Five years ago, Nazarwala made history when he predicted on Rediff.com that Mayawati would be victorious in the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, winning over 184 seats. With UP heading into a critical assembly election, Nazarwala returns to Rediff.com and writes of a mandate squandered at the altar of megalomania and vanity.
A satirical play, depicting the extravagant lifestyle of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, has been banned by her government.
Out of the 403 seats up for grabs, the BSP had prepared a final list comprising 97 Muslim candidates (12 more than 2012), 87 Dalits and 106 other backwards castes, besides earmarking 113 seats for upper castes -- Brahmins 66, Kshatriyas 36 and others 11.
Claiming shunted IAS officer Kunwar Fateh Bahadur has been appointed principal secretary to Chief Minister Mayawati, opposition parties in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday asked the Election Commission to remove him from the post immediately.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati has combined three bungalows into one in the prime location of the Lutyen's zone of Delhi and the unauthorised construction has come under the scanner of state-builder Central Public Works Department.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) defeat in the Bhadohi Assembly by-election in Uttar Pradesh last month was a big blow. Not only was this the first major setback for the Mayawati-led BSP, but also showed the flaws in the first-Lucknow-next-stop-Delhi project.
'Ruksana affected me very deeply.' 'It was the circumstances around her that changed her in various ways.' 'Of course, I carry her back home, hoping and praying from the bottom of my heart that nobody ever has to be in this situation.'
"TRS welcomes the decision of the UP Chief Minister. It is a bold step. It is very good for democracy. She has also reiterated her support to the formation of Telangana. For her act of kindness, I thank her," TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao told media persons in Hyderabad before leaving for Delhi to attend the Parliament session.
Addressing a press conference shortly after ensuring the approval of the resolution in an unprecedented manner, Mayawati said, "Well, we will now forward this resolution to the centre and it is not for them to get an approval of the parliament to see that Uttar Pradesh is divided into four smaller states in the larger interest of the people."
Indian-origin British author Sunjeev Sahota is among the 13 authors longlisted for the prestigious 2021 Booker Prize for fiction for his novel China Room, alongside Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro and Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers.
Rediff readers shared these photographs of tigers.
Rebutting that the Bahujan Samaj Party was pursuing policies against upper-castes, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Wednesday said it was the UPA government that was against the section as it turned down the suggestion of the party to formulate a law aimed at benefiting them. "Soon after we came to power, we recommended a law under which economically weaker sections even in upper castes could get reservation. But the Centre did not pay any heed," she said.
He challenged political parties to face the polls with the issue.
Hitting back at Mayawati who wants him to be put in a "mental asylum", WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday said that the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister needed to take up her case with the United States if she has a problem with the contents of American diplomatic cables that painted her as an "egomaniac."
Making a U-turn, the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday decided to return the land in Rae Bareli for construction of a rail coach factory, an issue on which she had a high-pitched spat with Congress President Sonia Gandhi during the week.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Friday dared Team Anna to fight the next general elections if it wants the Jan Lokpal Bill to be passed in Parliament.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati on Sunday lashed out at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his 'puppy' and 'Hindu nationalist' remarks and advised the senior BJP leader to study the Indian Constitution thoroughly.
The petition also seeks quashing of the first information report against her by the CBI.
Under attack for spurt in crime against women in Uttar Pradesh, the state government on Monday said it will launch a special one-month-long drive on July 1 to check atrocities against women.
Naidu is keen to enrol BSP into the 'Third Front', known as UNPA to fill the gap left by the departure of Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party recently to join hands with the UPA.
Reaching out to the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, which has 17 MPs in the Lok Sabha, Communist Party of India-Marxist General Secretary Prakash Karat drove to the Uttar Pradesh chief minister's residence in New Delhi to hold the first meeting after the Left parties withdrew support to the United Progressive Alliance government over the nuclear deal.
With the SP leadership already known to be looking for an opportunity to shake hands with Congress, Mayawati's decision was bound to propel the Congress leadership to respond at last -- even though the withdrawal was not likely to even remotely affect the fate of the UPA government. Political compulsions are bound to bring the two adversaries to a negotiating table since both have a tougher task ahead of them -- to tackle the visibly increasing might of the BSP.
