The ruling Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal combine swept the Zilla Panchayat chairmen polls, elections for which were held Saturday, winning 50 of the 65 seats.
S P Singh Baghel and B L Verma who made it to the Union council of ministers on Wednesday are two prominent Other Backward Classes leaders from Uttar Pradesh.
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.
While a few 'bahubalis' managed wins in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, a majority of them were rejected by the voters. According to the results, many alleged dons-turned-politicians failed to make it to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly.
A bench comprising Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Amitava Roy, while allowing the plea of the Pooja Pal, wife of slain leader, asked the probe agency to conclude the probe in the case preferably within six months.
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.
It would be better if the Supreme Court takes cognisance of this 'extremely serious and worrisome' incident, which is being discussed across the country, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said.
The BSP supremo also ridiculed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for "not taking cognisance" of suicides by Dalit students when his party was in power.
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.
It is speculated that Scindia, known to be very close to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, met the legislators in a bid to feel their pulses in the wake of developments in Karnataka and Goa.
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.
It was sweet revenge for Mulayam Singh Yadav on Tuesday five years after Mayawati famously said "why kill a dead man" after the Samajwadi supremo was ousted by her in a crushing defeat.
The Upper House witnessed unruly scenes, with almost entire the Opposition in its feet over alleged misuse of the Central Bureau of Investigation and demand for discussion on the issue under rule 267 suspending the listed business.
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.
'Taking forward the ideology of Babasaheb Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and Kanshiram sahib for 'Bahujan Hitaay - Bahujan Sukhaay', the Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) announced Chandra Shekhar Aazad as candidate from Gorakhpur Sadar (322) seat,' the party said in a statement on social media.
The Congress, meanwhile, alleged that both the Samajwadi Party and the BJP are hand-in-glove with the criminals and were two sides of the same coin.
In contrast to the inertia in the SP camp, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party showed no complacency in the run-up to the polls this month.
As the Opposition on Wednesday held its first meeting on the presidential election, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice for the top constitutional post with senior party leader Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Naveen Patnaik, sources said.
"We had not contemplated that the alliance will fare so badly. People are not able to digest the poll results. It is against their sentiment and aspirations," Mayawati said on Thursday.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi slammed the UP government over the incident 'Another proof of 'goondaraj' (hooliganism) in UP. When police is not safe how can people be?. My condolences are with family of martyrs and I wish speedy recovery of injured,' he said in a tweet.
'They know that if they do not tie up with the Congress, then the minorities will move to the Congress.'
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.
Hours after Mayawati announced her plans of going solo in future elections in a series of tweets, a senior SP leader accused her of "weakening" the fight for social justice.
Two months after a 22-year-old Dalit woman went missing from Unnao, her decomposed body was recovered from a vacant plot near an ashram constructed by a former minister in Samajwadi Party government Fateh Bahadur Singh, police said on Friday.
The party, however, has retained state president Naresh Uttam.
The Uttar Pradesh police on Monday gunned down one of the accused in the sensational February 24 killing of a prime witness in the 2005 murder case of then Bahujan Samaj Party MLA Raju Pal in an encounter in Prayagraj.
The BSP chief said she does not want to see any damage to the SP-BSP-RLD alliance.
The CM added the BJP has learnt its "lessons" and exuded confidence it will perform better in future polls.
UP minister of state for minority welfare Danish Azad Ansari told PTI on Wednesday that the decision was taken at the state cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath a day earlier.
According to the findings of the CSDS-Lokniti survey, the BJP saw a marginal increase in its support among the Muslim voters as compared to the 2017 assembly elections.
'I will make Akash join the BSP movement and give him a chance to learn,' she said in a statement.
Bowing to demands by several political parties, government on Tuesday said it has decided to include caste in census and the formality of endorsing it is expected at the next Cabinet meeting.
26 candidates in Amethi fray take away 60,545 votes; the difference between the victorious Smriti Irani and Rahul Gandhi is 55,120 votes.
It is likely that small parties would be given very few seats to contest, but these parties believe that they would be able to swing the result in favour of bigger alliance partners by transferring their vote bank.
State deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya among 692 candidates are contesting on 61 seats spread across 12 districts in the fifth phase.
Of the 143 candidates contesting in the first phase of Chhattisgarh assembly elections, 15 candidates have criminal cases registered against them.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-backed Samajwadi Party rebel candidate Nitin Agarwal was elected deputy speaker of the Uttar Pradesh assembly on Monday, defeating Narendra Verma, the official candidate of Akhilesh Yadav's party, by 244 votes.
On Tuesday, the government had agreed to refer it to the committee.
The development came on a day Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah arrived on a three-day visit to the state capital.
Another UP MLA came out in support of Sadhana Singh, saying there was nothing wrong in her remarks.
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