'Educated Muslim women overwhelmingly voted for me because of Modiji's stand on triple talaq.'
He claimed that Deoband's ancient name was Devvrad and evidences to support it were being collected.
'Yogiji insisted to Venkaiah Naiduji that he needs two more strong arms to rule Uttar Pradesh.'
Kicking up a controversy, Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Suresh Rana said that curfew will be imposed in Kairana, Deoband and Moradabad if he is elected again in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls next month.
Aditi Phadnis picks five key seats in the three states where assembly elections are being held today.
The BJP's bucket list this time includes districts such as Sultanpur, Aligarh, Firozabad, Deoband, Ghazipur, Basti and Mirzapur -- to rename a few. Virendra Singh Rawat reports.
With discussions on the UCC taking centrestage, he said the BJP government in the state will move towards implementing one law for all, "only after talking to all the parties".
Nazarwala, who predicted a triple century for the BJP in the UP elections, lists the challenges that await the new chief minister.
"Party's central observers -- Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and national general secretary Bhupendra Yadav -- will be present at the meeting on Saturday at 5 pm," UP BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said.
Adityanath has of late earned the nickname "bulldozer baba", which helped the party create a narrative of tough administration in the state polls.
Yogi Adityanath, who has been declared BJP candidate from Gorakhpur will be the second leader to contest from the district as a chief minister after Tribhuvan Narayan Singh, who lost in 1971.
Have Muslim women taken to the BJP under Modi even while their menfolk cling to 'secular' politics, asks Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Known for courting controversies, the Sadhvi claimed the mission of a Congress-free India has already been "accomplished" and it is now time to rid the country of Muslims.
'Congress and BSP are in the fray, but not in the contest.'
The results for the bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tripura were announced on Tuesday.
'Muslims may turn to the BJP or may not come out to vote in great numbers like they have in the past.' 'Anything can happen.' 'They can feel an increased sense of alienation, but that depends on the BJP -- on how it includes them.'
Cutting across party lines, chief ministers and others leaders urged the people to follow the self-imposed curfew from 7 am to 9 pm, noting that "social distancing" was key to breaking the chain of infection, as the number of coronavirus cases rose to 283 after 60 new cases were detected on Saturday, the highest so far in a day, and states like Maharashtra, Odisha and Bihar imposed partial lockdown till month end.
'How can the BJP give Muslim candidates tickets if they don't have any good Muslim candidates?'
Given the controversy over Uttar Pradesh's population control moves, Hemant Shivsaran/Rediff.com digs deep to find out how many children BJP MLAs in UP have.
'His selection is to honour the sentiment of the communal majoritarianism, satisfy the upper caste and continue the process of Hindutva.'
'The only narrative before India is what Modi and the BJP is presenting.' 'Nationalism has been taken as a serious plank by the BJP and RSS.' 'They want to keep the nationalism thing alive to make people forget the economic reality.'
As controversy continues over senior Uttar Pradesh Minister Azam Khan keeping away from its Agra meet, Samajwadi Party on Friday said no one can "blackmail" the party as nobody has the stature which supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav enjoys among the Muslim community.
'Had Muslims been a vote bank, they wouldn't be in the condition they are now,' Asaduddin Owaisi tells Jyoti Punwani.
'Compared to other social groups, managing the Muslim constituency has always been easier for the secularists.' 'Just some symbolic measures and window-dressing would keep the Muslim flock together.' 'Having been betrayed by all the supposedly 'secular' political parties, Muslims should turn into citizens without any ascriptive identity marks,'says Mohammad Sajjad.
'Dalits will only suffer in the days to come.'
'The BJP politics of appropriating icons from its ideological adversaries could only be a desperate attempt to extend the Jat-Muslim divide in Uttar Pradesh. Why this desperation when it can comfortably get votes on the plank of economic development?'
The 'secularists'are more adept at the politics of intense and alarmingly exaggerated fear-mongering, as this kind of politics provides easy votes of Muslims without making them answerable for the concrete issues of poverty, unemployment, lawlessness, and of basic needs like roads, electricity, etc, which is exactly how Nitish Kumar was defeated in the elections, says Mohammad Sajjad.
India's Muslims need to assert their educational and economic upliftment and political empowerment rather than be provoked by communal remarks, says Mohammad Sajjad, reflecting on the Malda riot.
'Even if Akhilesh Yadav opens up the entire state treasury for us we will not vote for the Samajwadi Party... ''...I don't want to return to my village, my head will be chopped off. They want me to press the button on the lotus.' Caught between an aggressive BSP cornering Dalit votes and the BJP cornering other Hindu votes, the Muslims of Muzaffarnagar have nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt presents the grim situation on the ground in western Uttar Pradesh.
