NEW DELHI: Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday congratulated Chief Minister-designate of Punjab Bhagwant Mann ahead of his oath-taking ceremony and hoped that the state will flourish under his leadership.

Over three lakh people are expected to attend Mann’s oath-taking ceremony. The Chief Minister-designate of Punjab had invited people of the state to attend his oath-taking ceremony, saying 3 crore people of Punjab will also take the oath along with him.

Earlier in the day, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal left for Punjab to attend Mann’s swearing-in ceremony.

“It’s a big day for Punjab today. In this golden morning of new hope, the entire Punjab will today come together and take a pledge to make it a prosperous Punjab. To witness that historic moment, I have also left for Khatkar Kalan, the native village of Shaheed Bhagat Singh,” Kejriwal said in a tweet in Hindi.

CHANDIGARH: Ahead of being sworn-in as Punjab chief minister on Wednesday, AAP leader Bhagwant Mann said people of the state will take oath with him to fulfil the dreams of Bhagat Singh and Babasaheb Ambedkar.

All arrangements are in place for the swearing-in ceremony of Mann at Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of legendary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh in Punjab’s Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar district.

Mann in a tweet in Punjabi said, “The golden rays of sun have brought a new dawn today. To fulfil the dreams of Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Babasaheb (BR Ambedkar), entire Punjab will take oath today at Khatkar Kalan.”

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other senior party leaders will also take part in the ceremony.

In a tweet, Kejriwal said he had left for Khatkar Kalan to witness a “historic moment”. “It’s a big day for Punjab today. In this golden morning of new hope, the entire Punjab will today come together and take a pledge to make it a prosperous Punjab. To witness the historic moment, I have also left for Khatkar Kalan, the native village of Shaheed Bhagat Singh,” Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi.

AAP leader and party’s Punjab affairs co-in-charge Raghav Chadha tweeted, “Today marks an important day in the history of Punjab as 3 crore Punjabis will together be sworn in as Chief Minister along with @BhagwantMann.”

“Oath to change this corrupt system & to fulfill dreams of Shaheed-E-Azam Bhagat Singh & Babasaheb Ambedkar Ajj ton har Punjabi CM houga (from today onwards, every Punjabi will be CM),” he said in the tweet.

Chadha also shared his photo in a yellow turban on his twitter handle. Newly-elected MLA from Anandpur Sahib Harjot Bains said, “Today marks the beginning of a new dawn in Punjab. Together, we will fulfil ‘Shaheed-E-Azam’ Bhagat Singh’ dreams which will be the real tribute to our shaheeds.”

Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party supporters from across the state began reaching Khatkar Kalan in large numbers on Wednesday morning to attend the oath-taking ceremony. The men were wearing yellow turbans while women were draped in a yellow ‘dupatta’. “We want to congratulate Bhagwant Mann and the entire Punjab,” said a party supporter from Shutrana.

Another supporter, who came from Mann’s Satoj village in Sangrur said, “We have high expectations from him and he will definitely live up to them. The way Kejriwal did good work in Delhi, Mann will also do the same in Punjab.”

When Mann was leaving for Khatkar Kalan from Mohali, a few of his supporters showered flower petals on his vehicle and congratulated him. “I am very happy that my brother (Mann) is going to be the CM. We are very happy about it,” said a woman supporter in Mohali.

The 48-year-old Mann had invited the people of the state to attend his swearing-in ceremony, saying the three crore people of Punjab will also take oath with him. Foolproof security arrangements have been made for the ceremony and several senior officials, including inspector general and senior superintendents of police, have been deputed for the event.

Around 8,000 to 10,000 security personnel have been deployed for the event, said the officials. The AAP romped home winning 92 seats in the 117-member Punjab Assembly, decimating the Congress and the SAD-BSP combine.

PANAJI: Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Saturday resigned from the post to pave the way for the formation of a new government in the state, two days after his party – BJP – emerged as the single largest force by winning 20 seats in the 40-member assembly.

Talking to reporters later, Sawant said he has been asked to continue as a caretaker chief minister till the new government is formed.

“The governor has given me an appointment letter to be the caretaker chief minister of the state,” he said.

Sawant said the date of staking claim to form the new government is yet to be decided by the party.

