The Bhojpuri superstar and Gorakhpur MP was in Noida on Sunday to campaign for BJP's sitting MLA Pankaj Singh, who is again contesting the election as the party's candidate.
Nearly 2.6 crore people in 73 constituencies of western Uttar Pradesh are voting on Saturday in the first of the seven phases of high-stake assembly elections
Some candidates in these two states have been provided security till the poll process ends.
'Unlike in the sporting arena, where sports federations moved from partisan to impartial referees, in Indian democracy's biggest festival, it appears we are moving backward from unbiased and objective to one-sided and partisan,' observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Elections will also be held in 35 assembly constituencies in Odisha.
While assembly polls in Goa and Uttarakhand were completed in a single phase, for Uttar Pradesh, Monday was the second of a seven-phase election.
Kishori Lal Sharma, a close aide of the Gandhi family, has been fielded from the Amethi Lok Sabha seat, the party said in a statement.
"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.
The April 11 polling will decide the fate of several political bigwigs.
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.
Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com gives the lowdown on the constituencies going to polls in the first phase on April 11.
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.
The State Election Commission, it said will fasten responsibility on gazetted officers for the observance of COVID-19 protocols at counting centres.
As Election 2024 hurtles towards result day in a medley of mangalsutra, mujra, mutton, machli and other barbs, these may sound like character names from Hindi comics of yore. Instead, these are the mocking, sometimes vicious monikers given by political rivals to each other.
Exit polls on Saturday predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain power for a third straight term, with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance expected to win a big majority in the Lok Sabha polls.
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.
Even as parleys continue in both states, the grand old party is expected to contest less than 110 seats in the November 20 polls for the 288-member Maharashtra assembly.
The BJP got the benefit of a split in Muslim votes in some seats of western UP, and its candidates registered wins from Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, Meerut, Bulandshahr, Baghpat and Aligarh Lok Sabha seats.
Officials said most of the preparations are complete and the counting will start at 8 am on Saturday.
The 52-year-old, who joins her mother Sonia and brother Rahul as an MP in what is a rare instance of three members of a family together in Parliament, would visit Parliament as a teenager to listen to her father Rajiv Gandhi speak as prime minister.
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.
This phase of voting was crucial for the state's ruling Samajwadi Party and main opposition Bahujan Samaj Party.
The MLA later told reporters that those who opposed his visit were under the influence of alcohol.
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.
The elections are being seen as a semi-final to the 2022 assembly election.
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.
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 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.
Newly elected Samajwadi Party MP RK Chaudhary, one of the founders of the Bahujan Samaj Party, has claimed BSP chief Mayawati has been ignoring the Bahujan movement which has led to her party's rout in these Lok Sabha polls.
The BSP has not entered into any alliances and has also been keen to shed the tag of being a 'B-team' of the BJP.
The Election Commission of India has announced that the Delhi Assembly elections will be held on February 5, 2023, with the counting of votes scheduled for February 8. The last date to file nominations is January 17, and the scrutiny of nominations will be done by January 18. Candidates can withdraw their nominations until January 20.
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.
Here's the full phase-wise list of polling dates in all states and Union Territories.
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.
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."
However, in 950 booths, voting will end at 4 pm, though people standing in the queue at that time will be able to exercise their franchise.
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.
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.
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.
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