As the Prime Minister hit the campaign trail in his Lok Sabha constituency, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Varanasi on Saturday charged the administration with "selectively" pulling down its posters in the name of implementing the poll code.
She also vowed to waive farmers' loans up to Rs 1 lakh per head.
PM also came up with new acronym of Vikas--V for 'vidyut', K for 'kanoon vyawastha' and S for 'sadak'.
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.
Leaders from across the political spectrum criss-crossed the entire state to woo the voters but Mulayam mostly kept indoors.
Reaching out to Jats, a politically crucial community in western Uttar Pradesh, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah has presented his party as the best bet for them, saying voting for the Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal or any other party would not help their cause.
The party, however, has retained state president Naresh Uttam.
Muslim voters in Uttar Pradesh could have voted in significant numbers for the BJP, endorsing its stand on issues like women's rights.
The passport of rape accused Uttar Pradesh minister Gayatri Prajapati was impounded on Saturday and a look-out notice was issued against him, hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Samajwadi Party and the Congress of chanting "Gayatri Prajapati Mantra".
The election in this seat is also important for Union minister and local MP Mahesh Sharma who has considerable influence the area.
Throwing a fresh challenge to Akhilesh Yadav, his sidelined uncle Shivpal on Tuesday announced that he will float a party after election results are out on March 11 and threatened to back "rebel" candidates.
His comments come against the backdrop of the prime minister's remarks in Parliament that one should learn the art of "bathing with a raincoat on" from Manmohan Singh as there was not a single taint on him despite so many scams having taken place during his regime.
Mulayam had slammed the SP-Congress alliance and said that the SP was capable of contesting elections alone.
Akhilesh Yadav doesn't need Bollywood stars to power his campaign for the UP election when he has a charming campaigner like his missus.
Akhilesh was referring to the advertisement in which Bachchan is seen inviting tourists to visit the Wild Ass Sanctuary located in Little Rann of Kutch in the state.
The Congress on Friday said it was open to post-poll alliances, even though it exuded confidence of emerging victorious in all five states, including Uttar Pradesh in alliance with the Samajwadi Party.
Polling in Phase II of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections consists of 67 constituencies spread across 11 districts.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi and BSP supremo Mayawati will descend on Varanasi on Saturday making it their battleground ahead of the last phase of Uttar Pradesh polls, a schedule that has put the administration on its toes.
In her brief but impassioned speech, she said, "No outside leader is required. Every single youth of the state can become a leader.... Every single youth here will work for UP and make the state progress by leaps and bounds. This is the wish of Rahulji and Akhileshji."
Several exit polls on Monday forecast a clear majority for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab with some of them giving an edge to the saffron party in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.
Faceless Ambedkarite groups from across the country are running BSP's election war rooms, writes Archis Mohan.
He said it's an alliance between two families, one of which 'looted' the country and the other UP.
Fielding of candidates in Amethi and Rae Bareli was one of the issues of contention between Congress and Samajwadi Party during their talks to forge the pre-poll alliance.
No one will want President's rule imposed in the state and the BJP run the government through the remote control.
'Going from 5% to 8%, 10, 15% of the votes is not going to translate into seats -- so what's the point of going it alone in UP?'
"Will wait and watch for results, as of now not thinking of alliance with anyone," BSP sources told ANI.
The SP-Congress campaign will see Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi criss-cross the seats held by either party.
'The Congress will never change its ideology, but to fight this new kind of propaganda politics, we have to prepare ourselves.'
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.
Many political watchers give their prediction quite confidently of a coalition government. But nobody's certain on the nature of the coalition.
Modi, who has stepped up his attack on Akhilesh in recent days, also said that the chief minister is to be blamed if people of the state which he ruled for five years do not see 'achche din'.
As the party moves forward into the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it not only needs to strengthen the state units and reach out to the grassroots level, but also forge alliances with like-minded parties.
Sensing defeat, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have launched a new game plan for a fractured mandate in Uttar Pradesh so that they can have bargaining power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday.
Blaming Akhilesh Yadav for "sleeping over" the demand for justice by a "beti" in the rape case against Gayatri Prajapati, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the voters in Uttar Pradesh have got an opportunity to perform the pind daan (last rites) of their "tormentors".
"The day news of the SP-BSP top leadership meeting came out, the BJP government used the CBI and raids were conducted in an old mining scam and the news of quizzing Akhilesh Yadav was deliberately spread. Is it not an action to defame the SP-BSP alliance?" Mayawati said.
The saffron party which has a lot at stake in the last two phases of polling scheduled for March 4 and 8 has moved its war room to Varanasi, entrusting Union ministers and senior leaders with the task of strengthening the campaign with the prime minister in the vanguard.
Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah on Wednesday dubbed the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party as "KASAB", adding yet another acronym in the Uttar Pradesh poll campaign, and said development will elude the state till "Kasab is laid to rest".
'Politics is about caste in Eastern UP and religion in Western UP.' Rediff.com's Archana Masih gets a sense of the fault lines in this election's most volatile region -- that can make or break the future of political parties in UP.
'When the campaign started the Congress said it had been miserable for the last 27 years for UP and that people should get rid of those who made it miserable, and that they should bring back the glorious years of the Congress.' 'Then they joined hands with those who ruled for the last 26 years. Some called it a shrewd strategy, but to the people this was not shrewdness.' 'Where is the credibility in your actions when you change direction of the campaign?'
'In the next two years, we might see a new kind of realignment across India.' 'I don't see political alliances working against the BJP until an alternative political agenda is created.'
