PM Modi's jibe at Rahul Gandhi over 'coconut juice' remark

UP Elections 2017 - Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday took a jibe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his "coconut juice" and "potato factory" remarks.

"There is a Congress leader, and I want to pray for his long life...He recently went to Manipur to address an election rally. There he told farmers that he would extract juice from coconuts and send it to London. In fact, a coconut possesses water (and not juice) and it is grown in Kerala," he said addressing a rally in Maharajganj, UP.

"It is like setting up a potato factory," Modi said referring to Rahul Gandhi's earlier remarks that he wants to set up potato factories in Uttar Pradesh.

"Such a talented and far-sighted leader he is," Modi said, and asked Rahul as to what he exactly he wanted to do for UP.

Addressing a poll rally in Manipur on Tuesday, the Congress leader had reportedly said, "I would also want when someone drinks coconut juice in London and sees Made in Manipur written on it."

Rahul Gandhi had earlier told farmers in Uttar Pradesh that "You all are demanding a potato factory in your area, but you should understand I am an opposition leader, I can put pressure on the government, but cannot take the decision. I cannot open a potato factory for farmers".(Read More)

UP elections 2017: Poll promises have not changed in 15 years; here's why

UP Elections 2017 - Pihani, Uttar Pradesh: For 16 years, Kailash Rai (not his real name), 49, has been commuting six hours every working day between his home in the state capital Lucknow and the government degree college where he teaches in Pihani, 135 km to the northwest.

A political-science lecturer, Rai cannot move with his family to Pihani, a cluster of over 100 villages (called a kasba) in Hardoi district, with less than 40,000 families as per Census 2011. When he started working there in 2000, it lacked the basic public facilities–regular power supply, good roads, public transport and good medical services.

Pihani remains an economic backwater. In the ongoing assembly elections, UP’s incumbent and contesting politicians are still promising the basic facilities they did 16 years ago: Electricity, buses and jobs, along with laptops and free data for poor youth.

A UP kasba: 100% rural, 83% farm workers
A community development block in Hardoi district, north-west of Lucknow, Pihani is an agglomeration of over 100 small villages. This rural administrative division is called a taluk or tehsil in other states. UP has 901 such blocks administered by a block development officer.

A third of Pihani’s population consists of people belonging to scheduled castes and tribes. Its literacy rate is 51%, and less than half its women (41%) are literate. Women in Pihani form about 14% of the workforce, nine percentage points less than the national average of 27% as IndiaSpend reported in April 2016.(Read More)

UP polls 2017: SP-Cong alliance pins hope on note ban anger to fight BJP

Campaigning comes to an end for the third phase of Uttar Pradesh assembly elections 2017 today evening. As many as 69 seats across central UP’s Lucknow, Kanpur, Sitapur, Mainpuri, Etawah and adjoining districts will vote on Sunday. Samajwadi Party and Congress workers in the region are nervous. They fear a Hindu consolidation for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP believes the third phase will mark a revival of the party after a tepid response in the first two phases.

In the cities and towns of central UP, there is a positive buzz for Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav but the alliance’s hopes rest more on the mistakes of its rival. The alliance has tried to tap into the anger on the street for Narendra Modi government’s note ban decision, the perceived non-performance of BJP’s Lok Sabha members of Parliament and the infighting in that party’s ranks because of faulty ticket distribution.

But the cadres are also discovering a groundswell of support from the upper castes who wish deliverance from the “Ahir-Muslim” rule of the last five years. The BJP is sure that the patchwork of caste coalition of upper castes and non-Yadav OBCs would help it win majority of the seats in the region.

1. Hindu consolidation

2. Note ban

3. Non-performance of BJP MPs, poor candidate selection

4. Chinks in SP-Congress alliance

5. Anti-incumbency and law and order

6. Split in Muslim votes

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Priyanka Gandhi wants to avoid people's questions, says Smriti Irani

UP elections 2017 - Union Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Smriti Irani on Wednesday attacked Priyanka Gandhi saying the Congress leader is not campaigning in Amethi as she cannot face people's questions.

