The panchayat polls will be seen as a kind of verdict from the hinterland for Yogi Adityanath ahead of the crucial 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections.
After Mulayam Singh Yadav's 'ladke to ladke hain' (boys are boys) remark about rapists, Uttar Pradesh Police has listed mobile phones, western culture and indecent dressing by women as reasons for rape.
Unprecedented rains and floods in the northern region in the past few days have not only caused extensive damage to lives and property but have also impacted business and commercial establishments. Vegetable prices have gone through the roof in the national capital and many other parts of the country since rains started pouring earlier this month. Traders say vegetable prices would come down only after roads open and skies clear, even as water in the fields will take time to recede.
'Now the very government we helped to form is telling us we are enemies of the nation!' The BKU has stayed away from direct participation in politics. But this time they are not so sure, reports Aditi Phadnis.
The quake, with its epicentre near Wazirpur in northeast Delhi, occurred at 1.26 pm at a shallow depth of 5 km, said JL Gautam, Head (Operations) at NCS, an institute under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
NIA had sought 15-day custodial interrogation of the accused who were arrested from various parts of the national capital and Uttar Pradesh.
The farmers lifted blockades on highways at Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur borders and took out a 'Victory March' to celebrate the repeal of three contentious farm laws and the Centre's written assurance to fulfil their other demands, including constituting a committee for legal guarantee on minimum support price (MSP) for crops.
The mercury breached the 46-degree Celsius mark in several places such as Allahabad (46.8 degrees Celsius) and Jhansi (46.2 degrees Celsius) in Uttar Pradesh; Sports Complex (46.4 degrees Celsius) in Delhi; Ganganagar (46.4 degrees Celsius) in Rajasthan; Nowgong (46.2 degrees Celsius) in Madhya Pradesh; and Maharashtra's Chandrapur (46.4 degrees Celsius).
Rather than lose direction with the Karnal protest, farmers decided to focus more on UP to defeat the BJP in the forthcoming assembly elections there, reports Nitin Kumar.
Leaders from 26 opposition parties, in power individually or in alliance in Delhi and 10 states, are meeting in Bengaluru to discuss strategy to take on the Narendra Modi-led NDA in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Tens of thousands of farmers gathered in Muzaffarnagar town on Friday to attend a mahapanchayat in support of the Bharatiya Kisan Union-led protest against the Centre's new farm laws in Ghazipur on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border.
The Samyukt Kisan Morcha, an umbrella body of the farmer unions protesting the three farm laws, said emergency and essential services such as ambulance and school bus will not be stopped during the 'chakka jam' that is proposed to be held between 12 pm and 3 pm.
Her body was cremated in the early hours of Wednesday, with her family alleging the local police forced them to conduct the last rites in the dead of the night.
The well-irrigated states of Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, western Uttar Pradesh and coastal states such as Odisha are, for the first time, feeling the effects of a poor monsoon.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi and general secretary in charge of western Uttar Pradesh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, will accompany her.
Rakesh Tikait, the 51-year-old Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader from the hinterlands of Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh, welcomed the support from international artistes and activists, including Rihanna and Greta Thunberg, but acknowledged he does not know them.
The Aligarh Muslim University Teachers' Association on Thursday urged political parties "not to play politics over the dead bodies" of the victims of the communal clashes in Muzaffarnagar.
Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) supporters stayed put on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway on Friday as the crowd swelled there, notwithstanding the Ghaziabad administration's ultimatum to vacate the UP Gate protest site where security force in large numbers was re-deployed.
Three more persons, including the main accused in the Bulandshahr gangrape case, have been arrested
Authorities have suspended civil construction works in Delhi and Haryana as part of emergency measures to improve air quality.
The letter by Singh, who is camping at the Dalit Prerna Sthal in Noida along with his faction members since December 2, came as protestors marked the birth anniversary of former prime minister and farmers' leader Chaudhary Charan Singh.
'Farmers have been sent notices in which the government is threatening that if you will join the movement, then we will impound your ancestral properties.' 'We will seal your bank accounts.' 'We will revoke the passports of your kids.'
Intense heat swept through east India and parts of the southern peninsular region on Thursday, testing power grids and prompting the Kerala government to order closure of educational institutions till May 6.
In the normal course, a high turnout reflects anti-incumbency but there is no correlation between high turnout and advantage to the National Democratic Alliance, says Dharmendra Kumar Singh.
The broad patterns tell us that to sweep UP, the BJP has to retain its voteshares of the past three elections. But to merely win it, the party can do so while losing some voteshare, and perhaps up to as much as 10 per cent, observes Aakar Patel.
Referring to attempts made by Azad to forge the relationship of 'bua' with her, Mayawati said she cannot have any respectable relationship with such people.
Addressing a public event in Orai in Jalaun district, where elections are scheduled on February 20 in the third phase, she went all guns blazing against the BJP, the Congress and the SP.
For the party's traditional vote bank -- traders -- demonetisation was a 'political betrayal.'
The activists told police that the two were allegedly found in an objectionable position.
The marches will also register the farmers' protest against non-fulfilment of various promises by the government, farmer leaders said.
The Delhi police on Friday charge-sheeted 17 accused, 12 of whom are absconding, for allegedly conspiring, recruiting Indian youths and establishing a base of terror outfit Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent.
The Samyukt Kisan Morcha called off the tractor parade by farmers on Tuesday and appealed to participants to immediately return to their respective protest sites.
Police personnel in adequate strength were deployed across the state to maintain law and order, officials said.
Large parts of north India reeled under numbing cold on Tuesday with the mercury remaining below freezing point at most places in Jammu and Kashmir, while dense fog in the early hours of the morning hit road and rail traffic movement.
A farmer union leader alleged that the National Investigation Agency is filing cases against those who are part of the protest or supporting it.
These farmers, belonging to various districts of western Uttar Pradesh, have come for the demonstration on the call of farmers' union Kisan Sena and want to go to Delhi to meet Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, according to the outfit's conevnor Thakur Gauri Shankar Singh.
If Saudi Arabia, with just two Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, can create a huge tourism-based ecosystem beyond oil, Ayodhya is sure to become the world's hottest religious tourism site in less than a decade, predicts R Jagannathan.
'The BJP would like to build a 'rainbow' coalition of different castes and communities buttressed by the appeal of nationalism and Hindutva.'
In Uttar Pradesh, the death toll due to lightning strikes rose to 42.
For the first time in his political career, he failed to carry his party to even a working majority -- and again, for the first time in his career, he finds himself in a situation where he cannot rule by dictatorial fiat, points out Prem Panicker.
