It's obvious to all that the Congress is overestimating its success and the BJP is underestimating the people's message delivered through the ballot box, notes Sheela Bhatt.
UP and Bihar contributed 105 seats to the BJP's tally in 2014. It has now lost 8 Lok Sabha by-polls in the last four years, including three successive losses in UP and two seats in Rajasthan.
Akhilesh Yadav confirmed in a television interview that the press conference is on the alliance in Uttar Pradesh, while parrying questions on the Congress.
The remark came at an event in Lucknow where he accused Narendra Modi of being a monarch and not a prime minister, calling him a front for 'two-three financiers'.
A court in Varanasi on Monday convicted gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari in the murder of Congress leader Awadhesh Rai more than 30 years ago.
Sakshi Malik expresses anguish at Brij Bhushan's son getting BJP ticket for Lok Sabha polls
The stampede took place as people headed home after a satsang in the district's Phulrai village, conducted by a preacher known as Bhole Baba. Twenty-seven bodies were brought to a hospital in neighbouring Etah district. Senior Superintendent of Police Rajesh Kumar Singh said 23 of them were women. And 89 lay dead in Hathras itself.
Sinh, who has been in the BJP earlier and was elected to Lok Sabha on its ticket in 90s, wields considerable influence in the Amethi region of Uttar Pradesh.
Seen by political watchers as the favourite to retain power for a third straight term, the Bharatiya Janata Party has set itself an ambitious target of winning 370 Lok Sabha seats, a goal aimed as much at projecting its strength as at diminishing the opposition in popular imagination.
Priyanka and Yogi meet up with future voters.
The party renominated Shashi Tharoor from the Thiruvananthapuram seat.
A local court in Ajmer has issued notices to the dargah committee, the Ministry of Minority Affairs, and the Archaeological Survey of India on a plea seeking to declare the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti a temple. The petition, filed in September, has sparked a heated debate, with politicians and community leaders weighing in on the potentially volatile issue. The dargah committee has declined to comment, but the Anjuman Syed Zadgan, a body representing the caretakers of the dargah, described the petition as a deliberate attempt to fracture society along communal lines. The petition comes just days after four people were killed in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, following a local court ordering survey of a Mughal-era shrine. The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which fixed August 15, 1947, as the cut-off date for status quo on the character of religious places, is at the centre of much of the debate. Several politicians, including Union minister Giriraj Singh and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, have weighed in on the issue. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has called the civil court's decision to entertain the petition unwarranted and has asked the Supreme Court to immediately intervene.
Rampur Sadar and Khatauli in Uttar Pradesh, Padampur in Odisha, Sardarshahar in Rajasthan, Kurhani in Bihar and Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh are the assembly seats where the bypolls are being held.
As Chandigarh braces for a fierce contest between Congress candidate Manish Tewari and the BJP's Sanjay Tandon, its industry leaders harbour a fervent wish: Replicate the success of the National Capital Region model in this Union Territory.
To beat BJP, you either deny them a critical mass of Hindu vote or build a regional leader and party strong enough to protect their turf, observes Shekhar Gupta.
While the BJP and the Congress have always supported the bill, opposition by other parties and demands from some for quota for backward classes within the women's quota have been key sticking points.
Hailing the Bharatiya Janata Party's Delhi assembly polls victory as 'historic', Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday launched a stinging attack on the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress, saying the country needs a serious political transformation and not politics of 'dhoort-ta (deceit) and moorkhta (foolishness)'.
Modi also alleged the opposition grouping will end the reservation given to SC, ST, OBC and give all of it to Muslims.
Rediff Labs brings you the election affidavits of all candidates in the fray in the sixth phase.
Rediff Labs brings you the election affidavits of all candidates in the fray in the seventh and last phase of polling for the Lok Sabha elections.
In the run-up to the 2024 parliamentary elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party's minority morcha on Wednesday launched a year-long Muslim outreach programme -- "Sufi Samvad" -- with a special focus on the Muslim-dominated districts in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and Telangana.
The party, banking on the legacy of former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh, had no MP and its lone MLA had switched to the BJP.
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.
A host of issues ranging from demand for President's rule in Uttar Pradesh over "deteriorating" law and order to the plight of ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka rocked Parliament on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's move to get reservation for women in legislatures promises to shape the political discourse ahead of key state polls and Lok Sabha elections, and a parliamentary approval to the long-contested proposal will be used by the Bharatiya Janata Party to burnish his credentials as a decisive leader.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party might conduct the Lok Sabha polls in December itself, claiming that all choppers have been booked by the saffron party for campaigning.
Scindia also said that as far as talks for alliances are concerned, "like-minded parties should also think in a like-minded way".
Heatwave conditions are expected over northwest India during the next five days, with Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi predicted to bear the maximum impact, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Thursday.
The BJP appointed Sunil Bansal, one of the party's key election managers, as its national general secretary and in charge of three opposition-ruled states -- West Bengal, Odisha and Telangana -- in run-up to the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
Allahabad has seen some interesting battles, such as the Congress's Amitabh Bachchan defeating H N Bahuguna in 1984 or the 1988 by-poll that marked V P Singh's emergence as the contender for the PM post.
Rajbhar said the seat-sharing talks with the BJP remained unsuccessful.
'Leave aside the negative fallouts of phraseology like 'urban Naxals' and 'terrorists', both the BJP and the Congress have to re-discover themselves in the context of the 2024 election results, including those of the upcoming ones for Maharashtra and Jharkhand,' observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
As the Prime Minister hit the campaign trail in his Lok Sabha constituency, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Varanasi on Saturday charged the administration with "selectively" pulling down its posters in the name of implementing the poll code.
The parties which gave chief ministers and sent scores of MPs to Parliament, drew a blank this time.
Kumar's comment comes days after a section of JD-U leaders in Uttar Pradesh announced that they would join the Congress' 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' in the state.
If 74.9 per cent of NRI voters are from Kerala, Andhra Pradesh at 6.4 per cent, Maharashtra at 4.7 per cent, Tamil Nadu and Telangana at 2.9 per cent each follow way behind.
Jaya Prada and Azam Khan have a long-running feud.
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) could have performed better in the recently-held Lok Sabha polls and perhaps, too much time was spent in reaching seat-sharing agreements, Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya has said.
Addressing an election meeting on what once was the home turf of slain gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday appeared to invoke nature as a great leveller -- a force that delivers justice.
Yadav said like his Rashtriya Janata Dal, the DMK headed by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin was a party that believed in social justice.
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