Mayawati said marvelous memorials and parks built to honour "ignored" gurus and sants born in Dalit and OBC communities are a new grand identity and tourist attractions in the state.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who set off a national debate when he walked the Bharat Jodo Yatra in a T-shirt in north India's cold winter, donned a pheran to ward off Kashmir's bone-freezing chill on Monday.
President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, several central ministers and chief ministers and leaders cutting across party lines condoled the demise of former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday and hailed his immense contributions to the state as well as the country.
The Uttar Pradesh Police on Tuesday took custody of jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari at Punjab's Rupnagar jail to transfer him to Banda prison.
The BJP and its allies won all assembly seats in Modi's Varanasi and Adityanath's Gorakhpur, and the SP bagged all 10 segments in Yadav's Azamgarh Lok Sabha constituency.
A win for SP could provide some consolation for Akhilesh Yadav after the defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early this year and the loss of Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in June bypolls.
While the ruling BJP, riding on the Modi juggernaut, wants to break the 38-year jinx and retain its southern citadel, the Congress is seeking to wrest power to give the party much-needed elbow room and momentum to position itself as the main opposition player in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The Bharatiya Janata Party faces an uphill task of repeating its performance of the last assembly election of winning 53 out of 58 constituencies in western Uttar Pradesh where polling will be held in the first phase on February 10.
While over 80 MLAs, including some of the independents, have reached a hotel in Udaipur, Soldier Welfare Minister Rajendra Gudha, SC Commission Chairman and MLA Khiladi Bairwa and MLA Girraj Singh Malinga expressed their displeasure in Jaipur.
Espousing an aggressive pro-backward and Dalit stance synchronising with the Maurya controversy, the SP has thrown down the gauntlet with Akhilesh upping the ante on the burning topic, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
Amid the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament, a heated argument broke out between Congress MP Ravneet Singh Bittu and Shiromani Akali Dal MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Thursday when the former accused the latter of getting the farm laws enacted while she was a minister in the Union Cabinet, and added that she 'doing drama' over the laws and showing 'fake support' to the farmers' cause.
It is not much of an issue just now, but it could become one if the idea of caste census captures socio-political imagination, going beyond electoral tags and identities, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The two parties named the seats distributed among them in a statement signed by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.
"The victory margin will be huge since there is an alliance between Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party. Bharatiya Janata Party did not fulfil its promises and now to divert attention, it is using the security forces. It has been a failed government," Dimple Yadav said.
The voting will begin at 7 am and end at 5 pm after the electioneering came to an end on Saturday, 48 hours before the electorate begin casting their votes.
NCP president Sharad Pawar on Thursday said the fate of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra will be decided on the floor of the Legislative Assembly, and the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress coalition will prove its majority in a trust vote.
Sibal, a prominent Opposition voice and a former Congress leader, also said that instead of a common minimum programme, the Opposition parties should talk about a 'new vision for India'.
The court granted relief to Ashish Pandey on furnishing a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and one surety of the like amount.
Modi was addressing a rally after laying the foundation stone of 594-km-long Ganga Expressway in this Uttar Pradesh district.
An MP-MLA court in Prayagraj on Tuesday held gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed and two others guilty in the 2006 Umesh Pal kidnapping case.
'Since 2017, the chief minister and the RSS seem to have come closer.' 'This relationship's warmth is more from the RSS's side.'
Among the seven seats which witnessed a stiff contest between the BJP and the regional parties, the saffron party held three and the Congress two, while the Shiv Sena and the RJD had one each.
So who cost the SP more seats in UP? Hemantkumar Shivsaran does a deep dive to find out.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has said she is not the only face of the party for Uttar Pradesh assembly polls and her remarks at a press conference on Friday about being the face of the party were made in a 'slight exaggerated way' in response to repeated queries from the media on the issue.
Reacting to Yadav's statement that he wanted her to become the prime minister and that the SP had forged an alliance with the BSP for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls for this, Mayawati, in a tweet in Hindi, said, 'When the SP chief could not fulfil his own dream of becoming the chief minister (of Uttar Pradesh) even after securing the votes of Muslims and Yadavs and forming an alliance with several parties, how can he fulfil the dream of others to become the prime minister.'
Meanwhile, Kamra has refused to retract his controversial tweets against the Supreme Court or apologise for them, saying he believes they "speak for themselves".
They were all fielded by the Samajwadi Party and its alliance partners.
On Friday, former ministers Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini, five BJP MLAs and one from the Apna Dal-Sonelal had crossed over to the Samajwadi Party.
A visibly upset Shivpal Yadav said, "I was never called to any meeting (of the SP) and no information was given to me."
He is the fourth chief minister from the saffron party to head the northern state. Before Adityanath, Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta and Rajnath Singh of the BJP had served as Uttar Pradesh chief ministers.
At present, there are 18 Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly.
The focus now shifts to smaller parties and Independents who will play an important role in government formation.
If only the Congress could rebuild on its strengths and develop a modern enough ideology, we could again be moving towards a clearer two-party political landscape, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'I have joined the Congress to save the Constitution of the country'
Sources said the opposition parties would look to avoid the prickly leadership question as of now and emphasise on building a common ground.
A video of the incident which occurred at around 6:25 AM shows a cow darting towards the road when it was hit by the vehicle carrying Ahmed. The cow fell near the road divider. After the incident, the vehicle stopped for a while before resuming the onward journey.
"Had there been no demolition, probably the courts too would have ordered status quo," he said then. And his last wish, he said, was to live till the temple comes up.
The Congress is banking on decisions like reducing electricity tariff and fuel prices, taken during current CM Charanjit Singh Channi's 111-day tenure.
However, the scheme will be optional for the eligible beneficiaries, Mann said in a video message.
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