News Analysis India

Tag: Uttar Pradesh

  • FIR lodged against Samajwadi Party for model code violation

    By IANS

    LUCKNOW: An FIR has been lodged at the Gautam Palli police station in Lucknow against the Samajwadi Party for violation of model code of conduct as well as Covid protocols.

    The action was taken after a huge crowd gathered at the SP office on Friday afternoon for the joining of former BJP minister Swami Prasad Maurya, Dharam Singh Saini and other legislators in the party.

    Lucknow District Magistrate Abhishek Prakash said that the Samajwadi Party’s virtual rally was held without prior permission.

    “Upon receiving information, a police team was sent to the SP office. Action is being taken on the basis of their report,” he said, adding that Section 144 is in force in the state capital.

    Samajwadi Party’s Uttar Pradesh unit chief Naresh Uttam Patel said, “It was a virtual event inside our party office. We did not call anyone, but people came. People work abiding by Covid protocols.”

    He further said, “Crowds were there even at BJP ministers’ doorsteps and in markets, but they only have a problem with us.”

    The Election Commission of India (ECI) had on January 8 announced a ban on physical rallies in light of the surge in Covid cases in parts of the country.

  • BJP suffers yet another blow in Uttar Pradesh as two MLAs of ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) quit party

    By PTI

    PRATAPGARH: Amid a spate of resignations from the BJP, two MLAs of its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) also quit their party Thursday in run-up to the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.

    Chaudhary Amar Singh, the MLA from Shohratgarh seat of Siddharthnagar, told PTI that he has resigned from the party after a meeting with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow this evening.

    Singh is likely to contest from Shohratgarh seat on an SP ticket.

    Apna Dal (Sonelal) MLA RK Verma, who represents the Vishwanath Ganj seat of Pratapgarh, also announced that he is leaving the party.

    He told PTI that he will formally resign on Friday and elaborate the reasons why he was quitting the party.

    Apna Dal (Sonelal), led by Union minister Anupriya Patel, had contested the 2017 assembly elections in alliance with the BJP.

    It had fielded candidates on 12 seats and won nine.

    The development comes in the backdrop of a spate of resignations from the ruling BJP.

    On Thursday, OBC leader Dharam Singh Saini became the third minister to resign from the Uttar Pradesh cabinet this week, giving yet another jolt to the ruling BJP in the run-up to the assembly polls.

    Hours before Saini’s resignation, Shikohabad MLA Mukesh Verma announced that he is leaving the BJP.

    Most of the eight MLAs, including the ministers, who have declared they are quitting during the last three days are from the Other Backward Classes and appear to be headed towards Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party.

  • BJP finalises candidates for 172 seats in UP; CM Adityanath and his deputies likely to contest

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: The BJP on Thursday finalised its candidates for 172 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh and is likely to field both Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya who are currently members of the Legislative Council, party leaders said.

    Polling in most of these 172 seats will be held in the initial phases beginning February 10 and the party is also considering fielding Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma and state unit president Swatantra Dev Singh.

    Addressing the media at the BJP headquarters, Maurya said the party held wider deliberations on the 172 assembly seats and will register a bigger victory than the 2017 assembly polls.

    BJP president J P Nadda and Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari, all three of whom have contracted the coronavirus, joined the meeting via video conferencing, while Home Minister Amit Shah and several other leaders besides those from Uttar Pradesh, including Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, met physically.

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also scheduled to join the meeting virtually.

    According to party sources, Adityanath is likely to be fielded from Ayodhya and Maurya from Sirathu constituency.

    Sharma may contest from one of the assembly constituencies in state capital Luknow. A five-term former Lok Sabha member from Gorakhpur, Adityanath is currently a member of the state’s Legislative Council.

    The party is likely to announce its first list of candidates in the next few days, the sources said.

    As many as 58 and 55 seats of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly will face the polls on February 10 and February 14 respectively. The state is scheduled to have seven-phase polls.

