The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday announced its 15-member election committee headed by Uttar Pradesh party unit chief Surya Pratap Shahi for the assembly polls scheduled to be held next year. The committee has five former state unit presidents including Kalraj Misra, Vinay Katiyar, Kesari Nath Tripathi, Om Prakash Singh and Ramapati Ram Tripathi, Shahi told reporters.
The newly appointed Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party president Surya Pratap Shahi visited the disputed site in Ayodhya on Friday and vowed to construct a Ram temple there, saying it was something related to the faith of crores of Hindus.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Varun Gandhi on Wednesday said all statues of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati would be replaced with those of Lord Ram once the party regains power in the state.
After last month's devastating debacle at the state assembly elections, Bhartiya Janata Party had now got down to rebuilding the party in Uttar Pradesh, where the party failed to even maintain its five year old tally of 52 , which plummeted to 48.
Promising sops for every section of society in its manifesto for Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday opposed 4.5 per cent reservation to minorities from the 27 per cent quota of backward classes even as it said it was committed to the construction of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya.
State BJP president Surya Pratap Shahi has alleged that the raids on Babu Singh Kushwaha were guided by the central government.
Leaders of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday visited the Digahi village of Maharajganj district, where ten people were charred to death on March 11, and demanded judicial enquiry into the arson.
Led by the state party chief Surya Pratap Shahi and the party's veteran local MP Lalji Tandon, BJP's mayors and other elected representatives of local bodies were not only disallowed to proceed towards the Governor's House, but also subjected to cane charge.
Uttar Pradesh BJP president Ramapati Ram Tripathi, who announced the list of the state party office bearers late on Monday night, appointed six vice-presidents, four general secretaries and six secretaries.
"I had said on the soil of Bahraich that glorification of foreign invaders should be stopped and that the national heroes must be honoured. And 1,000 years ago, such a tale of courage and bravery was written by Maharaja Suheldev on this very soil of Bahraich," Adityanath said.
Uma Bharti's return to the BJP, six years after she was expelled, has evoked mixed response in the party unit of Uttar Pradesh. The firebrand leader has been entrusted the task of outlining the strategy for the next state assembly elections in 2012.While state BJP president Surya Pratap Shahi has welcomed the move and praised her for her prominent role in the Ayodhya Ram Mandir movement, former state BJP chief and Bajrang Dal founder Vinay Katiyar is not too hopeful.
The districts where polling is being held on Thursday are Ambedkar Nagar, Balrampur, Siddharth Nagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria and Ballia.
Spread over 10 districts, polling in these constituencies will be held from 7 am till 6 pm on Thursday.
The sixth round of Uttar Pradesh assembly polls will see voting for 57 seats on Thursday sealing the fate of political heavyweights such as Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the Congress' Ajay Kumar Lallu and Samajwadi Party's Swami Prasad Maurya.
Officials said almost all the ministers present at meeting took the holy dip.
The prominent faces among the 676 candidates for 57 seats spread across 10 districts in this phase included Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath from Gorakhpur Urban and state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu from Tamkuhi Raj.
The list has been sent to Governor Ram Naik for approval.
Over 10 million farmers have received Rs 2,000 crore under the flagship scheme says Virendra Singh Rawat.
In the coming months, globally as well as in India, rice might remain a hot potato.
Yogi Adityanath was on Thursday unanimously chosen the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party legislature party in Uttar Pradesh in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Sagar's son had said that the last rites of his father would not be performed until the chief minister arrives at their hometown in Deoria.
Modi had promised during his election campaign that a decision on loan waiver would be taken at the first cabinet meeting of the BJP government in the state.
Nazarwala, who predicted a triple century for the BJP in the UP elections, lists the challenges that await the new chief minister.
An estimated 57.03 per cent voters cast their ballots on Saturday in the sixth phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections covering 49 Assembly seats, including Mau, where gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari is in the fray.
Around 1.72 crore voters, including 94.60 lakh men and 77.84 lakh women, are eligible to cast their votes in this round to decide the fate of 635 candidates.
It was conveyed that he would not have a free rein in making bureaucratic postings. Sunil Bansal, handpicked by BJP president Amit Shah to execute his UP blueprint, has made it clear the party's writ would run over the government. But Adityanath has institutionalised a system to keep Bansal out, reports Radhika Ramaseshan.
Given the controversy over Uttar Pradesh's population control moves, Hemant Shivsaran/Rediff.com digs deep to find out how many children BJP MLAs in UP have.
On the eve of the sixth and penultimate phase of the marathon Uttar Pradesh elections, Rediff.com's Aslam Hunani reports on what's at stake.
"The situation has already improved in Gorakhpur and it would soon improve in the state as well," he said.