Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday said the views of the newly-elected MLAs in Himachal Pradesh were being sought to bring out a consensus on who will be their leader.
The Congress leader, who resigned as the chief minister Sunday night, emerged victorious in the Patan assembly seat, defeating BJP candidate Vijay Baghel by 19,723 votes in the state assembly elections held last month.
Sources said the party has also tasked its senior leaders to be observers at the meeting of the Congress Legislature Party in Haryana to elect its new leader.
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.
For the first since the formation of Chhattisgarh in 2000, the new assembly will not have any MLA belonging to erstwhile royal families as all seven candidates fielded by the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Aam Aadmi Party bit dust.
According to a party statement issued here, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has approved the proposal for the appointment of Singh Deo as the deputy chief minister in Chhattisgarh.
Sources in the state Congress said that several party MLAs and ministers, who are close to Baghel, already reached Delhi on Thursday, while many legislators, ministers and senior leaders went to the national capital this morning.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pinned its hopes on the old guard to ensure victory in next month's assembly elections in Chhattisgarh as it gave tickets to 11 sitting MLAs and renominated 13 leaders who lost in the 2018 polls.
Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said like other states, the BJP started the game of using money power, power of the government and muscle power to destabilise the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh but has failed.
Vishnu Deo Sai, a prominent tribal face of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Chhattisgarh, will be state chief minister after he was elected as leader of Bharatiya Janata Party's legislative party during a meeting of 54 newly-elected MLAs in Raipur on Sunday.
Soren also claimed that his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma indulged in "purchase" of Jharkhand MLAs.
A former MP from Janjgir Lok Sabha constituency, Shukla left the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of assembly polls in 2013 and joined the Congress next year, alleging that she was sidelined by the state BJP leadership.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel has claimed the movie portrays half truth and only shows violence without conveying any message.
The ruling MLAs took part in the meeting called by Soren with their luggage before leaving for unknown destination.
The Bharatiya Janata Party will ensure the swearing-in ceremony of the new Chhattisgarh cabinet under Vishnu Deo Sai on Wednesday will be a 'historic' event which will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP leaders and chief ministers, state chief Arun Sao said.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday said his party would conduct a "caste census" if elected to power as only such an exercise would ensure the "participation of OBCs, Dalits, tribals and women".
The no-confidence motion was defeated by voice vote in the state assembly shortly after 1 am following a 13-hour debate.
The Congress needs to reorganise itself at the grassroots, infuse younger blood, and have more boots on the ground. Just offering freebies is not the answer anymore. Leadership matters, asserts Ramesh Menon.
It had given the BJP a tough fight in 2017 winning 77 of the 182 seats at stake.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Saturday returned to Raipur from Delhi, a day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi met him for the second time in a week in a bid to resolve the power tussle between him and state health minister T S Singh Deo.
'The BJP was looking at one or two disgruntled guys to see whether it can destabilise the government.' 'When the BJP does not win a state, it uses these back hand methods.'
The tussle for power between Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and health minister TS Singh Deo appears to have quietened at the top, but the feud is very much visible at the lower level in the ruling Congress.
The BJP, which rules the Centre, is in power in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and is all set to get Madhya Pradesh back and snatch Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress after today's vote count.
Speaking to the reporters on Wednesday, Minister J P Dalal said that they have called all the MLAs to make the new MLAs understand on the polling procedure.
Singhdeo was the main architect of the Congress party's poll manifesto, which he said was made after feedback from about 80,000 people from across the state.
In Maharashtra's 288-member assembly, the share of legislators with college degrees increased over the past decade.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
'There is ample evidence to suggest that attacks on the PM's probity and his connections with business houses do not resonate with voters.'
40,78,680 voters will elect 20 MLAs in Chhattisgarh on November 7, 2023.
Delhi has emerged as the youngest assembly in terms of age of elected legislators from the four states, with an estimated average age of about 43 years for members of Legislative Assembly elected in the national capital.
With days to go before Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh go to polls, the Congress is struggling to make an impact in the two key heartland states which have been ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party for two successive five-year terms.
Of the 34 SC reserved seats that went to the polls, the BJP won 22 and the Congress 11.
Of the 12 seats in Bastar, the Congress won eight. The BJP had secured 11 of these seats in 2008.
Peeved over denial of tickets after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party announced its first list of candidates for Chhattisgarh assembly polls, a section of leaders have criticised the party alleging "unfair" distribution with supporters of disgruntled aspirants also staging protests.
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh (Phase II) go to the polls on Friday, November 17, 2023.
At least 30 MLAs of the ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition in Jharkhand camping in a resort near the Chhattisgarh capital since August 30 flew back to Ranchi in a chartered aircraft on Sunday afternoon to attend the special session of the assembly scheduled for Monday, sources said.
The Maharashtra Congress has convened a meeting of its legislators on Tuesday in view of the developments in the state that saw a split in the Nationalist Congress Party and Ajit Pawar being inducted as deputy chief minister in the Eknath Shinde government.
Chhattisgarh House rule says that anyone entering the well of the House would be automatically suspended.
The counting of votes for the bypolls to 46 assembly seats in 13 states and in the Lok Sabha segments of Nanded in Maharashtra and Wayanad in Kerala, a crucial electoral exercise since the parliamentary polls in April-May, will begin at 8 am on Saturday.
The Congress is now gearing up to take on the BJP over alleged corruption, jobs and issues tied to tribals, farmers and women.
