"Didi has already said in Delhi that if Akhilesh Yadav needs our help, we are ready to extend help. The gesture of senior SP leader Jaya Bachchan seeking votes for the TMC during the West Bengal Assembly elections will be reciprocated in Uttar Pradesh," said Laliteshpati Tripathi, who recently joined the TMC.
More than 50,000 officials have been deployed for the counting of votes on Thursday in the five states where assembly polls were held recently.
Officials said most of the preparations are complete and the counting will start at 8 am on Saturday.
The State Election Commission, it said will fasten responsibility on gazetted officers for the observance of COVID-19 protocols at counting centres.
The April 11 polling will decide the fate of several political bigwigs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday laid the foundation stone for the Noida International Airport at Jewar in Uttar Pradesh. It will be one of the largest aerodromes in Asia.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Maneka Gandhi on Saturday indicated that her son Varun Gandhi's writings that were sometimes critical of the government may have cost him the party's Lok Sabha ticket from Pilibhit but asserted that he would do very well even without it.
Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com gives the lowdown on the constituencies going to polls in the first phase on April 11.
"The voter turnout data for the first two phases of the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections published by ECI on April 30 has been published after 11 days of the first phase of polling... on April 19 and four days after second phase of polling... on April 26.
The MLA later told reporters that those who opposed his visit were under the influence of alcohol.
Chaudhary's jibe comes in the wake of his allegations the BJP has been trying to woo RLD leaders as well as the party chief into the saffron fold ahead of Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
The Commission, under Justice (retd) Ritu Raj Awasthi, would recommend an amendment to the Constitution to add the "new chapter or part" on simultaneous elections, the sources said.
Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are contesting in all the 30 seats, while the Communist Party of India-Marxist is in the fray in 15 and its alliance partners of Sanjukta Morcha the Congress and ISF are competing in 13 and two seats respectively.
There are 218,442 voters over 100 years on the electoral rolls.
Days after Jayant Chaudhary's terse 'not a coin, won't flip' response to the BJP's apparent attempt to woo him, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the Rashtriya Lok Dal chief was a 'kid with little knowledge of history'.
The elections are being seen as a semi-final to the 2022 assembly election.
Gandhi, who is seeking a second-straight term from Wayanad in Kerala, in a video appeal said this election is to save democracy and the Constitution.
Vadra said that he will also be present with his mother-in-law Sonia Gandhi and brother-in-law Rahul Gandhi during their filing of nominations.
Polling is scheduled in all 13 seats of Punjab and four of Himachal Pradesh, 13 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, eight in Bihar, six in Odisha and three seats in Jharkhand besides Chandigarh.
This phase of voting was crucial for the state's ruling Samajwadi Party and main opposition Bahujan Samaj Party.
The fate of 961 candidates, including Union ministers Giriraj Singh, Subhash Bhamre, S S Ahluwalia and Babul Supriyo of the BJP and former Union ministers Salman Khurshid and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury of the Congress, will be decided by about 12.79 core voters in the fourth phase.
The fourth phase of the Lok Sabha elections will go to polls on April 29. The voting will be held for 71 seats spread across 9 states.
The Election Commission is confident of holding the five assembly polls due early next year, including in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, on time as the poll panel has gained a lot of experience from the electoral exercise in Bihar, West Bengal and four other assemblies amid the coronavirus pandemic, Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra has asserted.
People in these villages routinely encounter big cats that stray into their farms from the adjoining Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, a bustling habitat for the Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris).
Here's the full phase-wise list of polling dates in all states and Union Territories.
Campaigning for the first phase of the Gujarat assembly elections to be held on December 1 ended at 5 pm on Tuesday.
Voting was held on Sunday on 117 assembly seats in Punjab and 59 assembly constituencies spread across 16 districts of Uttar Pradesh.
The duo has been victorious multiple times from Sultanpur and Pilibhit. In the recent rejig of the BJP national executive committee, the two were also dropped from that list.
Taking a serious view of the violation of its directions, the EC shot off a letter to the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh in which it reminded the CEO that the "offence under Section 126A is punishable by imprisonment for a term upto 2 years or with fine or both."
The last time a non-Gandhi was in the fray from the constituency was in 1998, when Satish Sharma, a close aide of Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, contested the polls but lost to the BJP's Sanjaya Sinh.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) is unlikely to attend a meeting of the INDIA bloc on June 1, sources said, as it coincides with the last phase of voting in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls.
Polling for 58 assembly seats spread across 11 districts in the western part of the state began in the morning.
Electoral bonds have been pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties as part of efforts to bring transparency in political funding.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday made serious allegations against the Congress and said the grand old party has in its election manifesto expressed its intention to implement the 'Sharia law' in the country and redistribute people's property.
As the dust finally settles on the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections 2019 and Bharatiya Janata Party along with its NDA allies emerges as the clear winner, here is a list of who won in each of the 7 phases of elections.
Five BJP MLAs and Apna Dal (Sonelal) legislator Amar Singh Chaudhary also joined the SP in the presence of Akhilesh Yadav.
Of the total 166 names declared so far by the Congress, 119 candidates will be making their electoral debut.
Voting will be held on Thursday for the first phase of Gujarat Assembly elections in 89 seats spread across 19 districts in Saurashtra-Kutch and southern parts of the state where 788 candidates are in the fray.
Sources said Rahul Gandhi is likely to contest from Rae Bareli, but a final call is yet to be taken by the first family of the Congress.
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