Mumtaz Patel said that she will continue to work to make the party stronger along with the party cadre in Bharuch.
'Narendra Modi -- a man with deep and vital experience of Indian politics -- has seen the BJP lose many elections between 1975 and 2015, and with every defeat, he learned lessons that made sure he would never allow his party to be defeated so easily again.'
The Congress is hopeful of soon finalising the Lok Sabha poll seat-sharing arrangements with the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) allies Aam Aadmi Party and Trinamool Congress, sources said on Friday, days after the principal opposition party arrived at an understanding with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh.
Faisal Patel, son of late Congress stalwart Ahmed Patel, has announced he will stop working for the grand old party, claiming that he tried to follow in his father's footsteps but was denied at every step. Ahmed Patel, who had served as a Rajya Sabha MP, All Indian Congress Committee treasurer and former party president Sonia Gandhi's political secretary, died in November 2020. Faisal had aspired to contest from the Bharuch seat in Gujarat in last year's Lok Sabha elections but the Congress did not nominate him.
The leaders of the two parties discussed the possibilities of seat sharing but did not divulge any details.
"Special circumstances" exist in Punjab, Wasnik said and added that in view of these, the AAP and the Congress have decided to fight the Lok Sabha polls separately in the state.
Modi will have greater satisfaction to see that Sonia Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel's Bharuch Lok Sabha constituency is also going the Bharatiya Janata Party's way.
An alliance between the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress in Delhi and in different states, including Gujarat and Haryana, for the Lok Sabha polls may be officially announced on Saturday, sources in the AAP said.
Delhi and Punjab are ruled by the AAP and these are the only two states that have free electricity supply, he said.
Names of Rajya Sabha MPs Harbhajan Singh and Swati Maliwal are missing from the list.
Among the major parties, out of the 25 BJP candidates, four, or 15 percent, have criminal cases against them, with two facing serious charges, as per the data of ADR.
A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta told Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, appearing for the Enforcement Directorate, that the hearing on Kejriwal's plea against arrest is likely to take time and therefore, the court was considering hearing the probe agency on interim bail to him.
If the Congress is contesting fewer seats than ever before, the BJP is set to contest its highest-ever number of Lok Sabha seats.
The Congress-AAP alliance this time aims to give a tough fight and stop the division of anti-BJP votes.
'I am a human and humans tend to commit mistakes. To ensure that the party does not suffer due to my mistakes, I resign from the party, whose forgiveness I seek'
The party also announced that Kamal Nath will contest the bypoll for the Chhindwara assembly constituency.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will head to poll-bound Gujarat this weekend and is expected to participate in at least eight programmes, crisscrossing the state from Saurashtra to Surat.
He was elected as a local body councillor in 1976 in Bharuch Municipal body of Gujarat at the age of 25 years and became the political secretary of Sonia Gandhi and remained a bridge during UPA-I tenure between the party and the government.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal mounted a blazing campaign in the hot summer after he was released from the Tihar jail on interim bail on May 10, drawing huge crowds at rallies and roadshows, but it proved insufficient to propel his Aam Aadmi Party past the Bharartiya Janata Party challenge in the national capital.
The Congress leader is one of the most powerful functionaries in the party, having the reputation of being a trouble-shooter and strategist.
As per Ahmed Patel's wishes, he was buried next to the graves of his parents.
The 71-year-old remained Sonia Gandhi's most trusted lieutenant for most of her tenure as the longest serving Congress president, standing by her side through sun and shade.
Faisal Patel's tweet did not mention what kind of encouragement he was looking for, however, many believe it could be linked to his possible electoral debut.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP is trying to make inroads into BJP-ruled Gujarat where the assembly polls are due later this year.
He is starting to realise that an era is ending. And he is not ready to have a five-decade career besmirched by two alphabets -- AP -- that have cropped up in the AgustaWestland papers, says Aditi Phadnis.
Presenting the Interim Railway Budget 2009-2010 in the Lok Sabha on Friday, the minister said that Palej, Panoli, Kosamba and Kim in the districts of Surat and Bharuch in Gujarat, Roshanara Garden and Sultanpuri in Delhi, Shastrinagar and Model Town of Ludhiana in Punjab and Vasarpadi in Tamil Nadu will be considered on priority for construction of ROBs and RUBs.
Citing the complaint, the Bharatiya Janata Party said in New Delhi asked Gandhi to come clean on the matter.
He served as an effective link between the party and government during the two terms of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) between 2004 and 2014. As political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, he had access to leadership that no other leader in the party had and worked the channels to work out various issues.
In 2014 too, the Congress had lost all the 26 seats in Gujarat.
Patel, 71, who was critical for a few days, was admitted to the Medanta hospital in Gurugram on November 15 after he developed complications. His son Faisal said he died at 3.30 am.
Patel's closeness to the Gandhi family was undeniable. But unlike others, he resisted the temptation to use it to leverage personal business, says Aditi Phadnis.
The Congress considers the community to be in its fold without bothering about its representation or welfare while the BJP assumes that the Muslims would not vote for its candidates, says Shafeeq Rahman.
Rahul is going about the restructuring of the Congress leadership in a gradual, deliberate fashion: No sudden jerks, no abrupt moves. So while seniors like Janardan Dwivedi were edged out, Ahmed Patel has been retained.
Talking to reporters after meeting Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani in Gandhinagar on Wednesday morning, he said, "Senior party leaders told me that I will get free treatment for my back pain and neck pain only if I continue to be an MP. This is not possible if I resign as an MP. Party leaders asked me to take rest and assured that a system will be put in place wherein local party workers will do work on my behalf."
The Rajya Sabha election was personal so it had to be won and Amit Shah needed to be sent a message.
The election commission had upped the expense limit for Lok Sabha elections from Rs 40 lakh to Rs 70 lakh per candidate in big states but a new report states that 537 MPs declared expenses of less than 50 per cent of the limit. Vicky Nanjappa/Rediff.com reports
'This is a fascinating side to Sonia Gandhi, the way she disarms her opponents.'
The prime minister had called ferry service his 'dream project' while addressing a gathering at Gandhinagar on Monday.
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