New Delhi: Amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, the Election Commission on Saturday banned election rallies, roadshows and corner meetings till January 15 in the five poll-bound states.

Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra said the poll authority will review the COVID-19 situation on January 15 and take a further call on allowing public rallies.

The Commission will not hesitate to bar parties from further rallies if COVID protocol is not followed, Chandra said. The Commission also set out stringent COVID guidelines, restricting the number of persons allowed for door-to-door campaigns to five.

Political parties have been asked to provide masks, hand sanitisers to people attending rallies, if they are allowed, Chandra said.

The Commission has also banned victory celebrations and only two persons will be allowed to accompany the candidate to collect the winning certificate.

New Delhi: Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa will be held between February 10 and March 7 in seven phases, the Election Commission announced on Saturday.

The counting of votes will be held on March 10.

With the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic unfolding, the commission has set new protocols to ensure “Covid safe” elections to 690 assembly seats across the five states, Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra told reporters here.

He was flanked by election commissioners Rajiv Kumar and Anup Chandra Pandey. In Uttar Pradesh, elections will be held in 403 assembly seats in seven phases from February 10 to March 7.

Elections in 60 constituencies of Manipur will held in two phases on February 27 and March 3, while polling in Goa (40 seats), Punjab (117 seats) and Uttarakhand (70 seats) will be held on February 14.

The Model Code of Conduct has come into effect in the five states with the announcement of elections.

NEW DELHI:  Unlike elections in the recent past in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP is sensing that the party may face multiple rivals as ‘Mahagathbandhan (the grand alliance)’ may not take shape in the next year’s Assembly elections, with the likelihood of the Opposition parties looking at the post-poll realignment. 

With the UP polls likely to set up the backdrop for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Opposition outfits are expected to size up their strengths in the state by contesting maximum number of seats, while drawing lessons from the past experiments of ‘Mahagathbandhan’ in which only the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) had gained, leaving the Samajwadi Party and the Congress marginalised.

“There’s least likelihood of the grand alliance taking shape for the UP polls among the Opposition constituents. The SP on the basis of the past experiences will not cede the space for the Congress, which will insist to contest at not less than 50 Assembly seats. The SP and BSP have tried tie ups in the past, and they now know that it doesn’t work in their favour in UP,” Anil Jain, the BJP Rajya Sabha MP from UP and the former general secretary of the party, told this newspaper.    

Anil Jain, however, stated that the BJP is preparing for the UP Assembly elections with target to poll over 50 per cent vote share in Assembly constituencies.  

CHANDIGARH: BJP general secretary Tarun Chugh on Thursday slammed the Congress for allegedly creating disorder and instability in Punjab close to the Assembly elections.

He said the ugly infighting in the Punjab Congress has not only paralysed governance in the state but also exposed it to national security risks.

He said the frequent attack on the newly-appointed Punjab DGP by a section of the Congress leaders has demoralised the state police.

“This is a very dangerous situation for Punjab which has generated a sense of insecurity among people”, he said.

Chugh alleged the organisational crisis within the Congress has made Punjab a “drifting state” and it is time that the people decisively show the door to the party.

“In the state cabinet, tainted ministers have been inducted to persist with the mafia raj in Punjab and yet on the other hand some ministers have resigned even as their offices and departments are left god-forsaken,” he said.

Hours after the resignation of Navjot Singh Sidhu as the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee chief on Tuesday, Razia Sultana had stepped down as cabinet minister of the state in solidarity with the party’s senior leader.

Sidhu’s abrupt resignation triggered a fresh turmoil in the party’s Punjab unit.

Earlier, the Congress had picked Charanjit Singh Channi as the leader of the state’s Congress Legislative Party.

He was sworn in as the chief minister on September 20.

Amarinder Singh had resigned as the chief minister on September 18, after being locked in a bitter power tussle with Sidhu.

LUCKNOW: Working day in and day out to revive Congress in UP ahead of 2022 electoral battle, Congress general Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra seems to be ready with her master plan. As per the plan, she would now spare five days a week to the party in the state and spend only the weekend in Delhi.

Priyanka has reportedly prepared an elaborated plan to tour the state and stay in different districts to get the pulse on the ground.

As per the highly-placed Congress sources, Priyanka will sound her party’s poll bugle from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency Varanasi on October 10. She would also supervise Congress’s ambitious Pratigya Yatra which would take off on October 17. During the Yatra, to take off from four different places in the state, the Congressmen would reach out to the common man to expose the alleged failures of the BJP government in the state.

The Yatra is likely to culminate into a big rally in Lucknow drawing senior Congress leaders including Priyanka in November.

However, reviewing the party’s poll preparedness on the third day of her current 5-day visit to UP on Thursday, the Congress general secretary participated in a meeting of the newly constituted screening committee for finalising party tickets.

It is chaired by Congress general secretary Jitendra Singh, while party MP Deepender Singh Hooda and Maharashtra Cabinet minister Varsha Gaikwad also joined it as members on Thursday.

The Congress is still collecting applications from those who wish to contest the polls and has sought suggestions from various units of the party, including the district committees. These suggestions were taken up in the meeting.

Priyanka, who is chairing meetings with the state leadership, is an ex-officio member of the committee along with state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu, Congress Legislative Party leader Aradhna Mishra, and the party secretaries in charge of the state.

