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Jairam Ramesh said the Congress has to be the "fulcrum" of any Opposition alliance to take on the BJP in the 2024 general elections as it is the only political force with a pan-India presence.
'Several leaders leaving the party in quick succession tell us that something is very wrong with the oldest party'
The Congress on Friday released a list of 30 star campaigners for the February 20 Punjab Assembly elections and left out names of Tewari and Ghulam Nabi Azad, who are among the prominent members of the 'G-23' leaders who had written to the party leadership seeking an organisational overhaul.
The leaders who Gandhi met included Deputy Leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma and Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari. She is likely to meet some other leaders of the G-23 as well in the coming days.
The Congress on Sunday wrote to the Rashtrapati Bhavan seeking an appointment with President Ram Nath Kovind for a 7-member party delegation led by Rahul Gandhi to meet him and present a detailed memorandum of facts in connection with the Lakhimpur Kheri incident that claimed the lives of eight people earlier this month.
However, the party remained evasive about the part she could play in the party in future.
Pilot said rules and discipline of the party apply to all, adding that he hoped Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge would take a decision in the matter soon.
Asia's largest tulip garden overlooking the Dal Lake in Srinagar has been thrown open to the public, marking the beginning of the new tourism season in the valley. Formerly known as Siraj Bagh, the Tulip Garden was opened in 2008 by then chief minister of erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state Ghulam Nabi Azad. The idea of the garden, spread over 30 hectares in the foothills of snow-clad Zabarwan range, was conceived to advance the tourism season in the valley by two months.
If the prime minister does not repeal these laws, the country will suffer, he said.
Members of the G-23, who had shown courage to point out the flaws in the party's functioning, have allowed themselves to be co-opted by the Family to go through the motions of a post-mortem, notes Virendra Kapoor.
The G-23 group seems to have expanded with several senior Congressmen attending Wednesday's meeting.
Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge, a staunch Gandhi family loyalist from Karnataka, has become the Congress' first non-Gandhi president in 24 years.
The Congress is likely to get 11 Rajya Sabha seats in the upcoming election cycle with some of its top leaders, including P Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh, eyeing another term.
Prominent G-23 members including Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal and Manish Tewari have not been included in the Congress list of star campaigners for West Bengal assembly elections.
Puran Krishan was attacked near his residence in the Chowdhary Gund area of south Kashmir district, they said, adding that doctors declared Krishan brought dead after he was shifted to Shopian hospital.
Azad, who is a prominent member of the group of 23 leaders who had demanded organisational overhaul in the Congress, said that for the next two months the party is the top priority.
Every time we look at the Congress, its future, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, we find the situation more hopeless than even a few months earlier, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Glimpses of the CWC meeting, which was meant to formulate a plan to revive the party from the death throes of electoral irrelevance, but...
Describing the Congress veteran as a "symbol of socialism and secularism", Azad said Reddy functioned with utmost integrity.
Succumbing to pressure from Lone's son and legislator Shoaib, who was supported by opposition National Conference, Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad finally announced in the house that the CBI had been asked to probe the killing.
In a jolt to the Congress ahead of Himachal Pradesh polls, senior leader Anand Sharma on Sunday resigned from the chairmanship of the party's steering committee for the state, saying he was left with no choice after the 'continuing exclusion and insults'.
The opposition Congress is peeved at the Modi government's move to not allow its top leaders a meeting with the visiting US President, as has been the tradition.
The Congress president will have to set up a new CWC in place of the steering committee which was formed after the working committee was dissolved by him.
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It was after a gap of two decades that saw such an occasion where MPs of the upper house enthralled their fellow colleagues at a dinner hosted by Chairman and Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu for 72 retiring members.
This will be the second all-party meeting called by the government to discuss the COVID-19 situation since the outbreak of the pandemic.
'Putra-moh Congress ko nasht kar raha hai (Sonia Gandhi's love for Rahul Gandhi is destroying the Congress).'
The policemen were patrolling the area in view of a separatist-sponsored strike.
'We demand immediate release of all public representatives of mainstream political parties and innocent citizens,' the resolution said.
Rahul feels collective decisions taken with his mother and sister helped the party in the December assembly elections. Hence, he wants to follow the same strategy for the Lok Sabha election, too.
In a public show of dissent, the 'G-23' leaders, including Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and Kapil Sibal, who have been pressing for a leadership change and organisational overhaul in the Congress, gathered on one stage in Jammu on Saturday, saying the party is weakening and they have come together to strengthen it.
Senior Congress leaders Anand Sharma, former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Kapil Sibbal, Raj Babbar, Vivek Tankha, Ghulam Nabi Azad will address an event in Jammu on Saturday which Manish Tiwari is also expected to join.
Two militant outfits - al Mansoorian and Islamic Jehad Front - have claimed separate responsibility.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday accused Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad of making casteist remarks against Narendra Modi by referring to the backward community to which the Gujarat chief minister belongs and demanded an apology from him as well as the Congress.
Anand Sharma said weaponisation of laws and their use to target and humiliate people should not happen.
Rahul Gandhi, in turn, thanked all the leaders for reposing faith in him and said he would apply his mind on their request of becoming the Congress president, the sources said.
He also asked why anyone seeking to contest the Congress president's election should go to the PCC office to get the electoral roll as this does not even happen in a club election.
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