The Union textiles minister addressed rallies and press conference here, where she did not give direct reply when asked if she would be the party's chief ministerial candidate if it comes to power.

Every BJP worker wants that the party forms the next government in Uttar Pradesh, she said on the question of chief ministerial candidate.

She said that despite losing the Lok Sabha poll from Amethi in 2014 to Rahul Gandhi she has been working for the people of the constituency.

But, Priyanka Gandhi has not gone to campaign in Amethi because of the "unfulfilled" promises, she said.

"Priyanka wants to avoid people's questions," she said.

Asked if Samajwadi Party-Congress (SP-Congress) alliance has in any way affected the prospects of BJP in the state, she said Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav went with Congress because he was not confident of a victory alone.(Read More)

UP poll: No love lost between political rivals on Valentine's Day

UP elections 2017 - Even as the Valentine's Day falls today, there is apparently no love lost between the top leaders of major political parties as they crisscross poll bound Uttar Pradesh addressing public meetings and unleashing vitriolic attack on opponents.

The canvassing for the second phase of polling in 67 assembly constituencies across 11 largely western UP districts had come to an end on Monday evening with voting scheduled for Wednesday. The districts going to polls on February 15 include Saharanpur, Bijnore, Moradabad, Rampur, Sambhal, Bareilly, Amroha, Pilibhit, Kheri, Shahjahanpur and Badaun.

The politicking for the phase II polling nonetheless witnessed top mascots of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Congress upping the ante to corner their opponents with a view to consolidating their core vote banks.

Senior political leaders who addressed rallies on Monday across UP, included Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, BSP President Mayawati, SP President and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.

While, Modi and Rahul addressed well attended public meetings in Kheri, Mayawati and Akhilesh were the star campaigners and speakers at election rallies in Etawah and Badaun districts respectively.(Read More)

UP polls 2017: More women losing deposits, fewer winning elections

UP elections 2017 - Poor, populous Uttar Pradesh (UP) was the first Indian state to have a female chief minister–Sucheta Kriplani from 1963 to 1967–but this pioneering effort has not improved prospects for women in elections.

As voter turnout has risen, more competitors have stood against women candidates, fewer women have won and a growing number have lost their deposits, according to an IndiaSpend and Swaniti Initiative analysis of electoral data of the last three state elections in UP since 2002.


The only exception was for the seats reserved for scheduled caste (SC) candidates. The proportion of women winning SC seats was more than double that of those winning general seats.

All this happened over a period when women in India’s most populous state became healthier and better educated, reinforcing the point that there is no correlation between these indicators and better political representation of women.
States with the worst sex ratios have more women members of legislative assemblies (MLAs), as IndiaSpend reported in September 2015.

Roughly over the same period of our study, female literacy in UP grew from 42.2% in 2001 to 59.3% in 2011, and the sex ratio improved from 898 to 908, according to census data compiled by the NITI Aayog. (Read More)

PM Modi's letter defending note ban gets delivered in every UP household

Election 2017- Prime Minister Narendra Modi has written a letter addressing voters in Uttar Pradesh saying that his government's surprise demonetisation measure was necessary to root out corruption and prevent terrorism, reported The Economic Times on Tuesday.

According to the report, over 1,600 motorcycle-borne activists have been tasked with the duty of delivering the prime minister's letter to 2,75,000 households every day.

