SP president Akhilesh Yadav and ally RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary are unlikely to participate in the Yatra due to "preoccupation" with their party programmes, their party leaders said.
Sure enough, the two UP satraps would need to initiate steps to put their respective houses in order and to rejuvenate their badly disillusioned party ranks following the humiliating drubbing in the Lok Sabha elections. However, whether the two regional titans would care to introspect about their own failings remains a million dollar question. Sharat Pradhan reports.
Congressmen came out against the BJP in Lucknow staging a dharna and demanding Sengar's expulsion from the saffron party.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Wednesday launched a scathing attack on the Samajwadi Party government over law and order in Uttar Pradesh, saying it would not be wrong to term the prevailing situation as "anarchic".
The idea is to reinforce Mulayam's 'dhartiputra' or son-of-the-soil image, say party sources.
Sources said the opposition parties would look to avoid the prickly leadership question as of now and emphasise on building a common ground.
Naresh Agarwal, who defected from Samajwadi Party, on Wednesday joined the BSP which declared him as its candidate for the Lok Sabha polls from Farrukhabad seat, a day after another SP leader Dhaniram Verma was inducted into Mayawati-led party. Agarwal, who was transport minister in the erstwhile Mulayam Singh Yadav government, was inducted into the party by chief minister Mayawati.
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.
Led by the state party chief Surya Pratap Shahi and the party's veteran local MP Lalji Tandon, BJP's mayors and other elected representatives of local bodies were not only disallowed to proceed towards the Governor's House, but also subjected to cane charge.
SP chief spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said Akhilesh will not participate in the yatra, nor will any other leader from the party.
The two parties named the seats distributed among them in a statement signed by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.
Rising from the shock and dismay of the devastating defeat at the March state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati is trying to put her party back into gear."We must show the Samajwadi Party its place in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in which we must retain our last tally of 20 seats at all costs," Mayawati told a gathering of her party leaders in Lucknow last week.
Accusing the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party of raising the minority sub-quota issue mid-way during the Uttar Pradesh polls for their political gains, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati on Wednesday said this helped in large-scale transfer of Muslim votes to Samajwadi Party.
Well before the counting of votes commenced at 8 am on March 6, Mayawati moved out of 4 Kalidas Marg, the UP chief minister's official residence, which she had converted into an inaccessible and impregnable fortress.
The ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh on Monday said all scams reported during tenure of the previous Bahujan Samaj Party government are being probed and if former chief minister Mayawati is found guilty, legal action would be initiated against her.
Mulayam's cousimn and senior Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav's son Akshay is all set to take the electoral plunge in Ferozabad. However, he faces really tough competition from BJP's S P Singh Baghel. Renu Mittal reports.
While Brijlal Khabri, former BSP MP from Jalaun, is UP Congress Committee chairman, former UP cabinet minister and Mayawati's once close confidant Naseemuddin Siddiqui heads the party's state media department. Completing the ex-BSP troika, Nakul Dubey, former UP cabinet minister in the Mayawati dispensation (2007-12), is one of the six UP Congress regional presidents. He is reckoned among the most active of the three.
The SP workers' confusion began last month when Prateek Yadav's wife participated in a function organised by Shivpal Yadav and expressed her support for him.
She joined the SP the day Rajnath Singh filed his nomination papers, hoping to retain the seat he won in 2014.
"The BJP tried every trick to defeat the BSP candidate and indulged in malpractices," the BSP supremo alleged.
Party chief Chaudhary Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhary will decide on the number of seats the party will contest and the matter may be discussed during a meeting in the next few days
A statue of Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati in the heart of Lucknow was attacked by vandals on Thursday. The statue was attacked with a hammer, beheaded and its hands were chopped off.
The lively lot of politicians at the helm of India's most important political province.
As the Opposition on Wednesday held its first meeting on the presidential election, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice for the top constitutional post with senior party leader Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Naveen Patnaik, sources said.
'The tally of Muslim MLAs has increased. They know they can make themselves count in the electoral system.'
'Akhilesh did politics like Rabi and Kharif crop which come once a year. Politics is not seasonal, you have to harvest your field all through the year and only then you get a good crop' Political analyst lists 12 reasons why Akhilesh Yadav lost the UP elections.
Among the notable absentees were Congress president Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's M K Stalin, Telugu Desam Party chief K Chandrashekhar Rao, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and Delhi chief minister and Aam Admi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal.
The best-case scenario is that the BJP will top out at around 50 seats in UP -- a drop of 12 from the 62 it had won in 2019. Taken in tandem with Maharashtra and Karnataka, this is what is likely to put paid to the BJP's ambitions of a third term for Modi, argues Prem Panicker.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Sunday cautioned voters that neither an Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance nor a united SP can check Bharatiya Janata Party and that only her party would render a crushing blow to Modi government by defeating the saffron party in Uttar Pradesh so that it does not take "immature" steps like the note ban.
Attacking the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party said on Tuesday that the Mayawati-led party was a "B-team" of Bharatiya Janata Party and the two parties were hand in glove with each other.
Mayawati urged the Muslim voters to vote for the party, saying her party has given tickets to 99 candidates from the community.
Espousing an aggressive pro-backward and Dalit stance synchronising with the Maurya controversy, the SP has thrown down the gauntlet with Akhilesh upping the ante on the burning topic, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati, who had drawn flak from the Supreme Court for wasting taxpayers' money by building parks and installing her statues, on Saturday warned the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh that any move to make changes in the memorials erected during her regime could create law and order problem.
With two more phases to go in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Chief Minister Mayawati is confident of returning to power. "We would do better than the 2007 elections," said a beaming 'Behenji' after she cast her vote in Lucknow in the fourth phase of the elections on Sunday.
While refuting media reports about her plans to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha election, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati on Thursday went all out to woo the state's Muslims, by training her guns at the entire brigade along with its prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Wednesday charged the Centre with misusing the Central Bureau of Investigation against her in the disproportionate assets case.
'The BJP is racing against its opponents by putting a chain on their legs.'
Mulayam Singh Yadav wrote to Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari informing him about the expulsion of Ramgopal Yadav.
Akhilesh and his father Mulayam attended the swearing-in ceremony of Yogi Adityanath, a move that surprised one and all.
