

"I respect 'behen' Mayawati (BSP national president), I have worked with her for a long time. But she's not the same now, she runs after 'dhanna-seth'. If after many difficulties, she's going to come on field, I wish her well," Samajwadi Party MLA Swami Prasad Maurya.
Senior leader of Shiromani Akali Dal, Bikram Singh Majithia, withdrew his nomination from his home constituency and will contest from Amritsar (East) seat. He said that he accepted the challenge posed by Punjab Congress Chief Navjot Singh Sidhu to leave his home turf and contest from Amritsar East.
(All India Radio News)
Sitting Congress MLA from Nawanshahr in Punjab, Angad Saini, who filed nomination papers as an independent candidate after being denied ticket by the party, has been issued notice for alleged poll code violation by the returning officer.
Congress has allotted a ticket to Neha Tiwari, sister of Khushi Dubey, from Kalyanpur in Uttar Pradesh.
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AAP national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal landed in Goa to campaign for the upcoming assembly polls.
(ANI)
"Before 2017, there were riots in UP every other day. When the youth opposed, fake cases were registered against them. Women security was in jeopardy. Farmers were unhappy and forced to die by suicide," UP CM Yogi Adityanath said in Meerut.
(ANI)
Enforcement Directorate officer Rajeshwar Singh has been granted voluntary retirement from service (VRS) by the Union government. He is expected to join the BJP and contest the upcoming Assemblypollsin Uttar Pradesh. Singh, who was serving as the joint director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Lucknow so far, tweeted to announce that he was "hanging up his boots."
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Enforcement teams have seized liquor, psychotropic substances and unaccounted cash worth Rs 305 crore in Punjab since the model code of conduct came into force in the state with the announcement of assembly elections on January 8, according to state Chief Electoral Officer S Karuna Raju. The seizures were made till January 30.
Samajwadi Party candidate Abdullah Azam, who is the son of SP MP Mohd Azam Khan, has alleged that an increasing numbers of SP workers are being issued "red cards" to affect his campaigning.
He has urged the election commission to take appropriate action to ensure "a fair electoral process".
Abdullah told reporters, "If this situation continues, there is no possibility of fair election."
Meanwhile, to ensure that peace is not disturbed during the Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, police have identified nearly 55,000 people as possible troublemakers across the five Assembly constituencies in Rampur and are serving 'red card notices' to them.
Their names will be announced in their localities by police and district administration staff.
Abhinandan Pathak, who is better known as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's lookalike, will contest the Sarojini Nagar Assembly seat in Lucknow as an independent candidate.
Pathak, 56, who is from Saharanpur, claims he had sought a ticket from the BJP, but got no response.
"I wrote to BJP president J.P. Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for a ticket to contest from Lucknow but they paid no heed to my letters," he said.
"I am a 'Modi Bhakt'. The BJP can ignore me, but I will contest and win the election to help Yogi Adityanath become chief minister for the second term. Modi and Yogi are two faces of one coin. I admire their passion to work selflessly for the masses," he said.
Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Om Prakash Rajbhar will contest from Zahurabad seat in Ghazipur, which he had won in 2017 Assembly elections.
His son Arvind Rajbhar will challenge Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Rajbhar face and Uttar Pradesh minister, Anil Rajbhar, from the Shivpur Assembly seat in Varanasi.
Om Prakash Rajbhar was earlier tipped to contest the Shivpur seat, but gave it to his son Arvind Rajbhar.
Regarding the possibility of weakening the contest against the BJP candidate, the SBSP chief said: "There will be no difference in the contest. Whether I contest from Shivpur or field my son, the BJP candidate will lose his deposit."
Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Monday filed his nomination papersfromKarhal assembly seat inthefamily bastion of Mainpuri.
The candidates and the political parties will be allowed to hold public meetings in open spaces with an audience of maximum of 1,000 persons in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur from Tuesday.
The BSP on Monday released a list of 61 candidates for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, fielding Santosh Kumar Tripathi against Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya from Sirathu constituency in Kaushambi district.
In its latest list, the BSP has given tickets to 15 Scheduled Castes and nine Muslims.
The party has fielded Ravi Prakash Maurya from Ayodhya assembly constituency.
Kaushambi and Ayodhya will vote in the fifth phase on February 27.
At 94 years of age, five-time chief minister Parkash Singh Badal who filed his nomination on Monday from Lambi constituency in Punjab became the oldest politician contesting an election of any type in the country. Former Kerala chief minister VS Achuthanandan contested the assembly election in 2016 as the oldest candidate in poll fray at the age of 92 years.