Voting is being held in the politically sensitive Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, Palghar and Bhandara-Gondiya and Nagaland Lok Sabha seats.
Another UP MLA came out in support of Sadhana Singh, saying there was nothing wrong in her remarks.
The inauguration new parliament building will take place in two phases.
But she added that her government will be open to erecting memorials to honour leaders from 'other communities' and keep their religious sentiments in mind.
The rift between Samajwadi Party strongman Mulayam Singh Yadav and 'obedient' Akhilesh grew even wider with the father openly backing his son's foes in the party
'It's the same problem with all six of us. Behenji (Mayawati) is not to be blamed, but the coordinators have acted in a manner which has depressed us and we thought what is the use of remaining with such a party'
Nearly 57 per cent of total income of five national parties during financial year 2013-14 was from sale of coupons (smaller donations), a leading election watchdog NGO has said.
'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.'
Congress's chief ministerial face Sheila Dikshit offered to step aside in favour of a young Akhilesh Yadav.
Social Justice Minister Thaavarchand Gehlot sought to allay doubts raised by several opposition members about the legislation's fate if challenged in the Supreme Court, saying he can say with confidence that the apex court will accept it.
"All you have to do is to put the picture of (UP Chief Minister) Yogi (Adityanath) in front of you and Priyanka Gandhi's picture and you won't need to ask any more questions," said Khurshid, who is the chief of the party's manifesto committee for the state.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said there are courts to ensure that criminals get the harshest punishment but 'playing with law and order only gives birth to anarchy'.
Mayawati charged that the communal atmosphere in the state had been spoilt because of an understanding between the SP and the BJP.
SP has gained a majority in the 100-member Uttar Pradesh legislative council. The party had earlier faced difficulty pushing through its legislative in the upper house due to lack of numbers.
A station house officer was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl who was left outside his police station in Uttar Pradesh's Lalitpur by four men after they raped her for three days, officials said on Wednesday.
'Which path should Muslims take politically as they have been completely marginalised?'
The election tamasha that was successfully taken online by the BJP during the 2014 general elections is playing out in a bigger avatar, reports Sanjay Jog
Bihar's ruling JD-U and Lalu Prasad's RJD on Sunday decided to contest the state assembly elections in alliance and constitute a six member committee to finalize seat-sharing.
The Prayagraj police have issued posters of 59 people, allegedly involved in the June 10 violence, which will be put up on roadsides and public places so that they could be identified and arrested, officials said.
Samajwadi Party government exempts Dedh Ishqiya from tax ; Mulayam and Akhilesh camp in Saifai to welcome Madhuri-Salman
SP veteran Mulayam Singh Yadav claimed that there was "no discord".
In the video, Sakul Prajapati, a resident of the village in Chilkhar block was seen carrying his ailing wife Jogni (55) to the hospital on a cart.
Adityanath has of late earned the nickname "bulldozer baba", which helped the party create a narrative of tough administration in the state polls.
The lively lot of politicians at the helm of India's most important political province.
The Congress needs to reorganise itself at the grassroots, infuse younger blood, and have more boots on the ground. Just offering freebies is not the answer anymore. Leadership matters, asserts Ramesh Menon.
Mulayam Singh and Mayawati fell out after their ruling coalition in Uttar Pradesh crashed in 1995, two years after they came together along with smaller parties to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party out of power.
With the all-party meetings called by Rajya Sabha Chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla producing no breakthrough to end the deadlock in Parliament, Union ministers Piyush Goyal and Pralhad Joshi accused opposition parties of repeatedly 'insulting' Dhankhar.
UP Power Minister Shrikant Sharma stirred up a hornet's nest with his tweet terming the Congress president a 'coward and impotent'.
A coordinated multi-agency search operation is underway to locate the two, even as Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ordered setting up a three-member committee to probe the incident and submit a report in a week.
The Congress, which wanted to contest as many as 121 seats, has reportedly now settled for 105 seats.
'To summarise, PM Modi's failures in the last nine years can be categorised under 'durniti' (bad policies), 'anyay' (injustice) and - perhaps most importantly - 'badniyat' (ill intention)'
In an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamana, the party said Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi and National Conference's Farooq Abdullah, the "regular names that crop up during the presidential polls", don't have the personality or heft to make it a tightly-contested battle.
Reacting to Yadav's statement that he wanted her to become the prime minister and that the SP had forged an alliance with the BSP for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls for this, Mayawati, in a tweet in Hindi, said, 'When the SP chief could not fulfil his own dream of becoming the chief minister (of Uttar Pradesh) even after securing the votes of Muslims and Yadavs and forming an alliance with several parties, how can he fulfil the dream of others to become the prime minister.'
The voting will begin at 7 am and end at 5 pm after the electioneering came to an end on Saturday, 48 hours before the electorate begin casting their votes.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party of talking about terrorism during the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections while diverting attention from the 'central discourse' on unemployment, inflation, empowering women and helping small businesses and farmers.
The move is being seen as an attempt to forge opposition unity to defeat the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
Congress on Friday downplayed Narendra Modi's anointment as BJP's prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, while the Samajwadi Party said his "dream will never come true".
For the Congress to be taken seriously, it has to convince those around it that it could actually double its Lok Sabha seat share from the existing 52, and vote-share by a third more from the stagnating 20 per cent in 2014 and 2019, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'This move rendered the chiefs of important investigative agencies to the status of daily wage earners. It undermined the autonomy and independence of the agencies.'
While Brijlal Khabri, former BSP MP from Jalaun, is UP Congress Committee chairman, former UP cabinet minister and Mayawati's once close confidant Naseemuddin Siddiqui heads the party's state media department. Completing the ex-BSP troika, Nakul Dubey, former UP cabinet minister in the Mayawati dispensation (2007-12), is one of the six UP Congress regional presidents. He is reckoned among the most active of the three.
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