Basic Education Minister Anupama Jaiswal's remarks came even as the ruling party's Dalit, OBC outreach programme faces criticism from opposition Bahujan Samaj Party and some BJP leaders, including MP Udit Raj.
Gandhi said the 5 'guarantees' promised by the party will be implemented within a few hours after the first Cabinet meeting.
'Both the BJP and SP have workers and cadres across the state, and now it will boil down to which party manages booths smartly and gets its voters to come out.'
Three of the fence-sitters rule fairly large states Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha that together send 63 members to Lok Sabha -- where the Congress or other opposition parties have been pushed to the margins.
Five-time MLA Parshottam Solanki, who is also known as 'Bhai' among his followers, has been winning Bhavnagar-Rural with a comfortable margin.
Successive elections have demonstrated that the BJP campaign switches towards polarisation when it is faced with palpable discontent among the electorate, notes Utkarsh Mishra.
Jeetega Bharat has selected 125 Lok Sabha seats across the country where it will assist the Opposition alliance.
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.
The controversy over a Trinamool Congress member of Parliament mimicking Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar took political centrestage on Wednesday with the issue playing out both inside and outside Parliament and President Droupadi Murmu joining Prime Minister Narendra Modi in expressing dismay.
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.
Kishor dared the BJP to release the full record of the chat on Clubhouse, a social media platform, and claimed that the saffron camp would not get more than 100 assembly seats in the ongoing elections.
The Bharatiya Janata Party faces an uphill task of repeating its performance of the last assembly election of winning 53 out of 58 constituencies in western Uttar Pradesh where polling will be held in the first phase on February 10.
Sanped in Haryana's Faridabad, where a Dalit family was burnt alive leading to the death of two toddlers, on Wednesday erupted in grief and indignation, with the locals blocking Delhi-Agra highway with their bodies in protest as politicians joined them in mourning the horrific killings.
The houses of a sitting and a former MLA, both Dalits, were set afire by a violent mob.
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.
Here is a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of the two aspiring CMs.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday promised free education in government schools and colleges in Chhattisgarh and Rs 4,000 a year for 'tendu' leaves collectors if his party retains power in the state.
'The Shiv Sena and the Ambedkarites are two powerful social forces in Maharashtra with a presence in the toiling classes. However, they were made to fight each other by the powers that be. Now, they are joining hands while overcoming this contentious past.'
Aimed at broadbasing support for it, the Bharatiya Janata Party has gone all out to woo the Dalit community, with party president Nitin Gadkari invoking B R Ambedkar in his presidential address at the National Council in Indore and making a special mention of disgraced former party chief Bangaru Laxman, who belongs to the Scheduled Caste.Soon after landing in the city on Tuesday, Gadkari, 52, had directly gone to Ambedkar's birthplace Mhow, to pay tributes to the Dalit icon.
Mayawati's failure to contest the election as also her not organising large election rallies, as she once did, have led political pundits to conclude, rightly or wrongly, that she is 'out of the race', Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesri point out.
The BSP chief said she will spend every moment of her life strengthening the party across the country and urged its members not to be disheartened.
The officer added the Saharanpur police has also reached out to its counterpart in adjoining districts to seek their support in the effort to nab the attackers.
Insiders say the BJP is now concerned the LJP putting up a good fight against the JD-U would mean benefitting the MGB in those seats. Moreover, Chirag and Tejaswi are known to be friends, and the former is battling for his political survival.
Banerjee said the Border Security Force must work impartially as the BJP "may not be in power tomorrow".
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday cited Delhi's alleged 'liquor scam' to accuse Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao of being under 'remote control' of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Chirag Paswan says his party's support to BJP is issue-based.
"We particularly want Bajrang Bali because he is linked to my own Dalit caste," Mayawati said.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday embarked on the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Thoubal in Manipur with a promise to bring peace and harmony in the ethnic violence-hit state.
Congress leader Sachin Pilot on Friday stressed that the party would fight the Rajasthan assembly polls "unitedly" and said that a decision on who would lead the next government would be taken by the high command after consultations with the newly-elected MLAs.
Political watchers say the caste survey report was made public to play the OBC-EBC card and stall the BJP's campaign to win most of Bihar's 40 Lok Sabha seats.
'Modi's charisma and appeal is unparalleled.' 'Yogi has his own appeal and people connect.' 'He is seen as trustworthy, hardworking and honest.' 'People feel that these qualities are both common to Yogi and Modi.'
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.
Noting that the young girl belonged to a Dalit migrant family from Bihar, Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Nirmala Sitharaman also took a swipe at Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, questioning if he had asked Rahul Gandhi about the issue while holding a joint poll campaign with him in the state.
'Both Modi and Yogi are contesting this election together.' 'Both bring their individual strengths to BJP in UP.'
Religion matters. Aspirational India is still poor. India admires strong leaders. India values decency. Shreekant Sambrani highlights the reasons why the BJP pulled off improbable victories in the Hindi heartland.
The opposition on Tuesday termed as an 'election jumla' the women's reservation bill brought by the government with many leaders raising questions over the proposed legislation, contending it doesn't account for reservation for OBC communities and that it will be effective at the earliest by the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.
'It doesn't help to transpose the Hindi heartland model on Bengal. Bengalis don't understand its dynamics. They won't comprehend the impact of Modi's dip in the Ganga because Bengal's political culture is different. Even in the Ramakrishna Mission Ashrams, Christ is worshipped on Christmas. It's difficult to polarise Bengal religiously'
A day after fielding Mohammed Yousuf Savanur as its candidate from Shiggaon in Haveri district, the party nominated Yasir Ahmed Khan Phatan in his place.
Banerjee, who is staging a two-day sit-in to protest alleged discrimination by the Centre against the state, had on Wednesday in a change of stance urged all political parties in the country to unitedly fight the Bharatiya Janata Party in next year's Lok Sabha election.
'The Constitution, which talks about democracy and equality, is something that will be applied in this country, and not Manusmriti in which the RSS believes.'
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