A meeting of Opposition parties, organised by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will be held in Patna on June 23, his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.
To repeated questions, the SP chief asserted that the Congress was 'very much in the alliance'.
The incident took place outside the district hospital in Akbarpur where the hospital's fourth class employees staged a dharna by putting locks on the OPD on Thursday, Kanpur Dehat SP Keshav Kumar Choudhary said.
Congressmen came out against the BJP in Lucknow staging a dharna and demanding Sengar's expulsion from the saffron party.
Biju Janata Dal supremo and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who was the first to advocate an alternative government minus Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre, on Tuesday said it was still too early for such a move.
Among the notable absentees were Congress president Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's M K Stalin, Telugu Desam Party chief K Chandrashekhar Rao, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and Delhi chief minister and Aam Admi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal.
People had also started gathering at Mukhtar Ansari's residence in Ghazipur and there was a large deployment of security personnel around the house.
Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Monday said that the Congress and Samajwadi Party are the main contenders in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, as the ruling "BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) is involved in corruption, while BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is nowhere in the picture."
SP has fielded Shivpal from Jaswant Nagar seat in Etawah district.
In the five years in politics Priyanka Gandhi has undeniably emerged as a thorn in the BJP flesh, notes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. It is time that this thorn is twisted a wee bit more when the elections have become far more uncertain than what it was when the Election Commission announced the poll schedule.
With relationships souring between the United Progressive Alliance and its ally Samajwadi Party, and after the fallout with the Dravida Munetra Kazhagam, the Congress may be looking up to team up with Janata Dal-United, and the latter may not be averse to it, says Renu Mittal
"Ramgopal Yadav was expelled from the party for six years on 30 December, 2016. Therefore the party's national convention called by him on 1 January, 2017 was illegal," he asserted.
"Does the government have no other work?" she asked.
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.
Ghulam Nabi Azad said this was just a beginning of the alliance process and the nitty-gritty would be decided in the next one or two days.
A voter turnout of over 40 per cent was recorded till 1 pm on Monday in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections in 96 constituencies spread over 10 states and Union Territories amid incidents of violence in Andhra Pradesh and reports of poll boycott in some villages of Uttar Pradesh.
'His way of communication is different than the first yatra.' 'Maybe his anger and frustration stems from the fact that no one is asking hard questions to the government and he is trying to do that.'
The Congress also asserted that the opposition INDIA bloc had been formed for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections at the national level and was not state specific.
As BJP leaders went all out to project the event as a moment of national pride, some leaders were directly critical of the ceremony with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, belonging to the Communist Party of India-Marxist, slamming the state's role in the Ram Temple consecration, saying the line that demarcates religion and state seems to be 'getting thinner and thinner'.
'Commentators have said that dealing with allies as equals will make Modi more sensitive.' 'Remember that the people Modi is dealing with are equally autocratic in their own lairs.' 'Further, Modi always has handy the threat of dissolving Parliament and calling for fresh polls.' 'Most of his own party, and certainly his allies and opponents having blown their budgets of efforts and resources in the just concluded elections, have no stomach for this.' 'They are all greatly looking forward to the loaves and fishes of office on offer.' 'That gives Modi an unbeatable advantage in any push-comes-to-shove situation,' explains Shreekant Sambrani.
Opposition parties on Thursday continued their attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over inauguration of the new Parliament building and accused him of being 'megalomaniac' and the government of being 'arrogant'.
The Samajwadi Party on Thursday pulled out of the 'grand alliance' in poll-bound Bihar, saying it felt "humiliated" as it was not consulted while deciding seats and would contest the assembly elections in the state on its own.
The BJP lost 15 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. Union ministers have been deployed in all 15, tasked with turning the result around.
The body was brought to the family's ancestral burial ground, about half a km from their residence, where a grave was dug on Friday near that of Mukhtar Ansari's parents.
The BJP is far more prepared than the Congress as their pool of prospective candidates is much bigger, reports Prakash Bhandari.
Patel, 71, the quintessential backroom strategist for the Congress, died at a Gurugram hospital in the early hours of Wednesday due to multiple organ failure more than a month after he tested positive for COVID-19.
For the Congress, the Janata Dal-United has made up for the numbers in case the Samajwadi Party discontinues its support to the UPA government, reports Renu Mittal
Some parties, including the Congress, also demanded immediate sacking of Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Kumar Mishra, following Samyukt Kisan Morcha's allegation that his son was travelling in one of the vehicles involved in the incident.
INDIA bloc leaders will protest at Jantar Mantar Friday against suspension of MPs and nationwide protests will also be held in all district headquarters against the government's "immoral and illegal" behaviour of this government, the Leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha said.
The ceremony on Friday will be attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and chief ministers of Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states.
Kumar had also made it clear that he was in the process of uniting the non-BJP leaders.
Among the keenly watched contests are those involving former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav (Kannauj, UP) and Union ministers Giriraj Singh (Begusarai, Bihar), Nityanand Rai (Ujiarpur, Bihar) and Raosaheb Danve (Jalna, Maharashtra).
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh to the kin of each of the deceased and Rs 50,000 to the injured.
Top leaders of Opposition parties will brainstorm at a meeting in Patna on Friday to chalk out a roadmap for the formation of an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party front for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, with sources saying that they would look to avoid the prickly leadership question and emphasise on common ground.
The alliance would announce a coordination committee, which could be of 11 members from principal opposition parties.
Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the government has asked Apple two questions: whether their devices are safe, and if so the reason for the alert was sent to the Opposition members.
Besides Defence Minister Singh (Lucknow), Minister of Women and Child Development Irani (Amethi), those in the fray are Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishor (Mohanlalganj) and Minister of State of Consumer Affairs Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur).
Anger cannot be an end in itself to Rahul Gandhi's politics -- it must instead catalyse a new political strategy, argues Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
'Outside the core voter base of upper caste Hindus, there is a large section unhappy with the performance of the BJP.'
The booing and beating Maharashtra Navnirman Sena Legislators in Mumbai has brought rich dividends for Samajwadi Party's Maharashtra chief Abu Azmi , who has been turned into the party's hero.
