Capping its impressive showing in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the Bahujan Samaj Party also swept the three Lok Sabha bypolls for Mirzapur, Robertsganj and Bilhaur.
"The day news of the SP-BSP top leadership meeting came out, the BJP government used the CBI and raids were conducted in an old mining scam and the news of quizzing Akhilesh Yadav was deliberately spread. Is it not an action to defame the SP-BSP alliance?" Mayawati said.
While Justice Kant and Bhuyan delivered the majority verdict, Justice Datta dismissed Ansari's appeal against the Allahabad high court order.
BSP legislators were earlier supporting the Ashok Gehlot government from outside and were in constant touch with the chief minister.
She accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being 'anti-Dalit' and recalled the Una incident and the death of Dalit scholar Rohit Vemula to back her assertion.
Mayawati said that in case of a tie-up with the Congress in the past, the party did not benefit.
Sirsa MP Kumari Selja will campaign for the Congress and address a public meeting in Narwana this week, party general secretary Randeep Surjewala said on Monday after the Bharatiya Janata Party targeted the grand old party over alleged infighting amid reports that she was sulking.
The Maharashtra Assembly elections are taking place today, with the ruling BJP-led Mahayuti alliance seeking to retain power and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) hoping for a comeback. The campaign saw prominent leaders like Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra crisscrossing the state to garner votes. The Mahayuti is banking on popular schemes while the MVA focuses on issues like caste-based census and social justice. The elections have also seen a significant rise in the number of candidates and voters.
The chief minister stressed that faith of every sect and religion should be respected.
Ali said the JD-S did not have a large organisational structure in Uttar Pradesh, which sends most lawmakers to the Parliament.
The Congress said the alliance between the BSP and Jogi's Janta Congress Chhattisgarh has the support of the BJP, which is ruling the state since 2003.
While the results of the bypolls will not directly impact the composition of the 403-member state Assembly, the contest is being seen as a prestige fight between the BJP and opposition parties.
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.
Akhilesh's fielding candidates from a broad spectrum of castes, not just Yadavs, and with the BJP losing in several seats in Purvanchal, suggests that smaller OBC communities shifted from the BJP to the SP in the region.
Faced with one of the worst showing in the Lok Sabha polls, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati on Tuesday dissolved all the committees of the party.
Swati said that she had lodged an FIR against the "misdeeds" of BSP workers led by Naseemuddin Siddqui "at the behest of Mayawati".
Congress today received a shot in the arm in its bid to revive the party in Uttar Pradesh with a former Bahujan Samaj Party Rajya Sabha member joining it.
Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini has reached out to the SCs and the poor with the accelerated implementation of various schemes, especially the B R Ambedkar housing scheme.
Allahabad has seen some interesting battles, such as the Congress's Amitabh Bachchan defeating H N Bahuguna in 1984 or the 1988 by-poll that marked V P Singh's emergence as the contender for the PM post.
The voter turnout recorded in the 2019 assembly polls was around 68 per cent.
Polling for the seventh and the final phase of the Lok Sabha election will be held on Saturday, June 1, 2024.
Maharashtra recorded a voter turnout of 58.22 per cent till 5 pm on Wednesday in the elections to the 288-member state legislative assembly, with Gadchiroli district logging more than 69 per cent voting, poll officials said.
Earlier, when reporters asked Nath about his party's strategy for the elections in the central Indian state, he had said the party had not started talks of alliance with anyone.
What India needs more than one simultaneous election is better governance both at the central and state level. Yes, we need reforms, but our priority should be to make elections less expensive, make it more democratic, do away with freebies which are actually bribes before elections, allow only those who are educated to contest, and bring in a bill to make it impossible for criminals to contest, advocates Ramesh Menon.
Hitting back at Bharatiya Janata Party Chief Amit Shah after he needled her on desertions in the Bahujan Samaj Party, former chief minister Mayawati on Sunday said his "childish" remarks betrayed BJP's nervousness ahead of assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
She said neither the Congress nor the BJP works in the interests of the upper castes' poor and the remaining majority.
Mukhtar Ansari's Quami Ekta Dal's merger with the Samajwadi Party last year had triggered turmoil in that party.
The BSP-Congress tie-up is a done deal. Only the formalities need to be gone through and announced.
Ramesh Meena, who was among those BSP legislators who made the switch to Congress, said: "The chief minister should honestly tell how much money was paid to us when we joined Congress and left the the BSP in the last Congress government."
BJP sources said the party has sought a reply from the South Delhi MP for his use of unparliamentary words.
The Union government has ordered the complete withdrawal of the counter-terrorist commando force NSG from VIP security duties and handing over its nine "high-risk" VIPs to the CRPF by next month, official sources said Wednesday.
However, the BJP is sceptical about the SP-BSP alliance as they believe Mayawati and Akhilesh will "finish off after fighting among themselves."
The four-time MLA and OBC leader joined the saffron party in presence of Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah.
The BSP is contesting on 20 seats in Karnataka election with an alliance with Janata Dal-Secular while the SP is contesting on 27 on its own.
In the past five years, UP's Opposition remained passive and defensive against the BJP, a trend that does not augur well for the impending battle.
Accoding to data collected by the Association for Democratic Reforms, of the 695 candidates in the fray, 227 are crorepatis.
"The BJP tried every trick to defeat the BSP candidate and indulged in malpractices," the BSP supremo alleged.
Mayawati added that the BSP's relationship with the SP is never going to end and she will try to ensure that their relationship stays intact.
Describing Mayawati as a "living goddess", the ruling BSP in Uttar Pradesh, facing a hail of criticism over the garland issue, says it will continue to weigh its party supremo in gold and silver.
The two parties named the seats distributed among them in a statement signed by SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati.