“The party’s central observers will visit Goa and other three states (where the BJP has retained power), after which the dates of swearing-in in the respective states would be announced,” he said.

He refused to divulge when the observers will arrive.

He said the procedure to stake claim to form the new government has already begun with the state cabinet on Friday deciding to recommend the dissolution of the House on Monday.

NEW DELHI: The electoral drubbing has left Congress leaders worried in poll-bound Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh with a looming fear that the results will have a bearing especially in the western state where the AAP is planning big.

The recent change of guard in the Gujarat unit seems to have further increased trouble. The two states will go to polls by the end of this year.

Several state leaders said that the results in the five states would impact the party’s electoral fortune in Gujarat as several leaders, including sitting MLAs who were upset with organizational change, might join the AAP or the BJP.  The AAP is preparing to contest the polls with the launch of a Tiranga Yatra from April.

‘‘If the top leadership cannot ensure even one win in Gandhi bastions of Raebareli and Amethi, what do we expect from them? Apna ghar to bacha nahi paye! (They failed to save their own house),” said a senior Gujarat leader.

A former Gujarat MLA said the party should allow the state unit to manage the election rather than parachuting central leaders.

“In 2017, Krishna Allavaru was in charge of Gujarat elections and we lost due to poor management. He was sent to Punjab and look at the results.” 

In Himachal Pradesh last year, the Congress scored a major upset by winning all three assembly seats of Arki, Jubbal-Kotkhai and Fatehpur in bypoll.

The party had touted it as the sentiment of the people, but the faction-riddled state unit could impact the party’s performance.  

LUCKNOW:  Traversing through different phases of age and earning distinctions of being the youngest parliamentarian at 27 in 2000 and UP’s youngest CM at 38 in 2012, Samajawadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav seems to have finally come of age despite a series of electoral defeats since 2014.

The results of 2022 might not have led Akhilesh to the throne of UP, but he fought to accomplish the mission which always was considered to be herculean. He exhibited political maturity to beat the mighty BJP in its own game by cobbling up strategic alliances with smaller caste-based parties.

Akhilesh left no stone unturned to shrugg off the tag of being a ‘one family party’ and denied tickets to family members.

He tried to discipline partymen to shed the baggage of hooliganism, which his party is still carrying, and it reflected in the polls. He drew massive crowds in rallies, but convert that into votes.

He reached out to party veterans personally, projecting inclusiveness.

Akhilesh even mended the discordant notes in the family by shaking hands with uncle Shivpal Yadav and making him contest the polls on SP ticket.

After crushing defeats in 2017 followed by 2019 Lok Sabha elections, went back to the drawing board and drafted the roadmap for 2022.

He replicated the BJP caste calculus and struck tie-ups with smaller caste-based parties rather than going with Congress and BSP.

However, the strategy to induct big leaders from BJP ahead of the polls flopped. Swami Prasad Maurya and Dharam Singh Saini lost.

Neither did the alliances bring dividends in the form of non-Yadav OBC votes.

Even the farm protests did not hit BJP as much as expected. The saving grace for Akhilesh, fighting his first Assembly election, was that he won by more than 60,000 votes from the Karhal seat in Mainpuri.

RLD gracious in defeat

NOIDA: Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) president Jayant Chuadhary said he respects the people mandate. His party had formed an alliance with SP.

The RLD had fielded candidates in 33 seats in western UP and eight of them won.

“I respect public opinion. Congratulations to all the winning MLAs! It is expected that they will work according to the trust of the people. Our workers have worked hard, and the struggle will continue!”

MUMBAI: The Shiv Sena bagged less votes than the ones which went to NOTA in Goa, Uttar Pradesh and Manipur, Election Commission data shows.

In Goa, the Sena had fielded candidates in 10 seats.

All of them lost deposit.

Sena candidates got less than 100 votes in Cortalim (55 votes), Quepem (66), Vasco-Da-Gama (71) and Sanquelim (99).

`None of the Above’ or NOTA option secured 1.12 per cent of total votes polled in Goa, while the Sena bagged a mere 0.18 per cent votes.

In Manipur, the Shiv Sena contested six seats.

The NOTA secured 0.54 per cent votes in the northeastern state while the Sena bagged 0.34 per cent.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Sena had bagged 0.03 per cent votes as of Thursday evening, while NOTA has amassed 0.69 per cent votes.

