Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge has resigned as the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, sources said on Saturday, a day after he filed his nomination papers for the All India Congress Committee president's election.
Sharmishtha, who has quit politics, also clarified that she has not tried to tweak her father's views about anyone.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Friday described the Election Commission's decision to recognise his faction as the real Shiv Sena victory of truth and people.
The Maharashtra legislative assembly on Friday passed a bill empowering local tree authorities to allow the felling of all types of trees without referring matters to the State Tree Authority.
Shinde also said directives will be issued to give the Kunbi caste certificates to blood relatives of a person who already possesses similar documents.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on Monday said there was a need to fight the forces creating communal divide in Maharashtra and the country.
The February 16 polls are clearly a precursor to the big fight in the state in 2014. Neerja Chowdhury analyses
Senior leaders P Chidambaram and Digvijaya Singh are learnt to be the front-runners to take on the mantle of Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha.
Earlier, Vijay Wadettiwar questioned the recent meeting between Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar, who heads the rival faction of the party.
The BJP cannot afford to alienate the OBCs, who have explicitly voiced their opposition to the Maratha quota.
Ajit Pawar has the support of more than 40 MLAs of the NCP, according to sources citing a letter submitted to Raj Bhavan.
Raut said industrialists should be supported, but not corruption.
The unlikely power sharing agreement between the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress had fizzled out in June following large-scale dissidence in the Sena ranks.
The march will start near J J Hospital and end at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in south Mumbai.
"Sharad Pawar's presence has extraordinary importance when a new battle for freedom is going on in the country to save the Constitution and democracy, and in such a situation, Pawar should not step aside," he said.
It was a courtesy call as they had worked with Thackeray as part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition government for the last two-and-half years, said Congress leader Nitin Raut.
Pawar, who was also the deputy CM in the previous Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, which was in power from November 2019 to June 2022, enjoys the image of a grassroot leader and an able administrator.
'I was never interested to work as Leader of Opposition but accepted the role on demand of the party MLAs'
'There was COVID-19 for two years. Nobody met anyone during that period of time. Even before he resigned from his post in the organization, he used to tell us to meet General Secretary for organization-related work'
Any move of the present government to appease the Marathas may boomerang. Eknath Shinde is a worried man with the agitation not having an easy solution, notes Ramesh Menon.
Interestingly, among all the six former CMs, only Fadnavis, the first BJP leader to hold the top post in the state, completed full five-year term.
Chavan said he requested Wasnik to contest the Rajya Sabha polls from Maharashtra, his home state.
Leader of Opposition in the assembly Ajit Pawar (NCP) and fellow NCP leader Dilip Walse- Patil, who was home minister in the previous MVA government, too have been given 'Y-plus-escort' cover.
The two-day deliberations, which will be held at Grand Hyatt in the suburbs, will begin in the evening of August 31 and from 10am on September 1. The meeting will be followed by a press conference, Raut informed.
While arithmetic political stability is a reality, the end result of politics in Maharashtra is hard to predict.
Even as the race for the Congress president's post is hotting up, its veteran leader and Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh on Friday said he is not interested in becoming the party chief.
We will do whatever we can for the justice of the Marathi-speaking population in Karnataka, said Fadnavis.
Amid the ongoing tussle between Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole and party veteran Balasaheb Thorat in the wake of recent legislative council elections, both the leaders came face to face at the party's state executive committee meeting in Mumbai on Wednesday, with both of them later claiming that everything was fine between them.
The Maharashtra Congress has convened a meeting of its legislators on Tuesday in view of the developments in the state that saw a split in the Nationalist Congress Party and Ajit Pawar being inducted as deputy chief minister in the Eknath Shinde government.
The Leader of Opposition in the assembly also told an interviewer that he will "100 per cent" like to be chief minister of Maharashtra.
Congress leaders A R Antulay, Vasantdada Patil, Shivajirao Nilangekar-Patil, Shankarrao Chavan, Sushilkumar Shinde and Prithviraj Chavan are among the leaders who were not members of any of the state legislature Houses when they occupied the top post.
'We do not attach any importance if someone is writing about whether we create new leadership or not'
Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan claimed that Modi held 13 pre-Budget consultation meetings which were attended by top industrialists, but to none of these meetings Sitharaman was invited.
'People will teach a lesson to those who are compromising it for the sake of power and money.'
Prithviraj Chavan's statement has created another controversy for the ruling alliance in Maharashtra.
All the current political upheavals in Maharashtra are with the 2024 elections in mind and there is a degree of white-knuckle tension in all parties.
By resigning, the former deputy CM has struck pre-emptively against Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan and used the opportunity to demonstrate that it is he who calls the shots in the state unit of the Nationalist Congress Party, says Neerja Chowdhury.
'Praful Patel said his residential building was sealed, and the investigative agencies have shifted their office to his house, and that he was in a helpless condition.'
The Congress party needs a safe pair of hands in the form of Kharge, Tewari said.
Chavan was reacting to Sena MP Sanjay Raut's statement earlier in the day that the Sena was 'ready to consider' the demand of the MLAs led by Eknath Shinde that it should end the MVA alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.
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