Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav would file his nomination papers on Thursday for the biennial elections to 13 seats of Legislative Council slated for April 26 next.
Police on Monday stopped the protest march taken out by the Samajwadi Party highlighting the issues in Uttar Pradesh before the monsoon session of the state legislature.
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.
Tea and snacks like samosa and gulab jamun offered to guests by ministers have cost the Uttar Pradesh state exchequer nearly Rs 9 crore during four years of Akhilesh Yadav government.
Parties like the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, Mahaan Dal, and Janvadi Party-Socialist had distanced themselves from the SP after its defeat in the 2022 state assembly elections.
The Samajwadi Party and Congress have announced that they will contest together under the INDIA bloc.
Dharmendra Pratap Singh is 8 feet, 1 inch tall.
Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak said on Tuesday night that all the eight candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party have won in the Rajya Sabha elections from the state.
SP chief spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said Akhilesh will not participate in the yatra, nor will any other leader from the party.
A 23-year-old Dalit woman was found dead in Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh, with her family alleging she was killed for refusing to vote for the Samajwadi Party in the Karhal assembly bypoll. Two individuals have been arrested in connection with the woman's death. The incident has escalated into a political controversy, with the BJP accusing the SP of creating an atmosphere of terror and the SP alleging that the Election Commission is turning a blind eye to the BJP's alleged misuse of government machinery. The bypoll in Karhal is being contested by the SP's Tej Pratap Singh and his 'fufa' Anujesh Pratap Singh, with the BSP also fielding a candidate.
In the past five years, UP's Opposition remained passive and defensive against the BJP, a trend that does not augur well for the impending battle.
Mulayam Singh Yadav complained of uneasiness and breathing difficulty.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has opted not to grant tickets to eight MLAs, followed by Congress which replaced five MLAs.
Another meeting convened by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge at his residence in New Delhi on Wednesday with the floor leaders of the INDIA constituents in Parliament will, however, go ahead according to its schedule to formulate the opposition strategy for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi along with the five other Congress MPs from Uttar Pradesh will visit violence-hit Sambhal on Wednesday, party's state unit chief Ajay Rai said.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday night sacked a junior minister and changed the portfolios of 11 ministers including 9 of cabinet rank in a major reshuffle of his council of ministers.
Dissident Congress leader Sachin Pilot began a 125-km foot march from Ajmer to Jaipur on Thursday, challenging Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and the party's top brass as assembly elections in Rajasthan approach.
The June 23 meeting of opposition parties, called by Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar, will see anti-BJP players chalk out a strategy for the Lok Sabha polls.
The Samajwadi Party is unwilling to cede ground to the BJP, especially in Amethi, since the Congress is too weak to counter the BJP's well-oiled election machinery.
Akhilesh Yadav has instructed party MLAs to vote for opposition candidate Meira Kumar, SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav and his brother Shivpal Yadav might go in favour of NDA's nominee Ram Nath Kovind.
The party also decided to field Narpat Singh Rajvi from Chittorgarh after its earlier decision to deny the five-term MLA, who is the son-in-law of its stalwart leader Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, renomination from his Vidhyadhar Nagar seat. This triggered a backlash from a section of party workers.
'The BJP will use Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha to check Nitish Kumar.' 'They will not allow him to function freely as before.'
Opposition parties demanded that all elections in the future be held through ballot papers.
The election management committee and the election manifesto committee were formed by the party's national president J P Nadda.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma, state BJP president C P Joshi and Union minister Bhupendra Yadav welcomed them into the party at its state headquarters in Jaipur.
With the 2024 Lok Sabha elections less than eight months away, the SP is experimenting with yet another template of combining a soft Hindutva tenor with its time-tested Muslim-Yadav combination to reclaim its lost political capital vis-a-vis the BJP.
An inadvertent slip by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav while declaring Bollywood hit PK as tax free has not only earned him criticism on the social media but a social activist has also moved an application for lodging an FIR, accusing him of piracy.
In his maiden foray in the state election, Yadav won from the Karhal assembly seat by a margin of 67,504 votes.
The Congress, meanwhile, alleged that both the Samajwadi Party and the BJP are hand-in-glove with the criminals and were two sides of the same coin.
Though there was no official word from both the parties, the sources claimed that two Uttar Pradesh-based political outfits will contest 37 Lok Sabha seats each.
The father of one of the rapists sentenced to death by a Delhi court for the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic in the national capital last December, on Friday said he would explore the option of appealing to a higher court.
The governor accepted Kumar's resignation, and asked him to continue as caretaker CM till a new government is formed, they said.
Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister and former state BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya had also dropped a hint in a recent tweet, saying Yaduvanshi (Yadavs), Ravidasiyo (Jatavs) and Pasmanda Muslims will be brought closer to the BJP so that the lotus 'blossoms' in every booth in UP.
"We Ram-bhakts, today, as part of this programme, take this pledge that at the earliest, the Ram Mandir be constructed. Jai Shri Ram," the video showed him saying.
Hindustani Awam Morcha chief Jitan Ram Manjhi on Friday alleged that "poisonous substances" were being mixed into the food served to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, by those "coveting his chair".
The Lal Bahadur Shastri Bhawan, known as the secretariat annexe building which houses the chief minister's office as well as those of senior officials, is being painted saffron replacing the traditional white and blue.
While Yadav began to tour different constituencies and address public meetings to mobilise the SP rank and file, he has concurrently started the tedious process of cobbling up an alliance of smaller outfits representing a mlange of castes and sub-castes, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
Amid raging controversy over Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav's claim -- that those living in relief camps in Muzaffarnagar were political activists and not riot victims -- his party went into fire fighting mode on Wednesday, saying his statement had been twisted.
The Samajwadi Party leadership in Uttar Pradesh came under attack on Sunday over holding the annual festival of song and dance at the Yadav family's native village at a time when hundreds of victims of Muzaffarnagar riots were living in difficult circumstances in relief camps.
In the pictures, Swati Singh is seen cutting a ribbon with a group of people, including some bureaucrats, standing alongside her.
