Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore has shot off a letter to the Lok Sabha Speaker against Shashi Tharoor for speaking in public about his intention to summon Facebook officials without discussing the matter first in the parliamentary committee the Congress leader heads.
B S Gnanadesikan, who resigned as Tamil Nadu state Congress chief, tells Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com what is wrong with the party in the state.
Congress on Monday petitioned the Election Commission demanding immediate action against Bharatiya Janata Party's Narendra Modi for his video message to voters during polling in the last phase in 41 constituencies, including Varanasi, claiming that it was a violation of the electoral laws.
The Congress may get chairmanship of the prestigious Public Accounts of Committee but still there is no guarantee whether it will get the post of Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
No government can 'ignore inclusiveness in a democracy', Montek Singh Ahluwalia tells Anjuli Bhargava.
The party, however, chose to play down the incidents calling them 'minor protests', and claimed that there was no discontent among the workers.
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and charged that the National Democratic Alliance government has 'dictatorial' tendencies even as her party's leaders met in New Delhi to draw up a strategy for painting the ruling alliance as being "anti farmer".
One more ruling Congress legislator A John Kumar, a close confidant of Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy, resigned his MLA post on Tuesday, in yet another jolt to the ruling Congress dispensation ahead of the assembly polls due in few months.
"Sidhu could not manage a thing. I know him very well. Don't think that he is some sort of magic word for Punjab. He is going to be a disaster," he said.
'Priyanka did draw huge crowds and eventually all of those ended up voting for the Samajwadi Party.' 'The voters today are smart enough to vote for the party which they know is going to win or they know this party will come second, but no way will they vote for a party which will come third or fourth.'
Besides representatives of Facebook, the committee has asked representatives of the ministry of electronics and information technology to remain present on September 2 to discuss on the subject of "safeguarding citizens' rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms including special emphasis on women security in the digital space".
The political slugfest has been going on between the two, which started after Tharoor's announcement that the panel would like to hear from Facebook about the report published in Wall Street Journal claiming that the social media platform ignored applying its hate-speech rules to politicians of the ruling party in India.
'All the hoardings showed only Rahulji. No pictures of Indiraji and Rajivji. What is the Congress's worth without its history? It is unthinkable that none of our hoardings shows Indira and Rajiv. It was a total fiasco to see that many advertisements were in black and white. In such competitive politics, how can you experiment?' fumes a Congress leader.
After a report mentioned that Facebook overlooked its hate speech policies in cases of BJP MLA T Raja Singh and 3 others, Shashi Tharoor, chairperson of Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, said the committee 'would certainly wish to hear from Facebook'.
The Opposition has questioned the stringent provisions like criminalisation of a civil wrong in the triple talaq bill.
Shedding his discomfort with the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan on Thursday announced that the two parties, along with the Congress, would contest the next Lok Sabha elections jointly in Bihar.
'The Congress has indeed become overly dependent on the RJD.' 'A few Congress leaders have successfully convinced the national leadership about the benefits of maintaining ties with the RJD.'
'Khalistanis can be divided into three categories: Firstly, hardcore ideological people. They are microscopic, not even 1%.' 'Secondly, those who consider Khalistan a business.' 'The third category that has built the narrative of Khalistan are those who gain from polarisation.'
This is for the first time the UNHRC has issued a report on the alleged human rights violations in Kashmir and PoK.
Congress on Tuesday said that the Supreme Court order on the black money issue has exposed the Centre's "lame excuses" by directing it to disclose to it by Wednesday the names of all those who have black money stashed abroad.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday accused the Modi government of having failed the people of the country in handling the pandemic and demanded that an all-party meeting be convened immediately on the Covid-19 situation.
Gehlot also alleged that some other Union ministers, including Dharmendra Pradhan, are involved in the "conspiracy" against his government.
The party's research department is quietly collecting data, facts and figures to puncture the Modi government's claims on the note ban, the goods and services tax, and the economic growth.
With exit polls forecasting the National Democratic Alliance staging a comeback to power, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Wednesday said his party could not be written off and it would fight for "politics of secularism" whether it forms the government or sits in the opposition.
The Union home ministry has recommended the special CAG audit taking note of a May 24 letter by Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena which pointed out 'gross and prima facie financial irregularities' in the 'reconstruction' of the chief minister's official residence, they claimed.
The finance minister is "reasonably confident" that when it comes to the crunch, "it would be extremely difficult even for the Congress party to take a contrarian view" on the GST Bill.
The crowd at the mosque was larger than usual, unsurprisingly because it happened to be the last "Jumma" (Friday) of the holy month of Ramzan.
Digvijaya Singh, the Congress veteran who is one of its general secretaries, talks about his inability, despite years of urging, to get party vice-president and supposed heir, Rahul Gandhi, to communicate more directly. And, on related matters of generational change.
Giving the clearest indication yet that Pawan Kumar Bansal would be its contestant of choice for the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat, the Congress on Thursday said that the purported "taint" on the former rail minister was all a matter of "speculation which has nothing to do with the truth".
As politics played out over Uttarakhand floods, Congress on Sunday targeted Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi saying he wants to become a "Rambo", dismissing reports he had helped in evacuation of 15,000 stranded people from Uttarakhand in two days.
Ajmal in an interview to a media house on Friday had commented on women and Hindu men as well as Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, purportedly as a rejoinder to his remarks on 'love jihad'.
'The district administration failed and it was a very costly failure.'
Bijendra Prasad Yadav, the senior-most minister in the state cabinet, also lamented that the lack of cohesion was causing allies to engage in allegations and counter allegations, a job best left to the Opposition.
In a bid to appease the public following the AIADMK's rout in the polls, she also restored free power to farmers.
The 13 month-old Karnataka coalition government of JD-S and Congress slumped into crisis following the resignation of their 11 MLAs from the membership of the state assembly on Saturday.
Last week, Twitter had blocked Union Information and Technology Minister Prasad from accessing his account which ratcheted up tensions with the government as it came under renewed attack for not following local laws.
The firestorm that Kangana Ranaut kicked with her comment that the Independence India won in 1947 was bheek intensified on Friday with leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party and other parties demanding action against the actor even as a complaint was filed against her while some people took to the streets to burn her effigies.
'We are only amplifying the voice of scientists and experts. We are gathering information by talking to experts and are sharing it. If the government chooses to ignore that, what can we do?'
The 61-year-old MLA from Islampur seat of Maharashtra has been asked to depose before the federal agency in Mumbai on Friday, they said. Patil, a former minister of home and finance, is also the Maharashtra president of the NCP and is a seven-term legislator.
Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India (AKFI) on Wednesday washed its hands off the incident of the organisers of a state-level sub-junior girls' tournament allegedly serving food from a toilet in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur, saying the national body was not in any way involved in the staging of the event.
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