About its dismal performance, Shiv Sena chief spokesperson Sanjay Raut said his party received less votes than NOTA because it fell “short of (currency) notes”.

“The Sena received less votes than NOTA because we could not manage `notes’ used by the BJP. Still we contested in Goa and Uttar Pradesh. Our fight will continue. Victory or defeat is not the end, it is the start. We will continue to work,” the Sena MP said.

The party had deployed a battery of leaders including Maharashtra Tourism Minister Aaditya Thackeray for campaigning.

Aaditya Thackeray campaigned in Goa and Uttar Pradesh.

Sanjay Raut, Vinayak Raut, Arvind Sawant and Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar also campaigned in Goa.

But the party failed to make a foray in the neighbouring state even though Goa has a sizable Marathi-speaking population.

Maharashtra Minister and Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray on Thursday said results of the just held assembly polls, where the BJP emerged victorious in four of the five states that voted, will not impact the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the state.

Unfazed by the Shiv Sena’s poor performance in states, where the party had fielded candidates, he said it was just the beginning of an electoral journey for the Maharashtra-based outfit.

The Shiv Sena bagged less votes than the ones which went to NOTA (none of the above) in Goa, Uttar Pradesh and Manipur, Election Commission data showed.

The Sena, which is in power in Maharashtra in alliance with the NCP and the Congress, had contested Assembly elections in these three states but drew a blank.

Talking to reporters here, Thackeray said the Shiv Sena will contest elections from the gram panchayat level to Parliament in quest to expand its organizational base.

“This is just a beginning,” he said, adding “the Shiv Sena will win one day.”

The Sena minister had campaigned for party candidates in Goa and Uttar Pradesh.

NEW DELHI:  The BJP broke a decades-old jinx to retain power in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, even as Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party pulled off a stunning victory in Punjab to become the only regional party to rule in two states. And the Congress faced severe drubbing in all the five states that went to polls. The BJP is also set to form governments in Manipur with a simple majority, and in Goa where it stopped short of getting a full majority.

The BJP’s exuberance is not misplaced as it has proved wrong all the political pundits who had predicted the party’s rout in the Jat-dominated western Uttar Pradesh which was the epicentre of farmers’ agitation. As results started pouring in, it became evident that western UP had voted resoundingly in favour of the BJP. The party’s strike rate in western UP was better than the main rival — the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal combine.

The BJP performed equally well in all other regions of the state. The social coalition cobbled together by the party and the welfare schemes, including free ration to the poor, paid rich dividends. The party swept most of the constituencies having a large Dalit population indicating a huge shift of Dalits towards the BJP.

This shift of the Dalit vote dealt a deadly blow to Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party whose tally fell to a single digit for the first time since it started contesting elections in UP.

Mayawati has suffered huge setbacks in the last five elections in UP and her party’s vote share has continued to shrink over the last 10 years. She has, however, retained the support of a large chunk of Jatavs, the caste she belongs to, and a few other numerically smaller castes.

This seems to be the only vote left with her. But whether she would be able to bounce back from here is a million-dollar question.

The other big story of this election is the stunning victory pulled off by AAP which is poised to win over 90 out of 117 assembly seats. Buoyed by the success, Kejriwal laid bare his national ambition by exhorting people across the country to join AAP “to change the system”.  

Congress biggest loser, questions over Gandhi

Kejriwal said it was time the common man picked up the reins of power to decide his own future and the future of the country.

“Who is the person who has defeated Charanjeet Singh Channi? Labh Singh Ugoke runs a regular mobile phone repair shop. Who is the person who has defeated both Bikram Singh Majithia and Navjot Singh Sidhu? She is an ordinary AAP volunteer.”

The AAP landslide was so strong in Punjab that it swept away all the top leaders belonging to Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal, the two parties that have been ruling the state alternatively for decades.

Among the giants who were made to bite dust were Charanjeet Singh Channi, Prakash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Badal, Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu. For the first time in decades, there will not be a single Badal in the Punjab assembly. Congress became the biggest loser in these elections.

The party not only lost power in Punjab, but failed to perform well in Uttarakhand where it was widely believed to have been on a comeback trail. But the biggest humiliation for the party came in Uttar Pradesh where Priyanka Gandhi was leading the campaign.

