The meeting comes in the backdrop of the shock resignation of party veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday and his letter to party president Sonia Gandhi in which he lashed out at Rahul Gandhi for 'demolishing the party's entire consultative mechanism'.
The anti-encroachment drive by Jammu and Kashmir administration intensified on Saturday as the land illegally occupied by 'influential persons' was retrieved at many places in the valley, officials said.
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.
If the prime minister does not repeal these laws, the country will suffer, he said.
Restoration of peace and the normal routine of daily life, compared to the past, stands out as its most significant achievement, observes Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the veteran commentator on Kashmir affairs, four years after the abrogation of Article 370.
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.
Watch Opposition vs Government duel in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha LIVE.
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.
Two militant outfits - al Mansoorian and Islamic Jehad Front - have claimed separate responsibility.
'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 Congress will launch a two-month door-to-door campaign across India from next week to spread Rahul Gandhi's message among the masses, senior leader Jairam Ramesh said on Friday.
The policemen were patrolling the area in view of a separatist-sponsored strike.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If elected, he will be the second All India Congress Committee president from Karnataka after S Nijalingappa, and also a Dalit leader to hold the post after Jagjivan Ram.
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 two main factions in Karnataka's Congress party -- one led by Siddaramaiah and the other by D K Shivakumar -- are both contenders for the chief ministership. Both groups have fought hard to get their choice of MLAs the party ticket, notes Aditi Phadnis.
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.
'We demand immediate release of all public representatives of mainstream political parties and innocent citizens,' the resolution said.
'We repent our decision today as we feel we betrayed our (Congress) party, while the DAP betrayed us'
The protesters assembled outside Dogra Chowk in the heart of the city and tried to take out a march in violation of prohibitory orders when the police swung into action and restored to mild lathicharge before detaining several of them, the officials said.
The victim was identified as Sanjay Sharma, a resident of the Achan area in the south Kashmir district, they said, adding that the incident took place at around 11 am.
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.
Rahul Gandhi had earlier indicated that he might be present at the Patna rally.
Breaking his silence, former Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Saturday rubbished claims of the head of AIIMS' forensic medicine department that he was pressured to manipulate the autopsy report of Sunanda Pushkar and questioned Sudhir Gupta's credibility, saying he can "shoot his mouth off anytime against anybody".
This will be the second all-party meeting called by the government to discuss the COVID-19 situation since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Glimpses of the CWC meeting, which was meant to formulate a plan to revive the party from the death throes of electoral irrelevance, but...
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.
The BJP MP also said that MP said that he will seek breach of privilege proceedings against Ghulam Nabi Azad for "falsely" saying that the UPA had blacklisted Finmeccanica, the manufacturer of AgustaWestland choppers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
