An unholy row has broken out in the Parliament House between the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and its most critical alliance partner, the Trinamool Congress, over a room for the new Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has trained its focus and its guns on Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and has asked him to answer their long list of questions on the 2G spectrum issue, wanting to know why he has been changing his stand on both 2G and jailed former Union minister A Raja.
With the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections just around the corner, senior Congress leader from the state P L Punia has pitted himself against Union minister Ambika Soni over the yet unreleased Bollywood film 'Arakshan' directed by Prakash Jha.
Karnataka Governor Hans Raj Bhardwaj, who has been let down once too often by New Delhi, is unlikely to take any precipitate action against Chief Minister Yeddyurappa, even though, according to the Constitution, he has considerable powers once it comes to the Lokayukta, say highly-placed sources.
Former union parliamentary affairs minister Matang Singh has been re-inducted into the Congress with immediate effect, said All India Congress Committee General Secretary Singh on Saturday. However, Janardan Dwivedi, AICC media in-charge, has denied this claim.
The latest reshuffle by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has created a great deal of unhappiness in the Congress party, with the prime minister having opened a can of worms with his remark that this will be the last reshuffle before the polls.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh affected what he has called the "last and final reshuffle before the polls in 2014". But what should have been an "expansive" exercise (in his words) sends a message of merely filling in some slots.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi met again on Monday to put the final touches to the proposed reshuffle which has been scheduled for 5 pm on Tuesday evening. However, nothing can be said with certainty as far as the Cabinet reshuffle and the event of swearing-in ceremony goes.
There was veiled criticism of the Manmohan Singh government by members of the Congress Working Committee for allowing Anna Hazare and his team to hijack a democratically elected government, and for the use of pressure and the threat of fasts to ensure that the government acted as per their diktat.
Differences between the government and representatives of civil society continued over provisions in the Lokpal Bill, even as the Manmohan Singh government was further in the dock over a quietly executed decision of removing the Central Bureau of Investigation from the purview of the Right to Information.
On the eve of Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi's birthday on June 19, loyalists have once again raised the issue of Gandhi junior becoming the prime minister of India, a post for which there is no vacancy at the moment.
After having been beaten black and blue on the issue of corruption and black money, the Congress leadership is now keen to change the discourse in the public domain from corruption and bring it back to its original agenda of development and good governance, which has been derailed over the last year or so.
Like his mother Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi is also said to be worked up about Baba Ramdev and the manner in which the government handled the issue, which led to the Bharatiya Janata Party getting a handle with which to beat the government with.
The government and Baba Ramdev have been unable to come to a negotiated settlement over the Baba's indefinite fast at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan. But the real story is the widening gulf between the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress party and the Dr Manmohan Singh led United Progressive Alliance government which has now come out almost in the open. In an interesting development, Sonia Gandhi called a meeting of senior leaders at her residence at 6.30 pm on Saturday.
After an all out tongue lashing by the Congress party, the government has hardened its position vis--vis yoga guru Baba Ramdev with the government deciding to reject most of his demands except the ones over black money which are under discussion.
It seems as if the Congress is paying huge amounts of money to have its national icons criticised and heckled, with the party officially bringing out the fifth volume of its history where the politics of former prime minister Indira Gandhi has come in for sharp criticism
A day before she takes oath as the first woman chief minister of West Bengal, Mamta Banerjee resigned from the Union Council of Ministers where she was the Railway minister.
The Congress has kicked off the Uttar Pradesh assembly election campaign against state Chief Minister Mayawati with the party signaling in no uncertain terms that Rahul Gandhi would be at the centre stage of the fight for UP, a battle which is set to last for the next one year as Hindi heartland's biggest state becomes the battleground.
The United Progressive Alliance government seems to have adopted a go-slow approach on whether it would move to dismiss the Yeddyurappa government in Karnataka and is likely to let the Bharatiya Janata Party sweat it out and keep the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.
An aggressive Congress and the party-led United Progressive Alliance government worked in cohesion on Thursday to attack Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati from both the AICC as well as the newly-constituted Group of Ministers' platform, set up to bridge the 'information deficit.'
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