The 13th general elections enter phase four on Saturday, when 74 constituencies spread over UP, Bihar, MP, Orissa and Himachal Pradesh and four other states go to the polls amid stepped-up security as a grim reminder of the violence, which erupted on September 18. An electorate of 80 million will decide the fate of 696 candidates in the fray for 24 Lok Sabha constituencies in UP, 19 in Bihar, 12 in Madhya Pradesh, 10 in Orissa, 4 in Himachal, 2 in Meghalaya and one each in Mizoram, Nagaland and Manipur. By Saturday evening, polling for 418 out of the 545-member Lok Sabha would be over. Security has been stepped up in Bihar and other states.

Priyanka defends Sonia's decision on citizenship issue

Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra said on Friday that it would have been too hypocritical for her mother to have acquired Indian citizenship soon after marriage. ``If she had acquired Indian citizenship the day she married, then I would say, it would have been too hypocritical. It takes time, say two to four years, to take things to your heart. Everything was new to her, new people, new traditions. ``All this talk of she is a traitor, she is this and that, everything is `bakwas' (trash). Of course, citizenship is a document, but what you have in your heart is entirely different. About her heart, I can say, she is a Hindustani from all angles,'' she said in an interview to `Aaj Ki Baat' in Amethi.

BJP demands retrieval of public funds, land from INGNCA

Emboldened by the Delhi high court order clearing decks for suitable action by government to restore its control on the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts trust, the BJP on Friday demanded that immediate action should be initiated to retrieve public funds and land allotted to the centre. BJP general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu told newspersons in New Delhi on Friday that an inquiry should be held to fix responsibility for the "fraud", by which public property of such enormous value and a government trust had been "usurped and placed in the private control of one individual.