The party saw a dramatic fall in its vote share and managed to win just two out of 403 seats. This has been the Congress’ worst performance in India’s largest state in decades.

The main opposition to the BJP in UP, the Samajwadi Party, had put together a rainbow alliance of castes to take on the BJP.

The SP’s attempt to shed the image of being a Yadav party succeeded to an extent but was not good enough to beat the BJP. The SP alliance stopped well short of the majority mark in spite of increasing its tally by almost 80 seats compared to its score in the last election.

In the last three elections, the SP has allied with three parties.

It fought the 2017 assembly election in alliance with the Congress, the 2019 election with BSP and the latest one with RLD. Nothing seems to be working for the young Akhilesh Yadav, who has come out of the shadow of his father and uncles but has so far failed to register a win of his own.

Modi imprint, says world media

New Delhi: The international media commented that the BJP’s record electoral gains in UP and elsewhere once again reinforce the dominance of PM Modi in Indian politics for the foreseeable future.

A report by the Washington Post said, “The results make Modi’s BJP the favourite to win the next national election in 2024.” Daily Telegraph said the election is expected to be a barometer for the national political mood.

NEW DELHI:  Ahead of counting of votes on Thursday, both the BJP and the Congress are preparing for all possible scenarios, especially in Goa and Uttarakhand, where the exit polls have shown it to be a close finish.

Both parties are looking at the option of seeking support from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and the Independents if they fall short of the majority mark of 21 in the 40-member Assembly.

In 2017, the MGP had lent support to the BJP after the results, but this time it contested in alliance with the TMC. In 2017, the Congress had emerged as the single largest party but failed to form government as BJP acted swiftly and forged alliances with MGP, GFP and Independents. 

“All options are being considered and plans are already in place for possible alliances in Goa. Senior leadership will hold a series of meetings and decisions will be taken based on the situation in each state,” said a Congress leader.  

In Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel and Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Hooda will be the Congress crisis managers even as CM Pushkar Singh Dhami exuded confidence that BJP’s performance would exceed projections.

Despite exit polls giving full majority to AAP in Punjab, the Congress has sent Ajay Maken as observer along with Pawan Khera. For Manipur, the party has appointed Chhattisgarh minister TS Singhdeo and senior leaders Mukul Wasnik and Vincent Pala as observers.   

Congress’ trusted crisis manager

Shivakumar was sent to Rajasthan during the crisis following Sachin Pilot’s rebellion. He had also prevented poaching of Karnataka MLAs in 2018, forcing CM BS Yeddyurappa to resign ahead of the floor test  

Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav |

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav accused the ruling BJP on Tuesday of attempting to “steal” votes and said exit polls are meant to create a perception that the saffron party will emerge victorious in the Uttar Pradesh election.

At a press conference here, he also alleged that government officials in Lucknow are directing their subordinates in the districts to slow down the counting of votes and prolong the process till late night where the chances of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning the electoral contest are slim.

Yadav alleged that the instructions are particularly with regard to 47 seats which the BJP had won in the last state Assembly polls with a margin of less than 5,000 votes.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister also alleged that the BJP-led state government is “stealing” EVMs and a truck with voting machines was caught in Varanasi.

The seven-phase Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls concluded on Monday. The counting of votes will be taken up on March 10.

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya on Monday asked Akhilesh Yadav to accept defeat and said on March 10 the Samajwadi Party will become “‘samaapt vaadi party'”.

Counting of votes will be held on March 10.

Several exit polls have forecast a clear majority for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

In a series of tweets in Hindi, Maurya said, “The claims of the Samajwadi Party and that of Akhilesh Yadav Ji have fallen flat. This means that on March 10 the people of Uttar Pradesh will make the Samajwadi Party a ‘Samaapt vaadi Party’ (a party, which has come to an end).”

“Akhilesh Yadav Ji, accept defeat before the counting of votes. Come to the ground from sky-high arrogance. People know your mindset, they know the goons of your party very well. “They know that if the Samajwadi Party returns to power there will be hooliganism, crime, riots, corruption and illegal grabbing once again,” he said.

In another tweet, Maurya also said that the future of the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress will remain in dark for the next 25 years.