Both the BJP and the Congress have banked on new and young faces, some of whom have been nominated by the parties for the first time.
The ceremony on Friday will be attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and chief ministers of Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states.
While the Samajwadi Party largely banks on its Muslim-Yadav support base, the Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to counter it with the Modi-Yogi combo in the state assembly polls.
The Rashtriya Lok Dal has chosen educated candidates hailing from the constituency and with no criminal background, while partner the Samajwadi Party picked them on their 'winnability' factor as the alliance announced the first list of nominees for the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
Bharatiya Janata Party MP Varun Gandhi on Sunday described farmers, who have been protesting against three farm laws, as 'our own flesh and blood' and suggested that the government should re-engage with them in reaching common ground.
According to the findings of the CSDS-Lokniti survey, the BJP saw a marginal increase in its support among the Muslim voters as compared to the 2017 assembly elections.
Voting for the seventh and final phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections covering 54 seats, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency Varanasi, will be held on Monday to decide the phase of 613 candidates.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala and senior leader Jairam Ramesh were among the 10 candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha on Friday from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Haryana, while counting was underway in Maharashtra after an eight-hour delay due to wrangling by rival parties over alleged breach of voting rules.
SP leader Akhilesh Yadav has successfully poached a number of OBC leaders from the ruling party, including Swami Prasad Maurya, in his efforts to broaden his party's social base beyond the traditional Muslim and Yadav votebank to take it on this time round.
These meetings with Pawar has fuelled speculations about the possibility of opposition parties coming together to form a third front against the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi held a virtual meeting on Friday evening with leaders of 19 Opposition parties, including the chief ministers of some Opposition-ruled states, amid efforts to boost Opposition unity and evolve a common strategy against the National Democratic Alliance government.
'Yogi was there, but ultimately the BJP got extremely worried and therefore Modi pitched in.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party-backed Samajwadi Party rebel candidate Nitin Agarwal was elected deputy speaker of the Uttar Pradesh assembly on Monday, defeating Narendra Verma, the official candidate of Akhilesh Yadav's party, by 244 votes.
A day after meeting Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday held talks with AAP leader Sanjay Singh and Apna Dal (K) chief Krishna Patel in the run-up to the 2022 assembly polls.
Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday said that the country is witnessing 'politics of change' and called on the youth to make it successful.
Party chief Chaudhary Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhary will decide on the number of seats the party will contest and the matter may be discussed during a meeting in the next few days
Mayawati made it amply clear that her party will not enter into any alliance with the Congress.
The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, trouncing its main rival SP, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
There are a total 623 candidates in the fray, and affidavits of eight of them could not be analysed because they were either badly scanned or incomplete, the ADR said.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday favoured a thorough inquiry into allegations of phone tapping with the help of Pegasus spyware which has led to a logjam in Parliament.
All 41 candidates from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Telangana were elected unopposed on Friday after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.
Voting for the seventh and final round will be held on March 7 for Varanasi and its eight adjoining districts.
With about 18 weeks to go for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the state is being barnstormed by one notable politician after another.
Pilot had claimed that the Ashok Gehlot government was in minority and more than 30 Congress and some independent legislators have pledged support to him.
As the Opposition held its first meeting on the Presidential polls and names of Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi also cropped up, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice with senior party leader and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress), Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal).
"Terms like 'unity in diversity' are used for our country. The country belongs to all. No remarks should me made that harm the country," Singh, a confidant of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, told reporters when asked for his reaction to the BJP leader's comments.
The 'Group of 23' leaders who participated included Ghulam Nabi Azad, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik, Prithviraj Chavan, Manish Tewari, Shashi Tharoor, besides Sibal who hosted the post-birthday dinner for them.
Here is the lowdown of the each state and parties.
The Haryana assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution seeking the completion of the SYL canal and the transfer of Hindi-speaking areas from Punjab, while denouncing the neighbouring state for staking its claim over Chandigarh.
The nodal officer for EVMs in Varanasi, a returning officer (RO) in Sonbhadra district and an additional election officer in Bareilly district have been pulled out from election duties, a day ahead of the counting of votes in UP.
They alleged that while the two main political parties in the state -- the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party -- have 'cheated' them, the other parties are 'ineffective'.
The BJP campaign highlighted Yogi's persona as a tough-as-nails leader and an incorruptible man with no nest to feather; Modi's charisma which was turned on full blast in the penultimate phases; Amit Shah's ground work; a well-oiled party organisation, and the RSS's back-up.
'If the Opposition does make a dent, it could encourage the efforts of regional parties to come together for the larger battle in 2024 and mark the beginning of a new anti-BJP politics.'
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra appears to have shed the maximum sweat among top leaders for over the last 45 days in the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh assembly elections campaign.
Some of the MLAs seen in the video are Indraraj Gurjar, Mukesh Bhakar, Harish Meena.
An Allahabad high court bench of Justice Shekhar Yadav had on Thursday last urged the government and the poll panel to consider postponing the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections for a month or two and banning all political rallies amid the fears of an impending third wave of Covid.
With several political stalwarts of Uttar Pradesh no longer on the scene, it will be keenly watched how their children lead at the hustings this time without their formidable presence.
The curtain came down on rumbustious electioneering over the last two months when assembly polls were also held in four other states - Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur.
On chances of taking uncle Shivpal Yadav's Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party Lohia along in the polls, he said, "I dont have any problem in this. He and his men will be given due honour".
While Yadav began to tour different constituencies and address public meetings to mobilise the SP rank and file, he has concurrently started the tedious process of cobbling up an alliance of smaller outfits representing a mlange of castes and sub-castes, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
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