After the meeting at Kaul house in Lucknow, Priyanka met the members of the Nishad community and heard their grievances in detail at Congress headquarters. She also held a dialogue with the party’s social media handlers.

In the last assembly elections in 2017, Congress had fought in alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and had won just seven seats with a vote share of 6.5%. However, SP had declined from 229 to 47, and BSP to just 19 from 80 seats. The BJP had romped home with a huge majority winning 312 of 403 seats.

Kolkata : Polling began at 7 am on Thursday for the by-election to the Bhabanipur seat, where West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is contesting, and two other constituencies amid tight security and stringent COVID-19 measures, officials said.

The by-polls are being held in south Kolkata’s Bhabanipur, besides Jangipur and Samserganj seats in Murshidabad district.

A total 6,97,164 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in the three constituencies. Votes will be counted on October 3.

Banerjee, who lost from the Nandigram constituency in the assembly elections earlier this year, has to win this by-poll to retain the chief minister’s post.

Polls had to be countermanded in Jangipur and Samserganj in April following the death of two candidates. As part of its elaborate security arrangements, the Election Commission has deployed 72 companies of central forces in the three constituencies, of which 35 are stationed in Bhabanipur alone, the officials said.

Prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC have been imposed within 200 metres of the polling centres.

Long queues were seen since early morning outside several booths across the constituencies. Voting will continue till 6 pm.

The polling centres have been stocked up with masks and sanitisers as part of the COVID-19 guidelines, the officials said.

Banerjee, who is also the Trinamool Congress supremo, is pitted against BJP’s Priyanka Tibrewal and CPI(M)’s Srijib Biswas in Bhabanipur.

Lucknow: The BSP will make efforts to not field ‘bahubali’ (strongmen) or mafia candidates in next year’s Uttar Pradesh polls, party supremo Mayawati said Friday, announcing that jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari will not be given a party ticket from Mau again.

She said BSP state president Bhim Rajbhar will contest from Mau seat, currently represented by Mukhtar Ansari who is lodged in a jail in Banda, with several criminal cases pending against him.

Mayawati’s announcement comes days after Mukhtar Ansari’s brother Sigbatullah Ansari joined the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party.

“In upcoming assembly polls, the BSP’s effort will be to not field ‘bahubali’ and mafia elements. So, the name of Bhim Rajbhar, the BSP UP president, has been finalised from the Mau assembly seat in place of Mukhtar Ansari,” she said in a tweet in Hindi.

Mukhtar’s another brother, Afzal Ansari, is a BSP MP who represents the Ghazipur seat. He had defeated the BJP’s Manoj Sinha, who is now the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir.

Mayawati said the decision to not field criminal and mafia elements has been taken to meet people’s expectation as she appealed to party leaders to keep this in mind while choosing candidates. “So that there is no problem in taking strict action against such elements once the government is formed.”

She added, “Alongside ensuring ‘a rule of law, by law’, the BSP’s resolve is to also change Uttar Pradesh’s image now.”

She said the BSP’s should be known as the government that follows the philosophy of ‘Sarvajan Hitay and Sarvajan Sukhay’ (universal good).

CHANDIGARH: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) formed an alliance on Saturday for the 2022 Punjab Assembly election.

“Today, is a historic day….a big turn in Punjab’s politics,” he said in the presence of BSP General Secretary Satish Chandra Mishra.

He said the SAD and the BSP will jointly fight the 2022 polls and other elections together.

The Mayawati-led BSP will fight 20 of the 117 Assembly seats in Punjab, while the rest will be contested by the SAD, he said.

Among the seats which the BSP will contest are Kartarpur Sahib in Jalandhar, Jalandhar-West, Jalandhar-North, Phagwara, Hoshiarpur Urban, Dasuya, Chamkaur Sahib in Rupnagar district, Bassi Pathana, Sujanpur in Pathankot, Mohali, Amritsar North and Amritsar Central.

The SAD earlier had a tie-up with the BJP and the Badal-led party walked out of the NDA over the farm laws issue last year.

The BJP used to contest 23 seats under its alliance with the SAD.

Damascus, May 28 (AP): Syrian President Bashar Assad was re-elected in a landslide, officials said Thursday, ushering in a fourth seven-year term in the war-torn country following an election described as illegitimate and a sham by the West and his opposition.

Assad’s win was not in doubt, in an election where officials said 18 million were eligible to vote. But in the country ravaged by the 10-year-old conflict, areas controlled by rebels or Kurdish-led troops did not hold the vote.

At least 8 million, mostly displaced, live in those areas in northwest and northeast Syria. Over 5 million refugees mostly living in neighbouring countries have largely refrained from casting their ballots.

US and European officials have also questioned the legitimacy of the election, saying it violates UN resolutions in place to resolve the conflict, lacks any international monitoring, and is unrepresentative of all Syrians.

Syria’s parliament speaker, Hammoud Sabbagh, announced the final results from Wednesday’s vote. He said Assad garnered 95.1 per cent of the votes. He said turnout stood at 78.6 per cent of the voters, in an election that lasted for 17 hours on Wednesday with no independent monitors.

Assad was facing symbolic competition from two candidates a former minister and a former opposition figure.