Rahul Gandhi said that instead of getting involved in the Sanatan dharma row, the leaders should focus on the poor and their issues as they have been the party's traditional vote bank, the sources said.
While the BJP said it has only portrayed some incidents, which happened during the previous Congress regime through the cartoons which are not meant to hurt anyone, the grand old party accused it of releasing such illustrations out of frustration.
Vishnu Deo Sai, a prominent tribal face of the Bharatiya Janata Party, will be the next chief minister of Chhattisgarh where the saffron party returned to power after a gap of five years following the recently-concluded assembly polls.
Ending days of suspense, the Congress on Friday announced that Rahul Gandhi will contest the Lok Sabha elections from Rae Bareli, the constituency held by his mother Sonia Gandhi for the last two decades, and Kishori Lal Sharma, a close aide of the Gandhi family, will fight from Amethi.
Priyanka Gandhi and other leaders, including Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, waved at the large crowd as the procession wound its way through Varanasi's roads.
The Congress on Monday released a list of 30-star campaigners for the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
As the rape and murder of two cousins in Uttar Pradesh's Badaun sparked a nationwide outrage, Chhattisgarh Home Minister Ramsevak Paikra has waded into a controversy by saying that rape happens "by mistake".
The party's decision to announce the first list of candidates so early underlines the significance it has attached to five state elections, the last round of assembly contest before the all-important Lok Sabha polls.
Of the ten police personnel who lost their lives in a Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district, five had joined the force after quitting Maoist violence, a senior official said on Thursday.
Priyanka Gandhi led the party's charge in Himachal Pradesh with several rallies and was also closely involved in strategy planning for the polls.
Uppal, 43, was detained last week in that country and the ED authorities are in touch with the Dubai authorities to get him deported to India, they said.
iyush Goel, Dharmendra Pradhan, Pralhad Joshi, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Biseswar Tudu are the 5 Union minsters.
They share their excitement :)
Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra left for Lakhimpur Kheri Wednesday evening from a PAC guest house in Sitapur where she was kept in detention since Monday morning.
Former prime ministers Manmohan Singh and H D Deve Gowda will not attend the G20 dinner hosted by President Droupadi Murmu for world leaders on Saturday due to 'health reasons'.
Kharge's remarks came after Modi on Friday said the Congress stands "badly exposed" in front of people for promising to them what the party knows it will never be able to deliver.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav attacked its INDIA block ally Congress on caste census, reminding them that the party did not conduct a caste census when it was in power.
The minister walked out of the House after being upset over what he termed as the government's 'limited' statement on the issue, following which members of the opposition BJP claimed such an incident had 'never happened where a minister expressed dissatisfaction over his own government's reply'.
As trends indicated a comfortable win for the grand old party in Himachal Pradesh, Shukla said the party was happy that it is getting an opportunity to form the government in the state and asserted that the party will do everything to fulfill the 10 guarantees made to the people of the state and would provide better governance to people.
Against predictions by most exit polls that the ruling Congress had an edge in the state, the BJP banked heavily on the charisma of the PM.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday alleged that the operation against Naxals in Chhattisgarh, in which 22 security personnel were killed, was 'incompetently' executed and 'poorly designed'.
The development comes nearly a month after Chief Minister Baghel said that his government was ready to hold talks with the rebels if they expressed faith in the Constitution.
The development is being viewed by many as a show of strength but sources in the Baghel camp insisted that the MLAs were reaching Delhi on their own accord and there was no show of strength going on.
Modi made the remarks at a meeting, held via video conferencing, with district magistrates of over 40 districts having low vaccination coverage.
In a suspected case of food poisoning, 26 personnel of the Indo Tibetan Border Police fell ill with after consuming meal at their camp in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon district, officials said on Friday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar supremo Sharad Pawar were among the famous faces who queued up at the polling booths on Tuesday to caste their votes in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel headed state government has written to the Union home ministry and the ministry of rersonnel asking them to direct the CBI not to register fresh cases in the state, the officials said citing an official statement.
The Enforcement Directorate on Friday arrested the special secretary of the Chhattisgarh excise department in a money laundering case linked to the alleged Rs 2,000 crore liquor syndicate scam in the state.
The IAS officer was later taken into custody under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and is expected to be produced before a magistrate seeking his remand, the sources said.
Chief ministers of 3 Congress-ruled states, other national and state party leaders are also likely to accompany Rahul to the court.
Ahead of the state assembly elections due this year-end, Baghel made as many as 15 announcements in his address during the state-level Independence Day function at the Police Parade ground in Raipur.
'The right to vote is the supreme right of democracy which is being executed through EVMs. No nationally or internally recognized institutions or governments have certified the EVMs as a cent per cent accurate. Despite this fact, by conducting polling using the machines in India, which is the biggest democracy in the world, the constitutional right of my vote is being violated. There is no guarantee whether my vote is cast in favour of whom I pressed the button through the EVM machine,' he said.
Congress leaders and workers were also detained on Wednesday after they staged protests outside the ED office and the party headquarters in New Delhi.
Mallikarjun Kharge, former Congress President Rahul Gandhi, General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attended the swearing in ceremony, while former AICC President Sonia Gandhi was absent. Chief Ministers of Congress ruled states Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan), Bhupesh Baghel (Chhattisgarh) and Sukhvinder Singh Sukku (Himachal Pradesh) and several top party leaders were also in attendance.
Leaders of several like-minded opposition parties are likely to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Karnataka chief minister-designate Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar on Saturday in Bengaluru.
Security agencies are working to ascertain a claim made by Naxals that they abducted a CoBRA commando after the ambush in Chhattisgarh on Saturday that left at least 22 security personnel dead, official sources said
Senior party leader P Chidambaram, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut expressed support to Priyanka, who has alleged that no notice or first information report (FIR) has been given to her even after her 38-hour detention and was not allowed to meet her legal counsel.
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.
Raut also said that all the opposition parties will discuss whether a delegation should be sent to Lakhimpur Kheri.
'There is some deep rot that has set in the Congress party. This requires an organisational surgery.'
