Although it saw a veritable who's who of the Oppostion leadership, the Samajwadi Party stayed away from the Iftar dinner hosted by Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday.
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.
The Congress and the Left parties have not only extended support to the Samajwadi Party candidate but are also campaigning for him, in accordance with the spirit of the new opposition togetherness ahead of next year's general election.
The padyatra concluded at the Lal Chowk area on Sunday with Rahul Gandhi unfurling the national flag but the official closing would take place on Monday in Srinagar, amid snowfall.
Neta app claims BJP is down to 212 seats from its 2014 tally of 282.
The chief minister apprised Advani of the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh.
Dinesh Pratap Singh, who was elected to the state legislative council for the second time in 2016 and left the Congress last year, is pitted against UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on a seat held by her since 2004.
Lok Sabha constituencies that sprung a surprise in the 2024 polls.
Gandhi had on Saturday said that the Congress reached out to the BSP leader, offering her the chief minister's post for contesting the assembly polls together, but she did not respond.
Yadav was dismissed in 2017 after he posted a video online complaining about the food served to the troops.
It was curtains down on the high-decibel campaigning for the fourth phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls as sparring among political rivals intensified during the last-minute canvassing on Monday.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav are and 10 political leaders who were on Thursday elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday said the party will welcome the support of anyone in national interest, even as most exit polls and its own predictions give a majority to the National Democratic Alliance led by it.
The Congress on Monday nominated Bharatiya Janata Party turncoat Ashish Shukla against the saffron party's nominee, Sanjay Sinh, from the high-profile Amethi assembly seat in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
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.
Priyanka stressed on the importance of the UP polls for the party, calling it a "do-or-die" situation.
Mayawati added that the BSP's relationship with the SP is never going to end and she will try to ensure that their relationship stays intact.
In the past five years, UP's Opposition remained passive and defensive against the BJP, a trend that does not augur well for the impending battle.
Gandhi's name was the only name discussed when 18 opposition parties met to decide on their candidate for the vice presidential poll, the sources said.
The party also declared sitting MP Praveen Nishad as its candidate from Sant Kabir Nagar
The response was tepid in other parts of the country even as several INDIA bloc parties as well as other non-BJP outfits extended their support to the bandh.
Nineteen political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, received over Rs 1,100 crore during assembly polls in five states and Union territories in 2021 and spent over Rs 500 crore, a big chunk of which went towards advertisements and travel expenses for star campaigners, a study said on Friday.
A case has been registered against Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and 20 party workers in connection with alleged assault on some journalists in Uttar Pradesh's Moradabad, police said on Saturday.
Those whose cover has been reduced include Samajwadi Party chief and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, leaders Shivpal Yadav and Azam Khan, Dimple Yadav and Ram Gopal Yadav, and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati.
The Bahujan Samaj Party will not contest by-elections for 12 seats in Uttar Pradesh, which would fall vacant due to the legislators being elected as members of Parliament, party supremo Mayawati said on Friday.
Akhilesh and his father Mulayam attended the swearing-in ceremony of Yogi Adityanath, a move that surprised one and all.
Close to half of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats are bracing for multi-cornered fight this time, making the contest way more interesting and intense than it was in the 2019 elections.
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 Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal and some smaller parties will contest the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls together, and an announcement in this regard would be made soon, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said on Tuesday.
Nearly 137 public meetings in UP...
Majority of these constituencies are in Uttar Pradesh and the party that is on the third slot even as the counting is still underway on several seats is the Bahujan Samaj Party, a party neither with the National Democratic Alliance nor the opposition INDIA bloc.
An eighth BJP candidate on Thursday filed his nomination for the Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, setting the stage for a contest with the Samajwadi Party on February 27.
At present, there are 18 Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly.
'Our leader is Modi and everyone has been saying Modi hai to desh hai'
Political observers lauded the SP's choices in fielding several non-Yadav and Scheduled Caste candidates, the party's alliance with the Congress, and Rahul Gandhi's campaign around the danger to the Constitution if the BJP won a big majority.
The expensive giant statues of Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati and party symbol elephant in Uttar Pradesh will remain safe with Samajwadi's star campaigner Akhilesh Yadav saying on Tuesday they will not be pulled down after the change of guard in the state.
"Had there been no demolition, probably the courts too would have ordered status quo," he said then. And his last wish, he said, was to live till the temple comes up.
Ahead of the Madhya Pradesh elections, Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs from Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra have arrived in Bhopal as part of the ruling party's programme wherein every legislator will be allotted one assembly seat each that they are supposed to visit to take stock of the ground situation, party leaders said.
A visibly upset Shivpal Yadav said, "I was never called to any meeting (of the SP) and no information was given to me."
The BJP has won just eight out of the 40 zila panchayat seats in Ayodhya, a disappointment for the ruling party in the district on which the Centre and the state government have lavished much attention.
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