Here are some glimpses of the polling from the last rounds of elections.
Rumblings within the Bharatiya Janata Party came to the fore on Wednesday night as the party decided to field L K Advani from Gandhinagar for Lok Sabha polls, angering the patriarch who wanted to shift to Bhopal in a reflection of his tensions with Narendra Modi.
During their visit to the holy city, the Congress leaders will take a dip in Saryu river, and then visit the Ram temple and Hanumangarhi temple, Rai said on Sunday.
Joshi has issued a brief statement for voters in Kanpur, from where the 85-year-old leader had won in 2014.
The defence ministry in an official statement has informed that the minister will give a statement in Rajya Sabha at 11.30 am and in Lok Sabha at 12.15 pm.
In a riposte to former Bharatiya Janata Party chief Nitin Gadkari's recent overtures to Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray, the Shiv Sena on Friday decided to field its candidates in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi for the Lok Sabha elections.
613 candidates are in the fray on 54 seats, including those falling in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary segment Varanasi.
Some have been cherry-picked to assert the BJP's supremacy over its allies or, significantly, its leaders who charted an independent course in the recent past.
Modi's tweet comes after Shankaracharya Swaroopanand Saraswati objected to the slogan being used in favour of BP's PM candidate
'I don't want to give any headline to the media as at present my focus is on the Bharat Jodo Yatra'
Have Amethi and Rae Bareli got rough treatment in the last one year? Has Varanasi become cleaner? Business Standard's Manavi Kapur finds out
Ahsan Ullah Khan, the additional district and session judge of the MP-MLA court in Sonbhadra, also imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on Gond which would be used in the rape survivor's rehabilitation.
'Besides Ayodhya, the BJP lost in nine other constituencies with a Ramayana imprint; it tasted success only in Thrissur.' 'In Rameswaram, K Navaskani of the Indian Union Muslim League won with a 44% voteshare in a 84% Hindu constituency.' 'In the 21 seats in the Ayodhya and Varanasi regions, both crucial to the Hindutva project, the BJP won just 7.' 'It won just 3 out of 12 seats around Modi's constituency,' points out Krishna Prasad.
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
In 2014 Lok Sabha polls, where it was introduced for the first time in any parliamentary election, around 60 lakh voters had opted for the NOTA option -- equalling about 1.1 per cent of the total votes polled during those elections across 543 seats.
The party 'Mera Adhikar Rashtriya Dal' (MARD), registered in 2018, had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Lucknow and Varanasi.
District election officer Mahendra Bahadur Singh said Aman Giri won by a margin of 34,298 votes. He received 1,24,810 votes while Tiwari got 90,512 votes.
The party office in Lucknow buzzed with activity as enthusiastic Congress workers gathered outside the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee building, even before she returned from an overnight stay in Jaipur.
"The court of Additional Sessions Judge/First MP-MLA Court Durgesh also imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on Mukhtar and Rs 1 lakh on Afzal," ADGC Criminal Neeraj Srivastava said.
It said there is no part of the country that he did not visit during the 125 days between December 25 and May 1 as he crisscrossed from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Jamnagar to Silchar, while speaking to students to scientists, farmers, entrepreneurs, foreign heads of state and political workers.
'It doesn't help to transpose the Hindi heartland model on Bengal. Bengalis don't understand its dynamics. They won't comprehend the impact of Modi's dip in the Ganga because Bengal's political culture is different. Even in the Ramakrishna Mission Ashrams, Christ is worshipped on Christmas. It's difficult to polarise Bengal religiously'
Bypolls to the Lok Sabha seats vacated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav will be held on September 13, the Election Commission announced on Saturday.
After Narendra Modi, Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal on Friday held an impressive roadshow in Varanasi and derided the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate for resorting to "helicopter and corrupt politics".
Modi also gifted Harris a 'gulabi meenakari' chess set, the sources said, adding that the craft of 'gulabi meenakari' is closely associated with Varanasi, one of the oldest cities of the world and the prime minister's Lok Sabha constituency.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday visited Garhwa Ghat Ashram in Varanasi, which has considerable following among the backward castes, and paid tributes to former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri at his ancestral home.
The two parties named the seats distributed among them in a statement signed by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi and general secretary in charge of western Uttar Pradesh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, will accompany her.
The speech he gave in which he accused the Congress of getting black money in tempos from Ambani and Adani is remarkable.' 'It is a self-goal for sure, but indicates someone who has lost control, someone who is rattled.'
Ignoring controversies surrounding him over Adarsh housing scam, the Congress has decided to field ex-Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan for the Lok Sabha polls and has fielded Madhusudan Mistry, a close aide of party vice president Rahul Gandhi to take on Narendra Modi in Vadodara. Anita Katyal reports
'We should not underestimate the power of Hindutva.'
'Rather than taking a very short-term view on the markets, equity investing should be premised on longer term growth opportunities.'
Rajbhar said the seat-sharing talks with the BJP remained unsuccessful.
When a former police constable was appointed Gujarat unit chief, everyone was surprised. Now workers are laying bets on when he will be elevated to the Union Cabinet, notes Aditi Phadnis.
Ambani's Reliance has refineries at Jamnagar in Gujarat.
Narendra Modi has a once in a lifetime chance to change and take the RSS-BJP-VHP to a new level. Varanasi is the right place to turn the page on saffron history. By surrendering to the spirit of mystical Varanasi, Modi and his party can change the trajectory of their political journey.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited his constituency Varanasi on Friday, for the first time since taking charge. During his two-day visit, the PM is also adopted Jayapur village.
The people of Uttar Pradesh have always been springing surprises, he said.
In a first of its kind in Lok Sabha polls, a "recorded video speech" of BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will be shown in "3D" on Monday at 300 places across the country, including 18 in Delhi.
He held two massive roadshows in Rajasthan and one in Madhya Pradesh and his entries in many of rally venues were marked by a drive through cheering supporters.
In spite of its not-so-cordial relationship, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress could join forces to counter Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi if he contests the next Lok Sabha election from Lucknow or Varanasi. Anita Katyal reports
