The party also made it clear that no one will be permitted to undermine or weaken the party and its leadership. The CWC also resolved that inner-party issues cannot be deliberated through the media or in public fora and all such issues must be raised within the party 'in the interest of propriety and discipline'.
"We have come to realise that these elections are being held to facilitate only one party -- ruling party," Congress leader Ghulam Ahmad Mir said.
Maharashtra Revenue Minister Narayan Rane on Thursday said that party high command has not fulfilled promises made to him after he joined Congress in 2005.
The party will also leave two seats for the Apna Dal, and entered into an electoral agreement with the lesser known Jan Adhikar Party.
The Lok Sabha constituencies that JD-S will contest are Uttara Kannada, Chikkamagaluru, Shivamogga, Tumkur, Hassan, Mandya, Bengaluru North and Vijayapura.
In a stern message to Congress, Samajwadi Party Chief Mulayam Singh said on Sunday that it had "no moral right" to comment on the bonhomie between his party and former BJP leader Kalyan Singh as the grand old party was in power at the Centre when Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992.
While a total of 377 reports on Congress appeared in the Delhi edition of four leading English newspapers -- Indian Express, Times of India, Hindustan Times and The Hindu the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party could get their affairs onto the front page only 138 times during the first six months of this year.
Party leaders said the entire campaign methodology would be chosen much in advance so that there is sufficient time for the messages to make an impression to the voters. It is learnt that the campaign would be both in the print and the electronic media apart from other forms of visual publicity like outdoor campaigning.
Fears of the Congress not having a credible face, after the death of its three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit last July, and ceding its vote bank to the Aam Aadmi Party came true with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party capturing the space once occupied by the grand old party.
Asked whether the Congress will be a part of this confluence, he said, "I said that there will be sangam of people and thoughts. All answers are included in this."
The AAP chief said the BJP had tried to polarise the assembly polls and that they hadn't cleared the Shaheen Bagh road because of the elections.
Elections 2024 is not as open and shut as has been presumed. There is some life left in it, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Republicans convened their national convention in St Paul, Minnesota on a subdued note focussing much of their attention on how best they could rally forces to the beleaguered folks of Louisiana and Mississippi affected by Hurricane Gustav.
It was celebration time at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi as Sonia Gandhi on Friday created history by completing 10 years as its president, an unparalleled feat in the history of the grand old party. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was among the first to greet Sonia on the occasion as he drove to her 10 Janpath residence and presented her a shawl.
Noor, niece of Congress stalwart A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury, have quite often been taking stands which were not in line with that of the party's state leadership.
The Blair model, used to turn the Labour Party's flagging fortunes around in Britain over a decade back, has come in handy for India's grand old party, which is in search of a winning formula after successive electoral defeats including in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
With Lok Sabha elections just a year away, a key committee of the Congress embarked on an exercise aimed at turning around the electoral fortunes of the grand old party, which has been been on a losing spree.
Given Nitish's track record as an accomplished trapeze artist who can dump the BJP overnight and embrace the RJD, he can leave the saffron party stranded should he fail to get the chief ministerial crown for the fourth time, notes Virendra Kapoor.
In the Grand Old Party, no one else has the record of a hat-trick term in the top office of a state other than Mohan Lal Sukhadia, who was the chief minister of Rajasthan for 17 long years, and Krishna Sinha in Bihar for 14 years.
The AAP said the tie-up can only be done on 33 Lok Sabha seats across four states and one Union Territory.
After resorting to quirky measures like debarring party spokespersons from news channel debates, the opposition parties are now overhauling their organisational set-ups and purging respective executives, committees and wings to weed out non-performers and deadwood. Virendra Singh Rawat reports.
Many leaders who appealed to Gandhi to stay argued that their political futures depended on his presence in the party and hence he must stay.
President Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Rajapaksa will transform Sri Lanka's political landscape after Thursday's electoral triumph, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran Colombo watcher.
Khurshid also asserted that the Congress was going through a "transitional process", but there was no leadership crisis plaguing the party as Sonia Gandhi was there at the helm.
A day after the party's rout in Delhi elections, the knives are out in the Congress with leaders blaming each other and raising questions on whether the party has outsourced the task of defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party to others.
"How many more lies will be peddled to sustain a sinking dynast? India, certainly deserves better," Jaitley said.
Personal differences between the two alliance partners, Congress insiders say, are owing to Kumaraswamy's style of functioning. He, unlike his father, is suspected to have a soft corner for the BJP, reports Bibhu Ranjan Mishra.
A number of Congress leaders across the country have gone against the party's stand in Parliament on abrogation of the provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir by supporting the Centre's move and a bill to bifurcate the state. The Congress has strongly opposed the move and the bill to bifurcate the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union territories.
'This letter assumes significance as it is for the first time that a letter has been documented and collectively agreed upon.'
The Congress, who has presently become a "leaderless" party, has also been facing multiple shocks at the state levels.
Some commentators said Gandhi's decision will augur well for a party that needs to reinvent itself and present a clear vision to again emerge as a credible alternative.
The AICC meet will be the vindication of the policy of the 'coming together of secular forces' pursued by Sonia since she took over the reins of the organisation way back in 1998.
Gandhi reportedly told them that he has already conveyed his decision to the Congress Working Committee and would not relent.
The BJP leaders denounced the Congress raising flags and placards and accused them of propagating false facts in connection with the Batla House case.
The grand old party, which had gone to polls in February this year in alliances with RJD and LJP contesting 84 seats, could secure just ten and finish second in as many, polling a meagre five per cent of votes.
The party desperate to retain power in the state will also prepare dossiers on opposition MLAs to assess the winability of prospective party nominees.
I-T returns data show 83% of the Congress' and 65% of the BJP's total income was from anonymous benefactors.
'If the leadership goes back to Rahul Gandhi, then there will be a perception problem about the drama about his exit a year-and-a-half ago.'
The party workers were busy overseeing the preparations for the D-Day and said the exit polls had underlined what they were always confident about.
Hans Raj Bhardwaj has slammed his own party, calling it too weak to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party.
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