Rattled with the twin problem of defection and resignation after the selection of candidates for the ensuing assembly election in Nagaland, the Congress has called upon all the deserters to come back and work for the party.
Several petitions were filed in the apex court challenging the Act, contending that it was discriminatory towards the Muslim community and violated their fundamental rights.
The merger was sealed on Friday during a meeting between Badal and Rahul at the latter's residence here where Singh and All India Congress Committee General Secretary Shakeel Ahmad were also present, they said.
Sources said Rahul Gandhi is likely to contest from Rae Bareli, but a final call is yet to be taken by the first family of the Congress.
Dikshit would be assisted by three working presidents -- Devender Yadav, Haroon Yusuf and Rajesh Lilotia.
"For me, they (Maoists) are no enemies at all. If they are under some wrong notions, we need to talk to them," Rao said in the Rajya Sabha, while participating in a debate on the Dantewada massacre.
The Congress party on Wednesday gave a deadline to Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan up to September 23 to decide whether it wanted to come with Rashtriya Janata Dal-led United Progressive Alliance in the coming Bihar Assembly polls.
While over 80 MLAs, including some of the independents, have reached a hotel in Udaipur, Soldier Welfare Minister Rajendra Gudha, SC Commission Chairman and MLA Khiladi Bairwa and MLA Girraj Singh Malinga expressed their displeasure in Jaipur.
'Bharat Jodo Yatra' is a 'booster dose' for the Congress and a 'decisive and transformational moment' for the politics of the country, senior party leader Jairam Ramesh said in Guwahati on Friday.
Legislative Assembly election-bound Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand will be exempted from this exercise
Rather unusually, for it was a party forum, China cropped up several times during the discussions at the All-India Congress Committee plenary session at Burari in Delhi. And references to the country were not in socialist solidarity, either.
Amid speculation about the number of MLAs supporting him and senior party colleague Siddaramaiah for the post of Karnataka chief minister, state Congress president D K Shivakumar on Monday said his strength is 135, as under his presidency, the party won the said number of seats in the assembly polls.
Union Minister Jairam Ramesh is back in the Congress's high-profile Group on Future Challenges, which also has Rahul Gandhi as its prominent member. Ramesh, who was earlier the convener of the Group, was dropped after its first meeting late last year, without any official explanation. Confirming his return, senior party leader M Veerappa Moily, who heads the panel said, "Ramesh is now a member of the group".
He said the multi-party committee formed by the Speaker in Himachal Pradesh would discuss all issues about street vending on October 3. Singh's remarks came a day after the Congress top brass chided him over his remarks on mandatory display of names by the street vendors and told him that no one was allowed to go against the party's policies and ideologies.
All India Congress Committee General Secretary Digvijay Singh, who appears to have stirred a hornet's nest with his remarks on Naxalism, will have to do some explaining to the party leadership on his newspaper article critical of Home Minister P Chidambaram when he returns from the US next week.
A delegation of Congress leaders, including Lok Sabha MP Gaurav Gogoi and All India Congress Committee general secretaries Jitendra Singh and Ajoy Kumar were stopped at Jorhat airport by the district administration on Wednesday when they were on way to Nagaland, where the Army gunned down 13 civilians in a botched anti-surgency operation.
The Congress Working Committee finally accepted Rahul Gandhi's resignation during its second meeting of the day.
Apart from the two major parties (Cong: 98; BJP: 67) the Bahujan Samaj Party is leading in four seats, while the Janata Dal-United and the Communist Party of India-Marxist are ahead in one each.
The Congress on Thursday demanded the resignation of Karnataka Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda on moral grounds after two out of three ministers in his government were found watching a porn clip on a cell-phone in the state legislative assembly. "The BJP, which talks of high morals and ethics, has no face left. What will its president Nitin Gadkari say now on this episode," said All India Congress Committee Secretary Sudhakar Reddy.
Political circles were abuzz on Saturday amid speculation that former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and veteran Congress leader Kamal Nath may join the Bhartiya Janata Party.
"Our politics is about bringing the society together and not to break it," the Prime Minister said and asked partymen to work towards bringing the Congress party closer to the 'aam aadmi'.
'When I said the Gandhi family had to step aside, it was because we have consistently seen that the public has not accepted them.'
Manish Tewari, Prithviraj Chavan, Anand Sharma and Bhupinder Hooda are the members of the pro-reform G23 group who wrote a letter to party's interim president Sonia Gandhi.
The NCP has already put its claim on Deputy CM's post while the Congress Legislature Party will meet later in the evening to elect their leader.
Tharoor's close aide Aalim Javeri collected the forms from the office of the party's central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry on the first day of the start of the nomination process, all but confirming an electoral face-off for the top party post with Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot.
India's Parliament is set to begin its Budget session on Friday, with opposition parties poised to demand a discussion on the alleged mismanagement of the Maha Kumbh festival in Prayagraj, where 30 pilgrims died in a stampede. The opposition also accused the government of politicising parliamentary committees and pushing its agenda through its majority. The session will start with President Droupadi Murmu addressing both houses of Parliament. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on Saturday for the eighth consecutive time.
'For the first time in this country, perhaps the first time anywhere, we are going to use backwardness index.' 'It is a fundamental shift in the discourse in the country's social justice.'
'I had to persuade him. I think he was a sceptic to begin with, but later on he was convinced that what we were doing was the right thing to do, that there was no other way out.'
The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party have united in their demands, calling for the immediate resignation and arrest of P P Divya, a Communist Party of India-Marxist leader and district panchayat president, who leveled graft accusations against ADM Naveen Babu at his send-off function organised by colleagues at the Kannur district collectorate.
The Indian National Congress was founded by Scotsman Allan Octavian Hume on this day in 1885.
She said she had told the party leadership last year that it was difficult to travel in the three hill states due to her health.
Chowdhury is considered a strong critic of Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee. His appointment also triggered speculation on whether he would continue to hold the post of the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, going by the party's principle of giving one post to one person.
All India Congress Committee General Secretary Prithviraj Chavan, former Chief Minster Ghulam Nabi Azad, former Union Minister Saiffudin Soz, along with Union Ministers Pranab Mukherjee and A K Antony are likely to take part in the deliberations. Congress sources said the election results clearly indicate that National Conference will be in a position to form the government with support of Congress and from some independents.
The Congress on Monday emphasised once again that the United Progressive Alliance was not scrapping the India-United States nuclear agreement right now and said that it was making efforts to allay the apprehensions of the Left allies over the agreement. "There is no backing off right now," said All India Congress Committee spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed. He was responding to questions on whether the Indo-US nuclear deal had been put on hold in view of the opposition.
The central election authority of the Congress met and finalised the initial program of the process.
He claimed even the media is debarred from entering the secretariat and reaching out to the chief minister and thus changes need to be made in the governance model in Odisha.
Rahul Gandhi may also contest from Amethi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from Rae Bareli, a seat which was previously held by Sonia Gandhi.
Naik, 71, is the first senior Congress leader to resign after Rahul Gandhi announced on Sunday in his concluding speech that he wants to give the younger generation a chance to come forward and lead the party.
The AAP has been batting for tie up with Congress citing the need to defeat the BJP and replace the Modi government in the national interest.
