With the announcement of the dates of the forthcoming assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur, Goa and Uttrakhand, political parties have sharpened their attacks on their rivals in order to score a political advantage and attract voters to their fold. Bharatiya Janata party leader Rajnath Singh claimed that Congress party's presence in UP polls would be insignificant.
Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal has urged President Pratibha Patil to flag off a government-sponsored Yatra, christened as Sakshar Bharat Yatra from Delhi on February 18.
People in Uttar Pradesh did not vote for Congress as they knew Rahul Gandhi would not stay there to become the chief minister, party leader and former Union minister Shashi Tharoor said on Wednesday.
On the eve of the sixth and penultimate phase of the marathon Uttar Pradesh elections, Rediff.com's Aslam Hunani reports on what's at stake.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday ridiculed Chief Minister Mayawati for sacking four ministers a day after the announcement of assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, wondering why she had not acted against them earlier.
Modi releases a photo book, 'President Pranab Mukherjee - A Statesman' at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah on Wednesday dubbed the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party as "KASAB", adding yet another acronym in the Uttar Pradesh poll campaign, and said development will elude the state till "Kasab is laid to rest".
The farmers, who attended the sabha, were seen decamping with the 'khaats'.
The SP-Congress campaign will see Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi criss-cross the seats held by either party.
He added that the rival parties had tried to project the Bharatiya Janata Party as communal and therefore "untouchable" but the people realised that the party stood for their welfare.
Akhilesh Yadav doesn't need Bollywood stars to power his campaign for the UP election when he has a charming campaigner like his missus.
Kicking up a controversy, Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Suresh Rana said that curfew will be imposed in Kairana, Deoband and Moradabad if he is elected again in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls next month.
'If the BJP wins UP and one or two other states, it could get emboldened and press ahead with its reckless agenda, as well as its divisive agenda.' 'If the BJP fails to form the government in UP and suffers a setback in Punjab and maybe one other state, it could go either way: It could become more reckless or pull back, pause and take stock, moderate its position.'
The government has identified three circuits -- Ramayana Circuit, Krishna Circuit and Buddhist Circuit - to boost religious tourism. The Ram museum will be a part of the Ramayana Circuit for which the Centre has sanctioned Rs 225 crore, with Rs 151 crore exclusively for Ayodhya, which is the hub of the circuit.
Cracking the whip, the Election Commission on Friday directed the West Bengal Police chief to arrest all persons named in an FIR for beating up poll personnel in the state and send the compliance report by this evening.
Ahead of the 2019 elections, the race for consolidating the Dalit vote-bank has intensified among all the political parties, more so in Uttar Pradesh, where the community comprises almost 21 per cent of the population.
Tuesday's exercise underlines Bharatiya Janata Party's attempts at wooing Dalits and OBCs, whose votes would be crucial to its fortunes in key states like UP and Gujarat.
A day after holding marathon talks with Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, Congress poll strategist Prashant Kishor on Monday held closed-door meeting with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav
The marathon meeting, spread over two sessions and kept under wraps, came a day after top leaders of socialist-leaning parties attended SP's silver jubilee meet here -- a move seen as an attempt by Mulayam to forge an alliance ahead of the assembly polls hardly a few months away.
The April-June quarter GDP slipped to 7 per cent from 7.5 per cent.
Priyanka is one of the star campaigners of Congress for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections and has also played an important role in forging an alliance between Congress and the Samajwadi Party.
The Commission has told both the sides that a judgment will be delivered at the earliest.
The BSP supremo also ridiculed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for "not taking cognisance" of suicides by Dalit students when his party was in power.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati has warned the people against the "communal designs" of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party and urged them not to lose their cool in the run-up to the 2017 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
He asked BJP MPs/MLAs to take up various programmes, including spending 72 hours to reach out to people, when his government completes three years on May 26.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Saturday said that those seen at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's roadshow in Varanasi were "mere spectators" brought in from other states and districts in Uttar Pradesh where voting had already taken place.
The districts going to polls in this phase are Balrampur, Gonda, Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Bahraich, Shravasti, Basti, Siddharth Nagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Amethi and Sultanpur.
With heavy security deployment in hyper-sensitive areas of Bastar region ahead of polls, Naxalites are apparently trying to change their course of action and mobilising cadres to town areas to attack "soft targets" outside their core hold, intelligence sources said.
Hits street with demonstrations across 75 UP districts
Any erosion in the TMC, may benefit the BJP, reports Ishita Ayan Dutt.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati termed the expansion of the Union council of ministers as a drama and said giving representation to a couple of leaders from the deprived sections will not ameliorate the lot of those communities.
Taking on the Congress-led UPA coalition, the BJP leader said it has done "nothing on the ground" for the Muslims except making announcements in its three-year rule.
Modi invoked Lord Shiva on Mahashivratri and said people, with their third eye, can see what is good for them and what is bad.
He was responding to a question on whether Gujarat polls would also be staggered like the seven-phased UP polls. The term of the present Assembly in Gujarat expires on December 26.
But he doesn't want to shut the door completely on the Yadav family as that could create problems for him in 2019.
Major focus will be on adequately funding existing schemes to ensure their timely completion before the next General Elections.
The overall average till 5 pm was 84.24 per cent.
Monday's surprise meeting is an admission by the Bharatiya Janata Party that their purported strategy of hoping to ride the popular 'Modi wave' in a Tamil Nadu without Jaya and a bed-ridden Karunanidhi does not have much chance of success, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
All the BJP's present leaders from UP put together cannot win the state for the party. So how about an out-of-the-box leader like Subramanian Swamy, asks Nazarwala, the man who called right the 2007 and 2012 UP elections.
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