The Uttar Pradesh government has withdrawn the 'Y-category' security cover provided to Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, saying it was not needed, even as his party decried the move as "unfortunate."
The report indicates that the miscreants forcibly entered her house and physically assaulted her. Shockingly, they also snatched her infant daughter and callously threw her away, the commission said.
Saturday's voting will mark the end to the marathon polling process that began on April 19 month and has already covered 486 Lok Sabha seats in 28 states and Union territories.
Consolidating its position, the Bharatiya Janata Party wrested high-profile Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh from the Samajwadi Party and won three assembly seats, including that of Chief Minister Manik Saha, in Tripura in by-election results announced on Sunday.
Villagers alleged that a seven-month-old child was snatched from her mother's lap and thrown away by miscreants in Sandeshkhali.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday dubbed the electoral bonds as the 'world's biggest extortion scheme' and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the 'champion of corruption'.
Voters include 8.4 crore men, 8.23 crore women and 11,371 from third gender. There are as many as 35.67 lakh first time voters, besides 3.51 crore young voters in the age group of 20-29 years.
A local court on Wednesday sent Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to one year in jail for violating prohibitory orders during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. Judicial magistrate Manish Kumar held Naqvi guilty under sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 341 (wrongful restraint) and 342 (wrongful confinement) of the Indian Penal Code, 7 Criminal Law Amendment Act and Section 144 of CrPC.
The seats held by the non-BJP parties in the state are Bijnor, Amroha, Moradabad, Sambhal, Raebareli, Ghosi, Lalganj, Jaunpur, Ambedkarnagar, Ghazipur, Shravasti, Mainpuri, Saharanpur and Nagina. Of these, Raebareli is held by Sonia Gandhi of the Congress.
The two were booked under sections 295 A (deliberate and malicious acts to outrage religious feelings) and 153 A (promoting enmity between different religious groups) of the IPC at Civil Lines Police Station here on Tuesday.
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.
The TMC has won in 34,560 gram panchayat seats, besides leading in 705 seats, according to the SEC as of 11.30 am on Wednesday.
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.
Modi also lauded party workers in the state, saying each of them is a champion
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which won 25 seats in the Himachal Pradesh elections, suffered a setback in the assembly segments falling under Shimla, Hamirpur and Kangra parliamentary constituencies in the hill state.
Rampur Sadar and Khatauli in Uttar Pradesh, Padampur in Odisha, Sardarshahar in Rajasthan, Kurhani in Bihar and Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh are the assembly seats where the bypolls are being held.
A win for SP could provide some consolation for Akhilesh Yadav after the defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early this year and the loss of Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in June bypolls.
Yadav asserted that he has always maintained that seat distribution should be decided considering which alliance partner is the strongest in a particular state.
Speculation has gained ground that she will contest from Rampur as she has been elected from there twice.
Samajwadi Party MLA Abdullah Azam Khan was disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh assembly on Wednesday, an official said, days after a court sentenced him to two-year imprisonment in a 15-year-old case.
'BJP has risen to second spot, ahead of the BSP, as the political party of choice for Muslims in UP.' 'Only the BJP government has worked tirelessly to usher in the minorities to the mainstream of society'
'They know that if they do not tie up with the Congress, then the minorities will move to the Congress.'
In contrast to the inertia in the SP camp, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party showed no complacency in the run-up to the polls this month.
In Pasmanda Muslim meets, the BJP leaders are highlighting that the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress always used Muslims as a "vote bank" and did not give them their due.
The counting began at 8 am to decide the fate of the candidates contesting the polls, among whom all eyes will be on Dimple Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav's elder daughter-in-law and the wife of Akhilesh Yadav, who is contesting from the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, necessitated by the demise of Samajwadi Party veteran Mulayam Singh Yadav in October.
Counting began at 8 am under multi-tier security cover. At first, postal ballots will be counted and then EVMs opened.
The bypolls were conducted for two Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, one each in Meghalaya and Odisha and the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency in Punjab.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and MP Ramgopal Yadav accompanied 44-year-old Dimple during the filing of nomination papers at the District Magistrate's office in Mainpuri.
The Rampur assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh which fell vacant following the disqualification of SP leader Mohammad Azam Khan is one of the five seats going for the bypolls.
The SP's Uttar Pradesh president Naresh Uttam will, however, continue to remain in his position.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is headed for a big win in the Uttar Pradesh legislative council polls, bagging Barabanki and Ayodhya and leading in several other places. But it lost Varanasi to an Independent candidate.
The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, trouncing its main rival SP, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
According to BJP insiders, every Union minister has been given 3-4 seats to mentor and has been told to work hard on these constituencies in the next 20 months to ensure the party's victory.
The difference in the number of votes received by the candidates of the two parties in Bhoranj, Sujanpur, Darang, Bilaspur, Sri Naina Devi, Rampur, Shillai, and Sri Renukaji was less than 1,000 votes.
Nineteen people have been killed in rain-related incidents in Uttar Pradesh in the past 24 hours, the state relief commissioner's office said Monday evening.
Counting of votes for the bypolls in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand will be taken up on Sunday.
The erstwhile royals of Himachal Pradesh, who once commanded their own space in politics, are losing their charm as only two of them won in the state polls this time while two others lost at the hustings.
Officials said most of the preparations are complete and the counting will start at 8 am on Saturday.
Thursday was the day results from the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections and by-elections in Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh were out, so what were some of our leaders up to?
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