On the eve of the counting of votes in Rajasthan, both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have started reaching out to independent candidates, including rebels, and smaller parties.
Mulayam Singh Yadav's son took exception to certain remarks made by a BSP member against his father.
Voting for the bypolls in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were held on Wednesday.
BSP candidate Virendra Singh defeated SP's Anil Rajbhar, son of Ramjit Rajbhar, whose death necessitated the bypoll, by 3,510 votes.
The Supreme Court had last month ruled that any appeal for votes on the ground of 'religion, race, caste, community or language' amounted to 'corrupt practice' under the electoral law.
Hemant V Shivsaran/Rediff.com does a deep dive and lists the winners with the highest and lowest margins in the recent Lok Sabha elections.
The development is being seen as a blow to the opposition Congress which was planning to forge a grand alliance in Chhattisgrah to unseat the ruling BJP.
Apart from the 18 members of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), including the Bharatiya Janata Party, seven non-National Democratic Alliance parties will attend the ceremony, going by their stated position on the issue which has snowballed into another political flashpoint between the ruling and opposition camps.
The ruling Bahujan Samaj Party has won the by-elections to all five constituencies, two Lok Sabha and three Vidhan Sabha seats, which went to polls on April 12. BSP candidate Bhismshankar alias Kushal Tiwari won the Khalilababad Lok Sabha seat by a margin of over 64,000 votes, trouncing his nearest rival Bhalchandra Yadav of SP. BSP nominee Akbar Ahmad Dampi won the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat defeating his nearest rival Ramakant Yadav of BJP by a margin of over 53,000 votes.
BSP is the first party in the state to release names of candidates for the forthcoming assembly polls. The list of 62 candidates from 31 districts included three women and one Muslim. Party sources said the BSP would try to repeat its success story in Uttar Pradesh. For the purpose, the party has roped in members of different castes, particularly Brahmins and Thakurs of the upper caste.
The meeting comes a day after Danish Ali faced verbal abuse from BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri in Lok Sabha.
Mayawati said that the BSP and the SP would not ally with the Congress party in the upcoming elections.
Madhya Pradesh assembly polls have recorded a voter turnout of 77.15 per cent, which is 1.52 per cent higher than in 2018, as per the latest data released by the Election Commission of India.
Hits street with demonstrations across 75 UP districts
"Some BSP MPs on the instructions of their leadership tried to misbehave with me, I just resisted it. Ask BSP whose members who don't know the democratic ways. I will file a written complaint against him for such a shameful and unparliamentary behaviour and demand action from the Special Privileges Committee," he told media persons when asked about the scuffle in the House on Wednesday.
Bahujan Samaj Party MLA Krishna Kumar Singh, who had joined the Samajwadi Party, was on Monday disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh assembly by the Speaker, the fourth party MLA to face action under the anti-defection law.
Opposition parties on Wednesday opposed the 'one nation, one election' proposal by calling it impractical and a 'cheap stunt' by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The train hit the cylinder before coming to a screeching halt on Sunday morning. Due to being hit by the train, the cylinder was thrown away from the tracks, they said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday declared 13 candidates from Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha polls including actor Arun Govil, who played Lord Ram in popular TV serial Ramayan, from Meerut, while replacing sitting MP Varun Gandhi from Pilibhit with state minister Jitin Prasada.
Amid a political crisis in the wake of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam pulling out of United Progressive Alliance, Bahujan Samaj Party on Wednesday said it will continue to support the government from outside but will not join it. "We will not be part of the government. We did not join it earlier and even now, we will not be part of it. We will continue to support it from outside," BSP supremo Mayawati told reporters outside Parliament House.
No one will want President's rule imposed in the state and the BJP run the government through the remote control.
Both the parties had been banking heavily on the internal feud in the first family of the state
As controversy raged over Yati Narsinghanand's objectionable remarks against Prophet Muhammad, his supporters on Sunday alleged that the Dasna temple head priest is being illegally kept in detention by police, which denied the claim.
The youth -- their dreams of government jobs unfulfilled -- are voicing their frustration.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
'It will be a grand alliance where they could get the Muslims, Dalits and Yadavs in one camp and pose a serious challenge to whatever the BJP might conjure up in the run-up to the 2019 election.'
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati attacked the Samajwadi Party government over the murder of her party leader, saying that there is total lawlessness in the state and that the Centre should intervene to improve the situation.
Modi's remarks at an election rally in Mirzapur in the backward eastern region of Uttar Pradesh came amid war of words on supply of electricity in the state.
Jumping into the Lok Sabha electoral fray in the national capital, Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party has declared candidates for four constituencies. One of the candidates is a billionaire, who unsuccessfully contested the Delhi assembly polls in 2008.
"Will wait and watch for results, as of now not thinking of alliance with anyone," BSP sources told ANI.
Slogan shouting Congress and BJP members on Monday forced four adjournments of Rajya Sabha demanding dismissal of SAD-BJP government in Punjab over alleged atrocities against Dalit youths.
BJP will find it tougher to push contentious Bills, especially those that would require Constitutional amendments, without the support of its allies and cooperation from the Opposition.
The best-case scenario is that the BJP will top out at around 50 seats in UP -- a drop of 12 from the 62 it had won in 2019. Taken in tandem with Maharashtra and Karnataka, this is what is likely to put paid to the BJP's ambitions of a third term for Modi, argues Prem Panicker.
SP legislator from Swar Tanda (Rampur), Nawab Kazim Ali, and Ram Sewak Singh Patel, BJS MLA from Binawar (Badaun) joined the BSP in Lucknow.
Earlier this month, there were speculations that Nath might switch over to the BJP, but he refuted such reports as "creation of media."
Jammu and Kashmir BJP chief Ravinder Raina, seeking re-election from Nowshera assembly constituency of Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir, is facing a major challenge from his former party colleague Surinder Choudhary.
Shami had been a five-time president of the Mauaima block. He was allegedly involved in a number of criminal cases.
Stepping up pressure on the United Progressive Alliance government, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party on Tuesday forced brief adjournments in both the Houses of Parliament, demanding an immediate financial package of Rs 80,000 crore for Uttar Pradesh. The BSP has raised the pitch on the issue in recent days with UP Chief Minister Mayawati threatening to withdraw support to the Centre if it failed to provide the package and bring down prices of essential commodities.
The withdrawal of the candidature by DPAP leaders on the last day on August 30 is seen as a boost to the NC-Congress alliance.
