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.
The 'ghar wapsi' was marked with celebratory atmosphere at Ghazipur border, where protestors, chiefly members and supporters of the Tikait family-led Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), danced to patriotic and regional tunes hailing the farming community.
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The ruling BJP in UP, however, lost Khatauli to Samajwadi Party ally Rashtriya Lok Dal.
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.
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.
Slogans of 'Make Rahul Gandhi INC president' rent the air on Sunday as thousands of Congress supporters reached the Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi to raise their voice against price rise and unemployment.
Operations at the Delhi airport remained normal. However, three flights were returned or diverted to the Delhi airport due to bad weather in Chandigarh, Varanasi and Lucknow on Tuesday night.
What we find interesting are the crowds Akhilesh Yadav has been attracting on his Samajwadi Vijay Rath Yatra in the state.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday targeted the Samajwadi Party, saying five years ago musclemen and rioters used to be a law unto themselves in Uttar Pradesh.
Rampur Sadar and Khatauli in Uttar Pradesh, Padampur in Odisha, Sardarshahar in Rajasthan, Kurhani in Bihar and Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh are the assembly seats where the bypolls are being held.
The Shiv Sena has plans to field 50 to 100 candidates in Uttar Pradesh, including in Ayodhya and Mathura and made it clear that the party will not be part of any alliance.
Chaudhary also announced that if his party is voted into power in Uttar Pradesh, high court benches will be set up in western Uttar Pradesh, Bundelkhand and Purvanchal areas of the state.
"Now it is necessary to investigate whether there is a lapse in the security or the anger of the farmers!" Tikait tweeted in Hindi on Wednesday.
Habib operates more than 850 salons and around 65 hair academies across 115 cities across India.
Likening Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the character of an arrogant king, 'ahankari raja', from stories of yore, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday said he is unable to understand that the 'jawan' who has kept the country safe is also the son of a farmer.
The Allahabad high court, which is hearing an appeal in connection with the case, has been informed that there is no evidence that the two men tried to change the woman's religion.
Mayawati said both the BJP and the SP indulged in empty talks to win the votes of Dalits and Brahmins, but neither safeguarded their interests when in power.
Riot-victims residing in Malakpur relief camp in neighbouring Shamli district have refused to leave the place, officials have said. On Saturday, a team of officials from Baghpat visited the Malakpur camp and appealed the victims to return to their native villages. But the victims have refused to leave the camp owing to fear, they said.
Tikait has been at loggerheads with various governments on a range of farmers' issues, including loan waivers, minimum support price, power tariff and land acquisition in states such as UP, Haryana Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh.
As many as 623 candidates, including 73 women are in the fray in the first phase and around 2.28 core voters, including 1.24 crore men and 1.04 crore women are eligible to caste their francise, election officials said.
'It was a terrible experience to survive the war for 13 days'
While the RLD has fought the just-concluded polls in tie up with the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party, the office-bearers of the BKU, which was part of the anti-farm laws protest against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre, insists it is an 'apolitical' group.
Attacking the Samajwadi Party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said it supported rioters and the mafia, and fielded criminals in western Uttar Pradesh for the assembly elections.
Amid the ongoing farmers protest at the Delhi borders, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is set to attend kisan mahapanchayat in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur district on Wednesday.
The poll results will depend much on whether the caste and community coalition worked out by Akhilesh can withstand the onslaught of the Hindutva forces who have increased their efforts to polarise the electorate on communal lines.
Jayant Chaudhary has plenty of time to make his own mistakes. But this election is a crucial test of his leadership.
The local, district and police administration are reaching out to meat traders to ensure this, officials said.
Though a number of Jat leaders and farmers said they would vote against the BJP in the upcoming panchayat election, slated for April, they remained non-committal on supporting opposition parties in the assembly polls next year.
Electoral politics is going to be an important part of farmer protests going forward.
Under Election Commission guidelines, campaigning has to end 48 hours before the close of polls for each phase.
Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM, which is going to contest next year's Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls on the promise of creating leadership among Muslims, has created unease in the political parties that so far considered the members of the minority community as their core "vote bank".
However, the RLD leader gave a terse response. 'Invite those +700 farmer families which you have destroyed, not me,' he tweeted in Hindi.
'A political party taking the law into its hands is objectionable, especially in the context of the 2002 incidents in Gujarat.'
On the lines of Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, around 50 women along with children have been squatting near the Clock Tower in Lucknow's old quarters. The women protesters alleged that blankets provided to them by some organisations were taken away by police. The police dismissed the allegations.
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.
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.
Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair on Thursday moved the Supreme Court seeking the quashing of six FIR lodged against him in several districts of Uttar Pradesh.
Gag orders have a "chilling effect" on the freedom of speech, the apex court said while refusing to accept the submission of the counsel representing Uttar Pradesh that Zubair be barred from tweeting when he is on bail.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted bail to Alt News Co-founder Mohammad Zubair in all first information reports (FIRs) lodged in Uttar Pradesh against him concerning his alleged derogatory tweets.