    Uttarakhand, Goa and Punjab assembly polls will also be held on February 14. The BJP is likely to drop a number of sitting MLAs to neutralise anti-incumbency at the local level.

  • Uttar Pradesh man arrested for raping Dalit woman with threat of online exposure

    By PTI

    BHADOHI: A 22-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly raped several times by a man in a village here, who threatened to leak her intimate video and pictures online, police said on Wednesday.

    The victim, who used to stay at a rented accommodation, became friend with a man named Govid Srivastava (28), who allegedly raped her with the threat of leaking her explicit pictures online if she didn’t submit, they said.

    He blackmailed the girl and raped her several times in the past two months, they said.

    The girl approached the police with her friend and got the FIR registered on Tuesday after which the accused was arrested on Wednesday when he was going to meet her.

    Police have recovered clips and photographs of the victim from the accused, local SHO Ajay Kumar Singh said.

  • 18 Uttar Pradesh Ministers will desert Yogi Adityanath’s Cabine by Jan 20: SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar

    By PTI

    LUCKNOW: OBC leader Om Prakash Rajbhar on Wednesday claimed that one to two ministers would quit the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet daily and this figure would go up to 18 by January 20.

    Rajbhar made the claim while welcoming the resignation of Uttar Pradesh ministers Swami Prasad Maurya and Dara Singh Chauhan.

    “I had realised BJP’s apathy towards Dalits, backwards and the deprived sections of the society in a short time after joining the government in 2017 but these people waited all these days and, left with no hope, are quitting it now,” the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party chief said.

    Rajbhar has joined hands with the Samajwadi Party for the 2022 assembly elections.

    “One or two wickets of the BJP Cabinet will fall every day and this figure will reach one-and-a-half dozen by January 20,” he said at a programme on a TV channel after the resignation of Forest and Environment Minister Dara Singh Chauhan on Wednesday and that of Maurya a day ago.

    In the last state assembly polls, Rajbhar was an alliance partner of the BJP and his party had won four seats then.

    Rajbhar himself was elected from Zahoorabad in Ghazipur district and was made a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government.

    He, however, had quit the Cabinet in 2019 and broken ties with the saffron party.

    Asked about his claim of one-and-a-half dozen ministers quitting Cabinet in Uttar Pradesh and their names, Rajbhar said, “Everybody will come to know about it as and when it happens. Why shall I name them?” The separation of Rajbhar, Maurya and Chauhan has dented the saffron party’s support among numerically significant non-Yadav, “Other Backward Class” people in the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

    Rajbhar, who attended a meeting of the allies called by SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav during the day, said things were going forward smoothly in the opposition alliance and names of the candidates of grouping would be announced phase-wise “without any hassle.”

  • Uttar Pradesh BJP MLA Vinay Shakya’s daughter says dad missing; cop says lawmaker safe at home

    By PTI

    LUCKNOW: In an apparent much ado about nothing, BJP MLA Vinay Shakya’s daughter on Tuesday alleged that her father has gone missing after her uncle and grandmother took him to Lucknow from Auraiya but the police saiud the lawmaker is safe at his home in Etawah.

    Amid reports that Shakya too is to join the Samajwadi Party like three other party MLAs after the resignation by UP minister Swami Prasad Maurya, the Bidhuna MLA’s daughter Riya on Tuesday alleged that her father has become untraceable after her uncle Devesh Shakya and grandmother took him to Lucknow.

    Riya raised the alarm on a viral video while also demanding from the Uttar Pradesh government to trace her father.

    Amid Riya’s alarms, Auraiya Superintendent of Police Abhishek Verma said the BJP MLA is “well and presently safe” with his mother at their residence in Shanti Colony in Etawah.

    “The charge of kidnapping is baseless and untrue. The matter is of a family dispute. I have myself talked to the MLA on a video call. A Dy SP-level officer is also present there,” Verma told PTI.

    In the video, Riya is heard saying that her father cannot talk clearly after suffering a brain stroke in 2018 and his whereabouts or condition are not known after he was taken away.

