currency garland controversy sparked demands for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the source of money used to make the garland reportedly worth Rs 5 crore.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Varun Gandhi on Wednesday said all statues of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati would be replaced with those of Lord Ram once the party regains power in the state.
Bahujan Samaj Party general secretary Satish Misra, who is regarded as the architect of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's much-hyped 'social engineering', on Tuesday flatly denied having called his party president corrupt.
Indian democracy is fast turning into by the elite, for the elite and of the elite, says M R Venkatesh.
On the birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Monday attacked Bharatiya Janata Party leaders saying when polls come they see Dalits as Hindus but later they do not even like to sit with them, and the party was not happy when the architect of the Constitution got Bharat Ratna.
Rising from the shock and dismay of the devastating defeat at the March state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati is trying to put her party back into gear."We must show the Samajwadi Party its place in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in which we must retain our last tally of 20 seats at all costs," Mayawati told a gathering of her party leaders in Lucknow last week.
The occasion, which brought Yadav, a former chief minister, and the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo together was a meeting convened to finalise nominees for the State Human Rights Commission. The arch rivals had parted ways following the collapse of their coalition government in 1995 and have been bitter critics attacking each other and rarely acknowledging even the presence of the other at public functions.
The demolition of Sahara Shahar's illegal encroachments is symbolic. The real assault will be executed at the right psychological and emotional moment, in true Mayawati style. Make no mistake.
With two more phases to go in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Chief Minister Mayawati is confident of returning to power. "We would do better than the 2007 elections," said a beaming 'Behenji' after she cast her vote in Lucknow in the fourth phase of the elections on Sunday.
'Emboldened by the BJP victory, the upper castes feel they must assert themselves and regain dominance over the rural power structure.'
The Lokayukta has found Siddiqui, who is also Bahujan Samaj Party's general secretary and leader of the opposition in the state legislative council (Vidhan Parishad), prima facie guilty of amassing assets far disproportionate to his known and legitimate sources of income.
Smelling a major scam in the recent sale of four sugar mills by the Uttar Pradesh government, the Congress on Thursday accused Chief Minister Mayawati of large-scale bungling and manipulation in palming off the mills to handpicked buyers.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has showered praise on the multiple and extravagant monuments and parks built by his bete noire -- Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati.
She said poor people and farmers have been badly hit by high denomination rupee ban decision.
Accusing the Congress of playing gimmick after gimmick to woo dalits, Bahuijan Samaj Party supremo and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati on Friday predicted that the next game of the party would be to install a Dalit as the country's prime minister.
Hours after Mayawati inaugurated the Rs 685-crore memorial park in Noida, Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh on Friday accused the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister of squandering the hard earned money of the people of the country on the building of monuments, parks and her own statues.
A myth was nurtured for nearly three decades that any chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who visited Noida in Gautam Buddh Nagar district was doomed to go out of power.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh to the kin of each of the deceased and Rs 50,000 to the injured.
Ill-health forced Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to cancel his scheduled visit to Chennai on Tuesday, where he was invited by his Tamil Nadu counterpart MK Stalin, a key aide of the Janata Dal-United leader said.
Speaking after dedicating over 15 memorials, including the statues of BSP founder Kanshi Ram along with those of her, Mayawati, who had recently made controversial remarks about Mahatma Gandhi, said 'the total costs incurred in building these monuments is much less than the total value of land at Rajghat', the memorial in Delhi for the Father of The Nation.
Poll-bound Delhi will witness star-studded election rallies on Sunday, organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party's ally Shiromani Akali Dal, the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which are trying their best to ensure impressive turnouts.Congress president Sonia Gandhi will sound the election bugle from Mangolpuri in outer Delhi while Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BSP chief Mayawati will address a rally in Trilokpuri in east Delhi.
The response was tepid in other parts of the country even as several INDIA bloc parties as well as other non-BJP outfits extended their support to the bandh.
On her birthday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati had an answer for each of her detractors: the Samjawadi Party, the Bhartiya Janata Party and the Congress. "If Congressmen have a problem with my celebrating my birthday, then we could also observe Congress president Sonia Gandhi's birthday as ghulami diwas (slavery day) - considering she is a person of foreign origin, for which she has always been targeted by other opposition parties", Mayawati said.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has told the Supreme Court that the prosecution of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati in a disproportionate assets case cannot be dropped as it has found cogent, credible and admissible evidence against her.
Reacting to the statement, Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary said "insulting the Sanatan Dharma again and again" has become the habit of the Samajwadi Party and its leaders.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati's focus on the state's deteriorating law and order led to the unceremonious exit of Director General of Police Vikram Singh late Tuesday night.