Extensive arrangements have been made due to the COVID-19 pandemic including personal protective equipment kits for election staff, more polling booths, thermal screening, sanitisers, masks and gloves for voters and markings to ensure social distancing, officials said.
Acharya Satendra Das, the chief priest of the makeshift temple at the dispute site in Ayodhya, alleged that VHP's yatra from here was politically motivated and not religious and that saints were being used for "vested interests".
The victories with huge margins came as a Diwali gift and a shot in the arm for the nearly six-month-old alliance ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls after facing frequent questions about its longevity.
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He made a reference to the clash between Indian and Chinese troops in Ladakh's Galwan Valley in June this year. "What our jawans can do, what the country can do, the world has seen in Ladakh," he said.
'His success confirms that the infirm 132-year-old party can still get to its feet if it allows regional leaders to come to the fore,' argues Amulya Ganguli.
She also challenged him to a public debate 'without a handwritten script' over his criticism of the Modi government.
Reaching out to Jats, a politically crucial community in western Uttar Pradesh, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah has presented his party as the best bet for them, saying voting for the Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal or any other party would not help their cause.
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'The current BJP leadership believes the party's expansion across India, and thus their own survival at the top, depends on injecting communal tension into areas where it has so far been largely controlled,' argues Mihir S Sharma.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee directed the director general of police to instruct all the superintendents of police to take strong action against those who carried arms in the rallies.
'They call us Punjabis as nashedi (drug addicts). So I also asked him with a smile, 'aaj aap kaunsa kar ke aaye hain (what did you take today). He failed to realise my gesture but only saw me smiling,' Akali leader and Union minister Harsimrat Kaur said.
Chef Rishi Desai stirs up a yummy meal with quails.
The BJP's losses in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where the UP CM had addressed nearly 75 rallies, has put a big question mark on his ability to deliver in high-octane contests, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
The country has seen that "people are God" in elections, the PM said.
The party president also said that India's self-confidence, pride and scale of ambition have grown manifold in three years.
Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan is working overtime to ensure the victory of his son Chirag Paswan, who is contesting from the Jamui parliamentary constituency in Bihar.
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As per the final tally, of the total 81 seats, the Congress won 73, followed by the BJP which bagged six seats. The Shiv Sena just about managed to open its account with one seat, and an independent candidate won one seat.
With actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha creating storm through his comments against Narendra Modi and describing Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as "PM material", the latter on Monday praised the Bharatiya Janata Party leader for his uninhibited opinion.
Suresh Kumar said he was withdrawing his nomination following a direction from the BJP leadership.
This Ganeshotsav prepare these sweet offerings.
'Modi has become confident enough not only to look forward to a second term in 2019, but also to celebrate the 75th year of India's Independence in 2022.' 'It will be in the fitness of things if the vestiges of the past are swept away and the country is reminded that the 1,200 years of 'slavery' under the Muslims and the British were a bad dream.' 'And what better way to achieve this objective than by rubbing out the names of the invaders?' says Amulya Ganguli.
She said the BJP needs a fresh face in the state before the 2017 elections.
Hundreds of RSS cadres are helping the Saffron party counter Lalu-Nitish's campaign on the reservation issue in Bihar polls, observes M I Khan
While some visible signs of recovery have emerged, Modi has not announced any sweeping market reforms, with critics saying he has scored high on oratory but low on delivery of his election campaign promises.
Ahead of the assembly elections, the saffron allies may be ecstatic over the swelling, but it's a double-edged sword with many older leaders wondering what they have got after putting in years of hard work, reports Radhika Ramaseshan
Already in the eye of a raging controversy over the 'Ghar Wapsi' programme, fiery Hindutva mascot and Bharatiya Janata Party MP Yogi Adityanath has now launched a campaign for declaring cow as 'Rashtra Mata', claiming his demand "embodies the sentiment of every Indian".
Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu are centred on chief ministerial candidates of rival parties. When Sasikala cannot contest even a panchayat election for six years after her release, even if she were to have sympathetic backers even among apolitical voters, she does not have any 'transferrable vote-bank' even otherwise for a chief minister candidate of her choice, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Throwing security concerns to wind Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday plunged himself amid the masses in Nagaon district of Assam during a road show after seeking blessings of Goddess Kamakhya at the historic Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati earlier in the day.
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.
A day after the attack on Aam Aadmi Party leader Somnath Bharti on Wednesday evening in Varanasi, Arvind Kejriwal lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, asking if the Gujarat model was about 'threatening people' and demanded the Election Commission's immediate intervention.
The saffron party will use Lord Ayyappa the same way it made use of Lord Ram in the north to take away the Nair vote and make electoral inroads in the state.
He may be only 28, but the now-chosen candidate for Bengaluru South has handled the party's IT cell and campaigned for several party candidates during the state polls last year.
Modi broke away from the Special Protection Group security cover to meet a group of school children.
The Hindutva poster boy has lost his sheen following the BJP's poll reverses in Hindi heartland states and his style of governance, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
Both the parties had been banking heavily on the internal feud in the first family of the state
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