With about 18 weeks to go for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the state is being barnstormed by one notable politician after another.
Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj on Saturday gave 'gurumantra' on how to become a popular legislator to newly elected Members of Legislative Assembly of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly. "The biggest wish of every MLA is how to become the most popular legislator and there are four important dimensions which, if followed, can make you popular," Sushma said during an orientation programme of first-time MLAs.
After it failed the crucial May 2014 'exams' without even getting 'passing marks', its that time again for the Congress as elections for the two state assemblies of Maharashtra and Haryana taking place on October 15. Renu Mittal reports
Its electoral triumphs in assembly polls, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, have made the BJP the single-largest party in the Rajya Sabha.
Counting of votes will be held on Thursday for 51 assembly seats and two Lok Sabha constituencies spread across 18 states where by-elections were held two days ago.
From invoking the 'Saptarishi' (Ursa Major) constellation, seven basic notes of Indian classical music to 'saat phere' (seven circumambulations) -- parties give different reasons and logic to claim that they will emerge victorious in the polls.
Addressing an election rally in the family bastion of Saifai, Akhilesh Yadav also asserted that his party will register a historic win in the bypoll.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi quit his Vadodara Lok Sabha seat, choosing to retain Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, where the Bharatiya Janata Party recorded a landslide victory bagging 71 of the 80 seats in the recent elections.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday said 166 criminals were killed and 4,453 injured in encounters with the Uttar Pradesh police in the past five years, highlighting his government's zero-tolerance policy on crime.
Kharge claimed that though the BJP says the corrupt must be put in jails, when leaders facing corruption charges join the saffron party, they are "put on the lap" and sent to Rajya Sabha or assembly.
Caste assertions, including from the upper castes, could have the Sangh Parivar stumble yet again in its efforts to construct a Hindu rashtra.
'The allegations of government involvement in targeted assassinations abroad are likely to help, not hurt, the ruling party.' 'True or false, they convey a sense of muscularity and, in some quarters, are celebrated as a harbinger of 'great power' status.'
The Samajwadi Party on Thursday announced Dimple Yadav as its candidate for Mainpuri parliamentary seat, which fell vacant after the death of party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav.
'It is not just about numbers. Sometimes coalitions and alliances have symbolic value.'
Rediff.com gives you a look at newbies in the Council of Ministers
P Chidambaram and Rajeev Shukla of the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party's Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar, former Congress leader Kapil Sibal, Rashtriya Janata Dal's Misa Bharti and Jayant Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal were among the 41 winners declared elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav lashed out at his one-time ally, the Congress, and said that in the state the BJP is nowhere.
'Episodes of targeted attacks on Muslims established that for a section of people and, sadly, even officials of the State, the election results conveyed no lessons.' 'Opposition parties must not be hesitant in speaking out whenever the mob with tacit State support targets Muslims,' asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
The government had earlier announced the country's highest civilian honour for L K Advani and Karpoori Thakur.
With the curtains finally set to go up on the results of the assembly elections across five states on Tuesday, news channels are lining up an array of special programmes to hook viewers on D-day.
Voting for the seventh and final round will be held on March 7 for Varanasi and its eight adjoining districts.
The Congress expects Rahul Gandhi to take over as its chief this year, Jairam Ramesh said on Monday.
'We get the opportunity for new recruitment and the chance to introspect.'
The seats identified are from Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the Northeast.
Ansari said the Muslim community is now shedding the 'illusion' created by opposition parties like the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress.
Called "Babuji", the former chief minister of undivided Madhya Pradesh and former Governor of Uttar Pradesh in the post-Babri Masjid demolition era was considered as a people's man and was accessible to all.
Will Modi 3.0 also see theaterisation of India's armed forces?
The opposition is likely to put up a joint candidate for the July 18 presidential election despite not having numbers on its side, and consultations in this regard have already begun.
"I sometimes think of leaving it, but the chief minister's post doesn't leave me," Ashok Gehlot famously said earlier this year, in part as a signal to the Congress top brass not to pick someone else for the job if the party wins the assembly polls.
Hours after Uttar Pradesh labour and employment minister Swami Prasad Maurya quit his post, his daughter and the Bharatiya Janata Party's Badaun MP Sanghamitra Maurya on Tuesday claimed her father has not joined any party and will reveal his strategy in a couple of days.
The BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will need to break several records to emerge victorious in the next Lok Sabha elections. Mayank Mishra reports.
"As part of NDA, we look forward to joining forces with you in Maharashtra to help secure victory in upcoming Lok Sabha elections & beyond. @nitishkumar," Kishor tweeted while tagging JD-U president Nitish Kumar.
An eighth BJP candidate on Thursday filed his nomination for the Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, setting the stage for a contest with the Samajwadi Party on February 27.
Congress MP from Faizabad Nirmal Khatri was made the new Pradesh Congress Committee chief of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday in a bid to revive the organisation in the key state after the party's debacle in the February assembly elections.
Informing about his decision, Maurya said in a tweet in Hindi, 'Due to the attitude of gross neglect towards Dalits, backwards, farmers, unemployed youth and small and medium-sized traders, I am resigning from the council of ministers of Yogi (Adityanath) of UP.'
The BJP may win more seats in the February 5 assembly election, but not enough to trump AAP, notes Ramesh Menon.
Ramesh said Congress has taken "the right steps" vis--vis Uttar Pradesh elections.
The 'Group of 23' leaders who participated included Ghulam Nabi Azad, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik, Prithviraj Chavan, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor, besides Sibal who hosted the post-birthday dinner for them.
'Just today a shopkeeper I went to was saying how bad business is. He must have been a BJP supporter.' 'He finally said, "It's a good thing there's an NDA government, not a BJP government, 'they' had become too big for their boots,".'
The BSP is contesting on 20 seats in Karnataka election with an alliance with Janata Dal-Secular while the SP is contesting on 27 on its own.
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