Live coverage of a cultural extravaganza in Etawah in the ancestral Saifai village of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has been prohibited by the district administration.
The suspense over whether Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will contest the polls from Amethi and Raebareli respectively continued.
'Do not conspire against us, don't betray us. They should tell us straight that they don't need Samajwadis'
24 hours was all it took for the Congress to overturn its decision to boycott the TV debates on the exit poll results. Sudhir Bisht offers an explanation.
In a major jolt to the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party, its national general secretary Naresh Agarwal and two sitting legislators from Hardoi joined the Samajwadi Party on Friday. "I am resigning from the Rajya Sabha and the post of BSP national general secretary," Agarwal said while addressing a gathering at a function at the SP headquarters in Lucknow. Besides Naresh, his son Nitin Agarwal and Rajeshwari -- both BSP MLAs from Hardoi -- also joined the SP.
The actress-turned-neta wants to "serve" and not contest any elections.
Asked how many seats INDIA bloc will get, Gandhi said, "Have you heard Sidhu Moose Wala's song '295'? So 295 (seats)."
Ahmad was elected to the assembly as an Independent in 1989, 1991, 1993 and on a Samajwadi Party ticket in 1996. He returned to the House in 2002 on an Apna Dal ticket. He was elected as an MP in 2004.
That will be the last pound of flesh Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh wish to extract for the support they are giving the dying Congress party. Fortuitously, the Congress too wants a similar outcome.
The ministries of coal and environment and forests are currently in the temporary charge of the prime minister and all the indications are that the current power minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, might be moved to Maharashtra as chief minister, creating a vacancy, top sources in the government said.
The June 23 meeting of opposition parties, called by Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar, will see anti-BJP players chalk out a strategy for the Lok Sabha polls.
The states and union territories where the elections are being held in this phase are Assam (4), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (7), Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu (2), Goa (2), Gujarat (25), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (11), Madhya Pradesh (8), Uttar Pradesh (10) and West Bengal (4). The BJP has bagged the Surat seat unopposed.
The BJP attacked Kejriwal after he refused to comment on the Maliwal "assault" matter during a press conference in Lucknow. He was flanked by Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav and AAP Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh.
Campaigning ended on Wednesday evening for 102 Lok Sabha seats across 21 states and Union territories which will go to polls in the first phase on April 19 with top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance and the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) making a last-gasp effort to woo voters.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Tuesday poised to form the government for a third consecutive term with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance getting a majority in the Lok Sabha, notwithstanding crushing losses in three Hindi heartland states after a bitterly fought election that was projected as a referendum on his popularity.
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.
The BJP cited the amendments to the Representation of People Act, 1951 and the relevant portions of the Reserve Bank of India Act and the Income Tax Act for not revealing its donors.
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
If the Congress reached 90, it would have a pretty good chance of holding the BJP below the 272 mark. A hundred seats will rock national politics, argues Shekhar Gupta.
Raising slogans of 'Inquilab Zindabad' and 'Kejriwal Zindabad', Aam Aadmi Party workers and leaders reached the area's metro station in groups, with the party calling for a march to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's residence on Lok Kalyan Marg for a 'gherao'.
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).
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his convoy will spend the night on a farm in Bhadohi as the district administration has denied permission for his stay at a government college citing a police recruitment exam, a party member said on Thursday.
The I-T probe is related to some trusts run by Khan and his family members, the sources said.
The SP continued silence on last week's acquittal of 16 policemen, pointedly accused of the cold-blooded murder of 42 Muslims in Meerut
Is it is necessary to play divisive politics to succeed in the next general elections? asks Dr Sudhir Bisht.
"Word of the day! Definition of *snollygoster* US dialect: a shrewd, unprincipled politician. First Known Use: 1845. Most recent use: 26/7/17," Tharoor had tweeted in 2017.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav attacked its INDIA block ally Congress on caste census, reminding them that the party did not conduct a caste census when it was in power.
Samajwadi Party member of Parliament Shailendra Kumar, two members of Legislative Assembly including Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya, and a member of Legislative Council were on Sunday arrested in Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh on charges of an attempt to murder after they allegedly threatened a candidate in local body elections, the police said.
The seized properties include a hospital building at Bhavani Nagar in Nauchandi and two luxury cars that Qureshi had allegedly purchased in the name of his family members and employees, they said.
The fraud was exposed by none other than his estranged wife who had already lodged a complaint against Majhi, who had once even managed to get a ministerial berth.
Banda chief judicial magistrate Bhagwan Das Gupta appointed Garima Singh, additional chief judicial magistrate (MP-MLA Court Banda) as the investigating officer in the case, the official said.
The party has fielded Parvati Das for the by-election to the Bageshwar assembly seat in Uttarakhand and Lijinlal G for the Puthuppally assembly seat in Kerala.
The incident took place on the night of November 1. Following the incident, hundreds of BHU students had held a protest on the campus and demanded that the entry of outsiders be banned.
Indicating his keenness to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Amethi, Robert Vadra, businessman and husband of Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has said that the people of Amethi expect him to represent their constituency if he thinks of becoming a member of Parliament.
If the Congress is contesting fewer seats than ever before, the BJP is set to contest its highest-ever number of Lok Sabha seats.
The DMK leader's reference made was to one of the INDIA bloc meetings in which Nitish Kumar reportedly stressed on use of Hindi.
Eight Union ministers, two former chief ministers and one ex-governor are among those who are set to test their electoral fate in the first phase of elections on April 19 when 102 seats across 21 states and Union territories will go to polls.
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