"Jairam Ramesh may not be the only minister to resign from the government and join the party for election work. You will know in the next one or two days", Sonia Gandhi said, minutes after attending the valedictory function of the 14th Lok Sabha where the strains of Vande Mataram brought the curtains down on five eventful years of the Congress heading the United Progressive Alliance coalition government.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi is learnt to be interested in reviving a working relationship with the AIADMK's Jayalalithaa, with whom her relations have been far from cordial in the past.
The Congress is all set to appoint Siddharamiah as its new Legislative Party leader in Karnataka, in place of Kharge who is tipped to make it to the apex decision making body of the Congress party, the Congress Working Committee.
In what looked to be a hardening of the Congress position vis-a-vis Pakistan and the terror infrastructure it had let loose against India, Congress President Sonia Gandhi invoked Indira Gandhi's name to suggest that she was their inspiration and obliquely hinted that like Indira, they would act tough against those who conspired against them.
While the bulk of the speeches were lessons in sycophancy, there were some eye-openers, workers who had come prepared to speak the truth and as they articulated the sentiments of the silent majority present there, there was loud applause and genuine appreciation. One such example was Umaid Sheikh from Ahmednagar in Maharashtra who said that Sheila Dixit only won in Delhi because of her performance while the others were winning because of the Gandhi name.
The Congress has kicked off its preparations for the coming Lok Sabha elections on a war footing. A new war room has been set up, another premises has been occupied to mastermind the party's electoral campaign strategy, three constituency-wise surveys have been completed to get a professional and scientific feedback from the grass roots.
"First apologize publicly, throw out Kalyan Singh and his son from the Samajwadi Party and then come and meet us" said the Ullemas of Deoband, refusing to meet the Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh who had gone there on Monday to get feedback on the party's tie up with the former BJP chief minister.
Union Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad are both set to enter the Rajya Sabha from Jammu and Kashmir. Congress president Sonia Gandhi cleared their names and both the Congress leaders would be filing their nomination papers on Tuesday.
The newly appointed Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee took charge of his new office in north block, returning to it after a gap of 24 years. The Finance Ministry office, which has been sealed off to outsiders and particularly prying journalists with the vote-on-account preparations in full swing, was on Thursday opened up at 4 p.m. when the media was invited in to cover the taking over ceremony.
No senior leader in the party wanted to react to Ashok Gehlot's comment that he would stop the culture of girls and boys going hand in hand to pubs and malls. The party spokesman Shakeel Ahmed when asked said that he did not know in what context the statement had been made and he would first have to find out.
As Mukherjee prepares to return to North Block after a gap of 24 years -- he was last there in January 1985 -- and becomes the first minister to sit simultaneously in both North and South Block, it is learnt that Mukherjee would be using the North Block office of the finance minister, which till recently had been used by P Chidambaram. He is expected to shuffle between the office of the finance minister and the external affairs minister.
It will be the first time in the history of independent India that a prime minister is absent at a Republic Day parade.
The Congress party's chief political troubleshooter, Pranab Mukherjee has been informally appointed the "chairman of the party's group of ministers on alliances" for the coming Lok Sabha elections by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Jharkhand Governor Sibte Razi has in a letter to the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram recommended that the Centre move to impose President's Rule in the state.
Interview with former JK chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Azad feels all his good work as the chief minister was wiped clean by the emotional and divisive politics unleashed by the father-daughter duo of Mufti Mohd Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti.
The Congress has a lot to consider before taking a decision on which party to align with in Jammu and Kashmir, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti says.
This time around the party's election manifesto committee which has already begun its meetings to prepare the draft for the 2009 Lok Sabha polls has decided to discard its usual cut and paste approach and instead listen and learn from the experts.
"We are committed to resolving all outstanding issues between our two countries through peaceful dialogue. There are certain concerns we have about infiltration, about violations of ceasefire, these I did raise and I hope that in the days and months to come the Government of Pakistan will have the wisdom to address some of them," said the prime minister.
Speaking on the contentious issue of Sikh students not being allowed to wear turbans in French schools, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said that he had raised the issue with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, during his recent visit to France to attend the India-European Union summit.The prime minister took up the issue with Sarkozy after a delegation of Sikhs met him in Paris and urged him to talk to the French President.
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