'They (BJP) can claim of winning even 82 seats, despite the fact that Uttar Pradesh has only 80 seats'
Adityanath has earned a new sobriquet "bulldozer baba" due to raging of properties of criminals and mafias built through illegal means.
The seat had fallen vacant after a court held the earlier held null and void the earlier election.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday accused Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of getting his telephones tapped and listening to the conversation every evening.
Gleaning lessons from Amit Shah's compendium of Chanakya-isms, the Samajwadi Party is keeping its operations low-key and working on an inclusive strategy.
'The people of Uttar Pradesh have already made up their mind to puncture the Samajwadi Party's cycle, kick away the Bahujan Samaj Party's elephant, and remove shadows of the already-vanished hand of the Congress.'
'Both the BJP and SP have workers and cadres across the state, and now it will boil down to which party manages booths smartly and gets its voters to come out.'
'This time, even the professedly secular parties have maintained a conscious distance from being identified with Muslims.' 'This could be interpreted as a success of the BJP campaign of what it has been calling 'minority appeasement', says Mohammad Sajjad.
The outcome in UP is far more significant than in the other states going to the polls next year. An unlikely setback in UP can cramp the Modi government, virtually making it a lame-duck two years ahead of the 2024 parliamentary poll, observes Virendra Kapoor.
'This is possibly a long drawn battle and if the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party are together in this long battle, a new political picture will emerge in the country.' 'In this battle if we have to sacrifice or give up anything, we are ready.' 'We have to remain cautious against the BJP's attempts to break our unity.' 'We want this alliance to stay.'
"You take any section of society be it Dalits, weavers or Brahmins, everybody has been exploited. The administration of Yogi Adityanath ji is working completely against the 'vichaar' (thoughts) of Guru Gorakhnath," she said at a rally, taking a swipe at the BJP leader who is also the head of the prominent Mutt in Gorakhpur named after Saint Gorakhnath.
The proceedings of the House were adjourned till 2 pm as slogan-shouting TMC and other opposition MPs trooped into the well of the House, some holding placards, to demand a discussion on the issue of Israeli-made, military-grade Pegasus spyware being used to snoop on opposition leaders, government critics and journalists.
District Collector Alok Ranjan Ghosh said that the Sector Officer Awadesh Singh's driver had expressed his desire to vote. According to a primary reply by the officer, he had taken the EVM machine and VVPAT into a private hotel. A formal reply by the Sector Officer is awaited.
Absence of name of actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha as BJP candidate from Patna Saheb seat on Friday caused heartburn among his supporters even as a large number of party legislators are angry over selection of "turncoats".
Don-turned-Bahujan Samaj Party member of Parliament Dhananjay Singh was arrested in Lucknow on Sunday evening in connection with his alleged involvement in a double murder case.
This election has some striking resemblances to the landmark one of 1977, with sub-caste combinations and antipathies still the bedrock of measures
Nitish's absence triggered speculation of a logjam in the coming together of Janata Dal-United and RJD ahead of the crucial state election.
Accusing the erstwhile Congress governments of pursuing "vote bank politics", PM Modi reached out to the numerically significant Nishad community in Uttar Pradesh
For firebrand Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yogi Adityanath, Hindutva and development complement each other and the sitting MP from Gorakhpur is harping on this ideology of political Hinduism, which he says is a "symbol of our nationalism", as he eyes a fifth straight term.
Within four years of winning a single party majority in the Lok Sabha with 282 seats -- the first time it has happened in 30 years -- the BJP has lost it.
'The NDA has provided me a healing touch to survive'
In an embarrassment to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, a senior Janata Dal-United Legislator Chhedi Paswan met Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi following which the party suspended him for six years.
Literally testing the waters in the politically crucial state, Priyanka Gandhi, who is in charge of eastern UP for the party, travelled about 100 kilometres on the Ganga over three days, ending Wednesday in Varanasi.
When the temple issue predominated BJP's discourse, its victory margins have been narrow.
The state government had on June 24 directed district adminstration to issue SC certificates to 17 OBCs -- Kashyap, Rajbhar, Dhivar, Bind, Kumhar, Kahar, Kewat, Nishad, Bhar, Mallah, Prajapati, Dhimar, Batham, Turha, Godia, Manjhi and Machua.
With an eye on the crucial Uttar Pradesh assembly election, BJP's national executive will begin its two-day meet in Allahabad on Sunday which will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah among others.
Somaiya, an old BJP hand and one of its leading speakers on economic issues in Parliament, had been a trenchant critic of the Sena.
Shatrughan Sinha and Kirti Azad certain to be axed along with Union minister R K Singh and former minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
Union ministers Prakash Javedkar and Nirmla Sitharaman and senior Janata Dal-United leader Sharad Yadav and Nationalist Congress Party's Praful Patel on Monday took oath as members of Rajya Sabha.
The polling for the sixth phase on May 12 covers 6 states and one Union Territory.
The party also nominated six others, including former Union minister Beni Prasad Verma, an influential Kushwaha leader who recently quit Congress and returned to the Samajwadi Party, and realtor Sanjay Seth for the biennial polls scheduled next month.
The Delhi Police has asked commuters to avoid Rajpath and its connecting roads on Friday morning as nearly 30,000 people are expected to throng the Red Fort on the occasion of International Day of Yoga, traffic officials said.
On Tuesday, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti kicked up a storm when she used expletives during a campaign speech in Delhi. While campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party, she called the electorate to choose between Ramzadon and h********n.
The bypolls were necessitated after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya vacated their seats following their election to the Uttar Pradesh legislative council.
Besides, the government would also undertake and promote steps for water conservation and curbing extraction of underground water, which is depleting the water table and is a matter of concern, the minister said.
'The poor manner in which the RJD stitched its alliance and mismanaged its electioneering, now reveals that Tejashwi was more interested in enhancing his political stature by cutting down many senior leaders, by downsizing and shrinking RJD allies, by displaying arrogance and inaccessibility and by committing silly mistakes in candidate selection,' points out Mohammad Sajjad.
'For the BJP to lose this virtual pocket borough of the saffron brotherhood demonstrates how resolutely the people of Gorakhpur have turned against the party,' says Amulya Ganguli.
Mohammad Sajjad raises important questions about the response to lynchings.
Given the controversy over Uttar Pradesh's population control moves, Hemant Shivsaran/Rediff.com digs deep to find out how many children BJP MLAs in UP have.
As the dust finally settles on the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections 2019 and Bharatiya Janata Party along with its NDA allies emerges as the clear winner, here is a list of who won in each of the 7 phases of elections.
