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Uttar Pradesh
The Sambhal administration has issued an ultimatum to a committee overseeing a shrine and a mosque built on land recorded as a graveyard in the Chaudhary Sarai area to remove the "illegal" structures, officials said on Wednesday. Tehsildar Dhirendra Pratap Singh visited the site and served a notice, warning of legal action if compliance is not ensured. Speaking to reporters, the tehsildar said the land is officially recorded as a graveyard, but a mosque and a shrine associated with Dada Fakhruddin Rehmatullah have been constructed on it. He said that a large market is held at the site every Friday, but its organisers now must obtain permission from the sub-divisional magistrate before holding it. "The land is registered as a graveyard. It should be used only for burial purposes and not for a mosque or any other structure," Singh said. He added that the committee has sought 15 days and assured the administration that the weekly market would be discontinued and the structures remove
Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Balrampur and Kanpur Nagar are among the top districts in Uttar Pradesh that have recorded the highest percentage of electors whose forms remained uncollected during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll, according to official data. Districts like Lalitpur, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Jhansi and Chitrakoot in the Bundelkhand region of the state had the least removals from the draft roll. The draft electoral roll published on Tuesday after the SIR excludes 2.89 crore voters but retains 12.55 crore. The 2.89 crore voters, or 18.70 per cent, of the 15.44 crore listed earlier could not be included in the draft list due to deaths, permanent migration or multiple registrations, UP Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said. According to district-wise draft roll data published on January 6, Lucknow topped the list with 30.04 per cent uncollected forms, involving about 12 lakh electors. The district's electorate declined from 39.94 lakh in October 2025 to 27.
The draft electoral roll for Uttar Pradesh was published on Tuesday after a special intensive revision (SIR) exercise, with 12.55 crore voters retained out of 15.44 crore listed earlier, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa said on Tuesday. The remaining 18.70 per cent, or about 2.89 crore voters, could not be included in the draft list due to deaths, permanent migration or multiple registrations, he said while addressing a press conference here. Rinwa said the Election Commission had undertaken a door-to-door enumeration drive in which enumeration forms were to be filled and signed by voters or their family members. While the exercise was originally scheduled to end on December 11, the state sought an additional 15 days after noticing that the names of a large number of voters, nearly 2.97 crore, were getting excluded from the draft list.
Uttar Pradesh has emerged as the leading state in implementing reforms for making business operations simpler, transparent and investment-friendly in the 23 key priority areas identified by the Centre, officials said on Monday. As per the state-wise ranking under the 'Deregulation 1.0' report of the central government, the state has been ranked first, a statement issued here said. The assessment focused on the effective implementation of 23 priority reform areas spanning five major sectors -- land, building and construction, labour, utilities and permissions -- along with overarching reform priorities. Uttar Pradesh is the first state in the country to fully implement all 23 priority areas in a comprehensive manner, the statement said. Under the land-related reforms, the state adopted a flexible zoning framework enabling mixed-use development, simplified and digitised the land-use change process and rationalised minimum road width norms for industries in rural areas, it noted. "In
The Uttar Pradesh government on Monday announced a one-time relaxation of three years in the upper age limit for the upcoming police recruitment drive, offering major relief to aspirants preparing for constable-level posts. The age relaxation will apply to all categories of candidates for the proposed 2025 direct recruitment to the police force, following the directions of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, an official government statement issued here said. The decision is expected to benefit aspirants who missed earlier recruitment opportunities due to age limits, especially after delays caused by the pandemic period, officials said. The decision has been taken under the provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Public Services (Relaxation of Age Limit for Recruitment) Rules, 1992, it added. The relaxation will cover recruitment to 32,679 posts, including constable (civil police) for men and women, PAC and armed police constables, special security force constables, women battalion constables,
Permanent migration has emerged as the primary reason for electoral discrepancies in Uttar Pradesh, accounting for nearly 1.30 crore of the 2.88 crore uncollectable electoral forms identified during the Special Intensive Revision. Official data as of December 27, 2025, shows that permanent shifting of voters constitutes 8.40 per cent of the total electorate. Election officials said this trend reflects large-scale inter-district and inter-state migration, with the highest impact observed in urban and semi-urban areas. Apart from 1,29,77,472 cases of permanent shifting, the second largest category includes untraceable or absent electors. This accounts for 79,52,190 cases, or 5.15 per cent of the electorate, and is largely attributed to temporary migration, frequent changes in residence and inaccurate addresses. Deaths of registered voters accounted for 46,23,796 forms, or 2.99 per cent of the electorate, indicating outdated entries in the rolls due to the time gap between revisions, .
