The Election Commission has intensified preparations for the West Bengal Assembly elections by reshuffling senior officers and deploying IAS and IPS officers in key poll management roles.
When Prasada joined the BJP months before the UP assembly elections, Sibal had written on the microblogging website, "Jitin Prasada Joins BJP. The question is will he get 'prasada' from BJP or is he just a 'catch' for UP elections? In such deals if 'ideology' doesn't matter changeover is easy."
Hours after Jitin Prasada switched from Congress to Bharatiya Janata Party, party spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia welcomed Prasada to the party asserting that his inclusion would make the BJP stronger in Uttar Pradesh.
Jitin Prasada was once considered as among Rahul Gandhi's 'young Turks' and was a minister in successive Manmohan Singh governments but defected from the Congress to the BJP in 2021, where he has again established himself as a prominent Brahmin face of Uttar Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya has called for Aligarh to be renamed 'Harigarh', drawing parallels with the renaming of Ayodhya and Prayagraj. He also paid tribute to former CM Kalyan Singh and criticized the Samajwadi Party.
Can Jitin Prasada retain the BJP's Brahmin vote in UP?
The reshuffle in the Union Cabinet, carried out on Wednesday, appears to have some focus on assembly election-bound states like Kerala and Uttar Pradesh.
Braving heavy rains, farmers and Congress workers on Saturday gathered in Aligarh for the 'kisan mahapanchayat', marking the culmination of Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi's four-day foot march in Uttar Pradesh. Travelling in buses, trucks and tractor-trolleys, the villagers arrived from the wee hours at the sprawling Nomaish Ground, amid tight security.
The Congress on Thursday dubbed as an instance of "Mayawati's jungleraj" the criminal case filed by Uttar Pradesh police against Union Ministers Jitin Prasad and RPN Singh for allegedly assaulting Samajwadi Party workers during Rahul Gandhi's rally in Phulpur recently.
An incensed Congress on Tuesday demanded the immediate arrest of Sharad Yadav for his remark against Rahul Gandhi and said the Janata Dal - United president had lost his mental balance.
The Bhartiya Janata Party has questioned Finance minister P Chidambaram's comment that cartelisation by some politicians has led to increase in prices of essential commodities and other items like steel, iron and cement.
The details of the march, called Gandhi Yatra, are still being worked out, sources said, adding the Mahatma's favourite bhajans will be played along the route.
'These betrayers don't realise that their exit opens up vast new opportunities to those whose growth they have always stunted'
Those who denounced the letter writers in the "Group of 23" like Nirmal Khatri and Naseeb Pathan have interestingly found places in the panels announced by Gandhi on Sunday evening.
On being asked what Varun Gandhi would do now, she replied, "Ask him what he wants to do. We will consider this after the elections. There is time."
Heavy police force was deployed at the Congress office in view of the march and roads leading to it were barricaded. However, many Congress workers reached the spot and started a public meeting.
The UP Congress reportedly passed a resolution demanding action against Prasada, a leader from Uttar Pradesh, and has accused his family of being against the Gandhi family.
The second list has named 16 candidates from Uttar Pradesh and five from Maharashtra.
The party fielded Maneka Gandhi from Sultanpur, while Uttar Pradesh minister Jitin Prasada has replaced Varun Gandhi in Pilibhit.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday declared 13 candidates from Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha polls including actor Arun Govil, who played Lord Ram in popular TV serial Ramayan, from Meerut, while replacing sitting MP Varun Gandhi from Pilibhit with state minister Jitin Prasada.
Five Congress ministers lose. Only Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi win.
Scindia also said that as far as talks for alliances are concerned, "like-minded parties should also think in a like-minded way".
Rahul Gandhi on Thursday joined his sister Priyanka Gandhi in attacking Narendra Modi over snoopgate controversy, saying the Gujarat government has no regard for women as it gets their phones tapped.
Without taking any name, Prasada hit out at the regional parties in the wake of Akhilesh Yadav, the chief of Uttar Pradesh's main regional party, of late making consistent attacks on the ruling BJP.
As people queued up across these states to cast their vote, there were some famous faces in the lines at different polling stations.
Many factors like women, caste combination, education qualification, age and performance of the legislators will be taken into consideration before the formation of the Yogi government 2.0, sources said on Thursday. Several rounds of meetings have taken place within the party after the poll results came out on March 10.
Ghulam Nabi Azad's resignation from the Congress on Friday marked the most high-profile exit of one of the "Group of 23" (G-23) leaders, who had written to party chief Sonia Gandhi two years ago for a "collective and inclusive leadership" in the organisation, exposing the faultlines in the grand old party.
Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said Singh was 'not fully committed' towards the party's ideology and that is why he left this fight midway to join the saffron party.
Rahul Gandhi reached the revered ancient Kedarnath shrine in the lower Himalayas on Friday morning
The BJP took into consideration caste and regional aspirations while picking ministers in a bid to further consolidate its hold over the politically crucial state which sends the maximum of 80 members to Lok Sabha.
Rahul asserted that Sheila Dikshit was "highly experienced" to change UP's face.
Sonia claimed that the Congress was the only one party that followed the path shown by him and carried on his legacy.
The monk-turned politician will take the reins of the most populous state for a second time in a row after completing his full five-year term.
The meeting came after a letter of Khatik to Union Home Minister Amit Shah offering to quit surfaced on social media.
Less than half the ministers in Team Yogi are not long-term BJP members. Many old-timers have been dropped.
I begin a new chapter in my political journey. Jai Hind," he wrote on Twitter sharing his brief resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi.
The ambit of the G-23 grouping increased this time as some more leaders -- Patiala MP Preneet Kaur, former Gujarat chief minister Shankar Singh Vaghela, former union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar and former Haryana speaker Kuldeep Sharma -- joined them.
The Baharatiya Janata Party condemned Uttar Pradesh government's crackdown against VHP yatra from Ayodhya and accused it of playing vote bank politics while Samjwadi Party said it won't let the state "become another Gujarat" or a repeat of Dec 6, 1992, when the Babri mosque was demolished.
Two men from her village have been arrested. National Security Act will be invoked against the accused.
The Congress party's first list of 194 Lok Sabha candidates released on Saturday night has no major surprises. Anita Katyal reports