The athletes on the US magazine's list have enjoyed sporting success as well as promoting other causes.
The Bharatiya Janata Party released a CD containing what it alleged 100 scams that took place during the Bahujan Samaj Party-led Mayawati regime in Uttar Pradesh.
Chuni Goswami needs insulin daily and due to the 21-day nationwide lockdown his medical supervisor is not able to attend him but his wife Basanti is 'managing' it somehow. Former India hockey captain Gurbux Singh remembers the World War II and also the partition but said he never witnessed anything like the current crisis.
The occasion, which brought Yadav, a former chief minister, and the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo together was a meeting convened to finalise nominees for the State Human Rights Commission. The arch rivals had parted ways following the collapse of their coalition government in 1995 and have been bitter critics attacking each other and rarely acknowledging even the presence of the other at public functions.
'These accusations of my film being a copy only makes our chances at the Academy harder.'
An aggressive Congress and the party-led United Progressive Alliance government worked in cohesion on Thursday to attack Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati from both the AICC as well as the newly-constituted Group of Ministers' platform, set up to bridge the 'information deficit.'
Releasing a 16-page chargesheet Ek Saal Mein Badhaal Pradesh Bana Uttar Pradesh, UP Congress president Rita Bahuguna Joshi told media persons that it was a compilation of election promises made by Mayawati and ground realities. She alleged law and order in the state had become bad to worse under Bahujan Samaj Party's rule and atrocities against women, Dalit and poor have gone up drastically.
Exhausted on account of exposure to the scorching heat, Bahujan Samaj Party's Brahmin mascot and party national general secretary Satish Chandra Misra fainted at a Brahmin rally in Khalilabad town, about 200 km from Lucknow, on Saturday.
Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Saturday backed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's demand for inclusion of a Dalit representative in the Lokpal drafting committee while Justice Santosh Hegde does not seem to find any merit in it.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati on Tuesday branded rival Samajwadi Party leaders as "terror elements" addressing their objection to being called "goondas" even as she pressed for imposition of President's Rule in Uttar Pradesh.
Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Mahendra Singh Tikait's elder son Rakesh Tikait has been taken into custody and moved to an undisclosed location, party sources claimed on Tuesday, a day after large-scale clashes took place between his party's supporters and the police. The party sources claimed that he was arrested at the Guest House and taken to some undisclosed location. However, there was no word from the police on Rakesh Tikait's arrest.
Tension prevailed in Sisoli village in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh after supporters of Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Mahender Singh Tikait clashed with police trying to arrest him for allegedly making derogatory remarks against state Chief Minister Mayawati, leaving a dozen policemen injured. Uttar Pradesh government has sounded an alert in all the districts of Western Uttar Pradesh and paramilitary forces rushed to the area to avoid any untoward incident.
The Crime Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department, which was entrusted with the probe into the sensational case, took BSP MLA Jitendra Singh 'Babloo' and UP State Ganna Sansthan chairman Intezar Abdi 'Bobby' into custody late Thursday night.
Talking to reporters in Lucknow on the sidelines of a workshop for Pradesh Congress Committee members, Jaiswal said the UP government had complained that in certain states the laid down security procedures were not being followed for the protection of Mayawati.
"Congress workers should use the Right to Information Act to seek the truth and visit every block to expose the lies of the BSP supremo before the people," All-India Congress Committee general secretary and the party's in-charge of the state Digvijay Singh said.
In the final part of a series on Presidential Scholars, Arthur J Pais profiles Maya Lakshmi Srinivasan who recovered from her shattered dreams of being a national gymnast.
The court dismissed the last-ditch appeal by his mother, saying Dharmalingam has been given "due process in accordance with the law".
The alleged gang-rape and illegal confinement of a minor girl by ruling Bahujan Samaj Party Member of Legislative Assembly Purshottam Naresh Dwivedi in Banda district did cast its shadow on the mega celebrations organised to mark the 55th birthday of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati in Lucknow on Saturday.While the entire BSP machinery was busy with Mayawati's birthday celebrations, the Allahabad high court sprung a surprise.