    “On May 1, 2018, my father had a brain stroke and he was admitted to the SGPGI in Lucknow. He cannot talk clearly and after the operation, his condition has not been good,” she said.

    “We are working for the BJP in the area as elections are near. I demand from the government to find out my father and our family members should be given a chance to meet him,” she added in the video.

    Asked about Riya’s purported video about her father earlier, Lucknow Police Commissioner D K Thakur earlier told PTI that he did not have any such information.

    There were reports that Vinay Shakya is also going to join SP along with three other MLAs — Bhagwati Sagar, Roshan Lal Verma and Brajesh Prajapati – after UP Minister Swami Prasad Maurya quit the government.

  • Government cowshed officials booked for throwing ill cows out: Uttar Pradesh Police

    A government cowshed manager and two others were booked on charges of cruelty against animal and other penal offences for throwing two severely ill cows out of the ‘gaushala'.

  • UP polls: Akhilesh promises free power supply for irrigation, households if voted to power

    By PTI

    LUCKNOW: Ahead of the crucial Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday promised 300 units of free electricity to households, if voted to power.

    The former chief minister also promised free electricity for irrigational purposes.

    Wishing the people a happy New Year, Yadav tweeted in Hindi, “2022 will be a new year with new light for a new Uttar Pradesh. Three hundred units of electricity for households (domestic consumers) will be given for free and electricity for irrigation will be free.”

    A similar promise was made by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in September 2021.

    The Arvind Kejriwal-led party had promised 300 units of free electricity to all domestic consumers, waiver of outstanding bills of 38 lakh families and 24-hour power supply.

    AAP leader and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had also announced free electricity to farmers.

    The AAP has made similar promises in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa where Assembly polls are due this year.

  • Class 10 student gang-raped in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar

    By PTI

    MUZAFFARNAGAR: Two people were arrested here for allegedly drugging a Class 10 student and gang-raping her, police said on Saturday.

    The minor girl had gone for tuition classes on Thursday from where two people allegedly drugged her and took her to a forest area near Sadpur village, according to a complaint lodged by her family.

    Two more people were waiting there and all four allegedly raped her, as per the complaint.

    She was later found in an unconscious state by her family members who had started searching for her along with police after she did not return home.

    She narrated the episode to her family after coming around.

    According to local Jansath police station SHO Bablu Singh Verma, a case was registered against four people based on the complaint and two were arrested.

    The minor was sent for a medical examination, he added.

  • Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath getting my telephones tapped: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav

    By PTI

    LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday accused Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of getting his telephones tapped and listening to his talks every evening.

    Yadav made the allegation while dubbing Adityanath as the most ‘anupyogi’ (useless) chief minister and seeking to counter Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s poll formula “UP+Yogi=Upyogi”, aimed at asserting the utility of the Adityanath government for UP’s growth.

    A day after a string of Income Tax Department’s raids and searches at some SP leaders’ offices and residences, Yadav also alleged that wary of its impending defeat in the upcoming assembly elections, the BJP government would be misusing various enforcement agencies more and more to persecute SP leaders in days to come.

    “All our telephonic conversations have been heard. This ‘anupyogi’ chief minister himself listens to the recordings of some people every evening,” Yadav alleged.

    He also asked reporters to “remain alert, if you are speaking to me.”

    The entire country knows that whenever the BJP is about to lose an election in any state, the frequency of the misuse of various enforcement agencies by the BJP rises, alleged UP’s former Chief Minister Yadav.

    “The BJP is following the Congress’ way. Like Congress, it is rearing to use the central agencies to instil fear (rival among political parties),” said Yadav.

    “Seeing the atmosphere in the state, I can say that the Yogi government will not last, The people have made up their mind for a ‘yogya’ (able) government,” said Yadav.

    “No government could be more ‘anupyogi’ (useless) than this government, It has ruined Uttar Pradesh,” he asserted.