Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini has reached out to the SCs and the poor with the accelerated implementation of various schemes, especially the B R Ambedkar housing scheme.
It was a mixed bag for 11 seats with more than 35 percent Muslim voters, where six candidates of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi emerged victorious in the Maharashtra assembly polls on Saturday, while four seats went to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance.
Family members of Dalit icons B R Ambedkar, Jagjivan Ram, Kanshi Ram and other 'prominent people' belonging to the scheduled castes are among those invited for the January 22 consecration ceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, according to sources.
Mayawati, a former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, said she is hopeful her nephew will emerge as a "mature" leader.
The Congress has proposed AAP should contest five seats while the Samajwadi Party and Left parties could contest one seat each.
While the results of the bypolls will not directly impact the composition of the 403-member state Assembly, the contest is being seen as a prestige fight between the BJP and opposition parties.
Allahabad has seen some interesting battles, such as the Congress's Amitabh Bachchan defeating H N Bahuguna in 1984 or the 1988 by-poll that marked V P Singh's emergence as the contender for the PM post.
'It is an existential crisis. We cannot recover lost ground through social media. We need to forge alliances and reshape our ideological contours.'
In another jolt to the Bahujan Samaj Party, Mayawati's once trusted lieutenant and former minister R K Chaudhary on Thursday quit the party accusing her of "auctioning" tickets to contest assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) gave a huge blow to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance by winning 43 seats out of total 80 Lok Sabha seats of Uttar Pradesh, as per the Election Commission.
Announcing it on X, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said she has taken the decision in the interest of the party and the movement and till the time Anand gains "full maturity".
The counting of votes for the bypolls to 46 assembly seats in 13 states and in the Lok Sabha segments of Nanded in Maharashtra and Wayanad in Kerala, a crucial electoral exercise since the parliamentary polls in April-May, will begin at 8 am on Saturday.
Flaying the Mayawati government's decision to dedicate schemes worth Rs 7000 crore to the Bahujan Samaj Party founder Kanshi Ram, Samajwadi Party on Wednesday questioned the late Dalit leader's contribution to Uttar Pradesh and termed it as an attempt to 'Kanshimarise' state capital Lucknow.
'With her pan-Indian Dalit following her in a frenzy, slogging for her in the field, with their dreams of seeing a Dalit prime minister in India, the possibility is not as distant as most Indians wish/dread it to be.'
Congress president Sonia Gandhi had inquired about the health of BSP chief Kanshi Ram.
Azad said the Bhim Army will run parallel to the party and continue to fight for Dalit rights and enrol new members.
Mayawati said all the memorials that needed to be built in honour of Dalit icons have been built.
Mayawati made a series of tweets on the death anniversary of party founder Kanshiram and called on her followers to seek power.
At a time when the BJP's stars are at the top on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls, the Puri-Joshimath Sankaracharyas may have kick-started a row whose efforts might be to divide Hindus, not in the name of castes, but on what passes for greater belief, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
A local sculptor has been roped in to carve out some 150 statues of 'Behenji' to be installed at election offices and other places by BSP candidates in the coming elections for campaigning purposes.
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 BJP had registered a one-sided victory on all the 17 SC-reserved seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But in 2019, out of these 17 seats, it lost Nagina and Lalganj seats to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
'I declared myself a Sikh. We want freedom from caste discrimination.'
Indicating that her ultimate goal is New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister blatantly displayed her feudal ways in a flamboyant celebration to mark the completion of her 100 days in office
Lok Sabha constituencies that sprung a surprise in the 2024 polls.
Siddiqui claimed that he had enough material to cause an 'earthquake'.
They try to hide behind the smokescreen that these are works of fiction inspired by real events. So, you can pick and choose from facts and fictionalise to push the right triggers with your audience or appease the powers that be, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Rahat Qureshi was nabbed from Kanshi Ram Colony on Saturday, Superintendent of Police Piyush Srivastva said.
Sixteen top officials of the Uttar Pradesh Construction Corporation were suspended by the Samajwadi Party-led state government for their alleged involvement in the multi-crore scam in the construction of the Kanshi Ram Memorial during Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati's regime. The suspended officials include four general managers and a dozen project managers of the Uttar Pradesh Nirman Nigam.
Gandhi had on Saturday said that the Congress reached out to the BSP leader, offering her the chief minister's post for contesting the assembly polls together, but she did not respond.
Predicting an early Lok Sabha election, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati on Tuesday called upon her supporters to get into the poll gear and start working towards expanding the party base to ride on to power at the Centre.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati is all set to sound the bugle for the 2012 political battle from Lucknow on Tuesday, which also marks the sixth death anniversary of her mentor and party founder Kanshi Ram.
Under attack over the controversial Rs 685-crore Dalit memorial, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Friday hit out at Congress saying it had no right to criticise when it has raised so many memorials for the Nehru-Gandhi family across the Yamuna bank in Delhi.
'Jignesh Mevani has many strengths: Youth, articulation, fearlessness, proficiency with social media, political and ideological flexibility.' 'Also focus, as in targeting the BJP as the one and only enemy for now and using that justification to align with the rest,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The Supreme Court on Monday imposed an interim stay on directives passed by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments that eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route must display names of owners.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati dubbed the austerity measures initiated by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance as a "drama".
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.
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