'When I started this, I just took it as an ordinary yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. Slowly we understood that this yatra has a voice and feelings'
Sunday's yatra proved that it needs both the maturity of locals as well as the police doing their duty, to ensure that a religious procession doesn't turn ugly.
What we find interesting are the crowds Akhilesh Yadav has been attracting on his Samajwadi Vijay Rath Yatra in the state.
Gandhi is seeking responses from Congress leaders and workers through the party's Shakti app, sources said. The opinion of common people on the issue will also be sought in a day or two.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has ridiculed the move as 'hypocrisy' saying Congress leaders had termed Lord Ram as an imaginary character.
It is not unlikely that ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP government comes up with more imaginative schemes aimed at constituency-building. The party under Modi's leadership has a more modern thinking in such matters unlike its rivals, which are still steeped only in ideology, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Uttar Pradesh police on Thursday arrested five people, including a man who they claimed to be the personal secretary of former minister Swami Prasad Maurya, for allegedly duping unemployed youth on the pretext of giving them government jobs.
Even though MLAs are required to show their ballot to respective party whips before casting their vote, all parties have ensured their MLAs are housed in five star hotels closer to the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha where voting will take place on June 10.
Of the 59 seats, the BJP had won 51 in the 2017 Assembly elections, four had gone to the Samajwadi Party, and three to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Though different voices are emerging from within the ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh over the issue, several saffron party MLAs, including senior leaders, appeared worried about a possible repeat of the 'Gujarat formula' to overcome anti-incumbency in the central state, where Assembly elections are due in end-2023.
Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma savours Mumbai's street fare... Shashi Tharoor bangs a drum... Punjab CM visits Pakistan...
While over 80 MLAs, including some of the independents, have reached a hotel in Udaipur, Soldier Welfare Minister Rajendra Gudha, SC Commission Chairman and MLA Khiladi Bairwa and MLA Girraj Singh Malinga expressed their displeasure in Jaipur.
With the Uttar Pradesh government set to conduct a survey of private madrassas, proprietors of the theological schools fear that their institutions may be declared illegal and 'run over by bulldozers'.
NCP president Sharad Pawar on Thursday said the fate of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra will be decided on the floor of the Legislative Assembly, and the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress coalition will prove its majority in a trust vote.
Former Uttar Pradesh minister Swami Prasad Maurya, who resigned this week from the Yogi Adityanath government and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the assembly polls, on Friday said that former state cabinet minister Dara Singh Chauhan will join the Samajwadi Party on Sunday.
The approval by Maharashtra assembly Deputy Speaker Narhari Zirwal to appoint Ajay Choudhary as the Shiv Sena's group leader in the House in place of rebel leader Eknath Shinde may expedite the need for the ruling coalition to prove its majority through a floor test, feels a constitutional expert.
In an email about its executive editor's death, NDTV said, 'It is a terrible, terrible day for NDTV. We have lost Kamal Khan; he was 61 and the heart and soul of our Lucknow bureau, an NDTV veteran who had boundless time and kind words for anyone who encountered him.'
Saini said he had resigned from Yogi Adiyanth government because 'for five years Dalits, backward classes were suppressed, their voices were suppressed'.
Jailed gangster and former member of Parliament Atiq Ahmad and his wife on Tuesday joined the All India Majlis e Ittehadul Muslimeen in the presence of its chief Asaduddin Owaisi, drawing a sharp reaction from the Bharatiya Janata Party which said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will not allow "Jinnah's jihadi mentality" to flourish in Uttar Pradesh.
Hours after Uttar Pradesh labour and employment minister Swami Prasad Maurya quit his post, his daughter and the Bharatiya Janata Party's Badaun MP Sanghamitra Maurya on Tuesday claimed her father has not joined any party and will reveal his strategy in a couple of days.
No answer for the time being, will see later, Vadra said.
Unemployment, delivery of justice in desecration cases, illegal sand mining and drug menace are likely to be key issues in the Punjab assembly elections.
District election officer Mahendra Bahadur Singh said Aman Giri won by a margin of 34,298 votes. He received 1,24,810 votes while Tiwari got 90,512 votes.
Plummeting to its lowest ever tally of winning only one seat in the current Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Mayawati said it was the media's aggressive propaganda showing the BSP as the 'B team of the BJP' that drove away Muslims and anti-BJP voters from it.
Lakhimpur Kheri had been one of the key attack points of the Opposition parties such as the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress against the BJP in the run up to the polls.
It was a high-stakes three-cornered fight between the BJP, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party.
'If the Opposition does make a dent, it could encourage the efforts of regional parties to come together for the larger battle in 2024 and mark the beginning of a new anti-BJP politics.'
The BJP campaign highlighted Yogi's persona as a tough-as-nails leader and an incorruptible man with no nest to feather; Modi's charisma which was turned on full blast in the penultimate phases; Amit Shah's ground work; a well-oiled party organisation, and the RSS's back-up.
Voting began on Thursday in the by-election to seven assembly constituencies in six states -- a contest symbolic of the fierce turf war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties.
Govind Singh Dotasra, Harish Chaudhary and Raghu Sharma have already offered their resignations in writing to Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday.
UP Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said the BJP parliamentary board and its national leadership will decide under whom the upcoming state assembly elections will be fought.
The districts where polling is being held on Thursday are Ambedkar Nagar, Balrampur, Siddharth Nagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria and Ballia.
Voting will be held on Thursday for the first phase of Gujarat Assembly elections in 89 seats spread across 19 districts in Saurashtra-Kutch and southern parts of the state where 788 candidates are in the fray.
Priyanka stressed on the importance of the UP polls for the party, calling it a "do-or-die" situation.
In a series of tweets, she attacked the SP accusing it of being an expert in "narrow politics".
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Opposition Congress in Madhya Pradesh, where assembly polls are due by 2023-end, are not attaching much importance to the presence of the AAP and the AIMIM citing the largely bipolar politics of the state.
She lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, holding them responsible for the lack of jobs and migration from the state.
A resolution to this effect was passed at the party's general body meeting in Hyderabad, party sources said.
The SP's bid to dent the BJP's formidable social equation is playing out in a big way in the Poorvanchal or eastern region of Uttar Pradesh as the ruling party is working overtime to keep its caste equation unharmed.
Droupadi Murmu scripted history on Thursday by becoming India's first tribal President in the one-sided contest, defeating Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