The move comes at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) might not be fairing as well in Uttar Pradesh as the party had initially thought. As reported earlier, there is a noticeable defensiveness among BJP voters and supporters this time around regarding the note ban and every time the questions related to the issue crop up. Further, the BJP’s local offices, which in 2014 brimmed with people prematurely celebrating Narendra Modi’s victory before counting, have been muted. (Read more)

A young party official of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh provenance in Rampur, who had his nose to the grindstone when the Lok Sabha polls were underway, told Business Standard that he “lost interest” this time. “I have nothing to say to our voters when they pose uncomfortable questions on demonetisation. I am packing my bags and taking a vacation in my village,” he said. The official’s main worry was that demonetisation had begun to "chip away" at Prime Minister Modi’s image. "Modiji has invested much personal and political capital in it but people ask me, does he not understand our hardships? Why did he make us suffer?" he added. (Read More)

Brand Akhilesh Yadav and the American style of campaigning

UP Elections 2017 - The 2014 general elections represent a watershed in the Indian electoral history in many ways. For one, it changed forever how campaigns are conducted in the country. The Lok Sabha poll campaign saw the then Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, creating a parallel campaign machinery outside of the party to take his word to the people. His campaign to become the Prime Minister had, in fact, kicked off even before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) named him its Prime Ministerial candidate.

Citizens for Accountable Governance (led by political strategist Prashant Kishor) helped Modi run a political campaign that could have given any MNC giant a run for its money. Through his 360-degree campaign, Modi reached out to disparate voters using their own communication mediums. What made it stand out was the campaign’s focus on modern technology – social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp were used extensively and effectively to create a cult following for Modi and turn the election into an almost Presidential campaign. The result: Narendra Modi seemed to be the only candidate around.

Lessons from this campaign have been learnt by other political parties as well – some more than the others. Later, similar ways were used in Delhi by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and in Bihar by Nitish Kumar, who built an unlikely alliance with his long-time bête noire Lalu Prasad, took his own message of good governance to the people, and returned to power with a landslide victory.(Read More)

UP: Woman who accused SP MLA of rape found dead in Sultanpur

UP elections 2017 - A 22-year-old woman, who had accused Samajwadi Party MLA Arun Verma of raping her along with some other youth in 2013, was found murdered near her house in Sultanpur, police said on Monday.

The body of the woman, who was missing since Saturday, was found on Sunday near a primary school in Jaisinghpur, they said. An FIR has been registered in this regard.

Police said the injury mark around her neck suggested that she was strangled to death. The body has been sent for postmortem to ascertain the cause of death.

The woman had alleged that the local MLA, who is also the SP's Sultanpur candidate for the February 27 polls, and some others had gang raped her in September 2013.(Read More)

UP Assembly polls 2017: Akhilesh to address rallies in Sambhal, Amroha

Elections 2017 - Kick starting the campaigning for the second phase of Uttar Pradesh elections, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will on Sunday address two election rallies in Sambhal and Amroha.

With the second phase of the state elections just three days away, political parties are busy campaigning to gain majority.

Akhilesh and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday jointly launched the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress alliance's Common Minimum Programme.


During the launch, Akhilesh attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying that their alliance has shaken the latter's confidence.

Akhilesh further slammed the prime minister saying that he only knows to do 'Mann Ki Baat' but not 'Kaam ki baat'.
"Several times people say 'Mann ki baat' but not 'Kaam ki baat'," said Akhilesh.

The second phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections will be held on February 15.

The first phase of the elections, which was held on Saturday, saw a voter turnout of 63 per cent.(Read More)

Opposition resorting to desperate measures to come to power: Rajnath Singh

Elections 2017 - Lashing out at both of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) political rivals in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday dubbed the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as parties resorting to 'desperate' measures to come to power.

"Out of desperation, the BSP has gone to the limit of appealing for votes on a communal basis," Rajnath Singh told media.

"It was the desperation of the SP which made it get into an alliance with the Congress. The SP has accepted that it is now weak. That is why it allied with a party like the Congress," he added.

Drawing a mathematical analogy, Singh said the SP-Congress alliance will be considered as null only because adding two minuses leads to a minus only.
"SP and Congress alliance is an opportunist one, but the blunder here is that a minus added with another minus is equal to minus only," he said.(Read More)