In a year when Uttar Pradesh grappled with violent crime, some of the most disturbing cases were not about strangers or organised gangs, but about families imploding from within where trust collapsed, blood ties snapped, and relationships ended not in separation but in death. Police records, post-mortem reports and court proceedings across districts told variations of the same story of relationships curdling into hostility and private disputes turning fatal. One of the most chilling cases surfaced in September when police in Sambhal uncovered what they described as an "insurance mafia" operating from within a family. It was alleged that Vishal Singhal killed his parents years apart and later his ex-wife, to claim insurance payouts exceeding Rs 50 crore. His mother's death in 2017 and his father's death in April this year were projected as road accidents and quietly closed at the time. It was only after a woman from Meerut approached police that the pattern emerged 64 insurance ..
An order for eateries to display their names, termed "religious profiling" by a section, police arrests over 'I Love Mohammad' banners, and waqf property registration hogged the headlines in Uttar Pradesh for a good part of the year. The Uttar Pradesh government persisted in framing laws for the mosques and other Muslim structures, moves that only met with tacit approval from the community, and at times outright rejection. During July-August, Hindu activists inspecting roadside eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route sparked a controversy. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi criticised the action, alleging that goons also forced dhaba owners on the Delhi-Dehradun highway to lower their pants to ascertain their religion. Former Samajwadi Party MP S T Hasan condemned the rule that stipulated that eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route display their credentials. In April, the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, was implemented after completion of the consultati
The Election Commission has revised the schedule for the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh, with the draft voter list now slated to be published on January 6, 2026, and the final list on March 6, the state's Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said in a statement on Tuesday. According to the new schedule, claims and objections will be invited from January 6 to February 6, he said. Rinwa said the notice stage, disposal of claims and objections, and decisions on enumeration forms will continue from January 6 to February 27, after which the final electoral roll will be published on March 6. The revision of the schedule comes amid heightened scrutiny of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in the state, where a large-scale pruning of voter list has been carried out. The nearly 52-day SIR exercise, conducted with the theme 'Shuddh Nirvachak Namavali, Majboot Loktantra' (Clean Electoral Roll, Strong Democracy), began on November 4 and ...
The revenue department here on Tuesday carried out the measurement of a graveyard land near a disputed religious site amid tight security and identified 22 houses and shops allegedly built through encroachment, officials said. The administration conducted the demarcation of land in Kot Purvi locality, which has been recorded as a graveyard in revenue records and found that parts of it were under illegal occupation, they said. District Magistrate Rajendra Pensiya told reporters that after receiving an oral complaint followed by a written representation, a revenue team measured plot number 32/2, covering an area of 4,780 square metres, adjacent to the disputed site. "The land is recorded 100 per cent as a graveyard. During the measurement, 22 houses and shops were identified as encroachments. Notices will be issued to the occupants seeking documents, following which action will be taken as per law," he said. Pensiya said the encroachments were both old and recent, some dating back ..
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday termed 2026 a decisive year for Uttar Pradesh's technological advancement, saying the state is emerging as a global hub for artificial intelligence and the digital economy. In a detailed message in Hindi on X, the chief minister said 2025 will be remembered for setting new benchmarks in innovation, data, and, future-oriented development as the state works to become a future-ready investment hub. Adityanath said investment can thrive only when the state and society are secure. He said strong governance has strengthened "Brand UP" globally and transformed the state into a trusted destination of investors. The chief minister said preparations are underway to develop AI cities in Lucknow and Noida, while a semiconductor unit worth Rs 3,700 crore is being set up in Jewar. He pointed out that a data centre policy, which focuses on indigenous centres and secure data, is already showing results. Five hyperscale data centre parks are now operational