Congress has said that it will never instigate violence for political benefits.
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Sunday launched a veiled attack on Congress leaders and said he gave sweat and blood for the party unlike those who are spreading 'falsehood' through social media.
Voting began on Monday in the Congress presidential polls as senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor face-off for the post of All India Congress Committee (AICC) chief.
With Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections, results for 51 assembly and two Lok Sabha bypolls spread across 18 states were declared on Thursday. Here are state-wise results of the bypolls.
Speaking to reporters for the first time after arriving in Bengaluru and sending in their resignations, the 22 MLAs said they were ready to face any consequences.
Gehlot said even within the party, there is an opinion in favour of making Rahul the new president.
The Congress is gearing up to demonstrate a political show of strength on Monday when the party leader Rahul Gandhi will appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection in connection with a money laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper.
Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday resigned from all party positions, including its primary membership, delivering another blow to the embattled party that has seen a series of leaders leave it.
While the authenticity of the video has not yet been verified independently, the BJP dubbed it as 'fake and misleading', and said it has been released to tarnish Mishra's image.
If elected, he will be the second All India Congress Committee president from Karnataka after S Nijalingappa, and also a Dalit leader to hold the post after Jagjivan Ram.
With this, the Congress's strength in the house has come down to 89 now.
The action comes two days after Congress president Sonia Gandhi held a key meeting and broke the ice by starting dialogue with some of the prominent 'letter-writers', who had earlier written to her demanding an overhaul of the party and an effective leadership.
After the accident on Friday, Virudhunagar MP Manickam Tagore, Ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh Bittu and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor alleged on Twitter that there were safety lapses on the part of the civil aviation ministry.
After his meeting with Rahul Gandhi, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Tuesday said there can be no opposition front without the Congress, in a clear message to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over her 'no United Progressive Alliance' taunt, even as another ally Nationalist Congress Party asserted it will make every effort to form a broad-based alliance that will also include the Congress.
Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge, a staunch Gandhi family loyalist from Karnataka, has become the Congress' first non-Gandhi president in 24 years.
'Punjab requires a CM who has solutions to Punjab's challenges, capacity to take tough decisions. Punjab needs serious people whose politics is not Social Engineering, Entertainment, Freebies and not regime favourites rejected by people in successive elections,' Tewari said on Twitter.
A Congress leader said that party president Sonia Gandhi and MP Rahul Gandhi have decided to organise the yatra 'to remind our new generations about the sacrifices made by our leaders in achieving freedom from the British Raj'.
Ignoring JD-S' request for support, the Congress did not withdraw its second candidate Khan from the fray and issued a whip to all its MLAs asking them to vote for the party's candidates.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi also appointed Harsh Mahajan, Rajender Rana, Pawan Kajal and Vinay Kumar as the new working presidents of the Himachal Pradesh PCC.
The opposition Congress on Thursday stepped up the attack on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka and demanded the arrest of party MP Tejasvi Surya and a party MLA, alleging they were behind the scam involving blocking of hospital beds meant for COVID patients in Bengaluru.
The BJP won both the Rajya Sabha seats from Assam.
According to a complaint lodged by Chowdhury's private secretary Pradipto Rajpandit, the four men entered the Congress leader's office, abused the staff and vandalised the office.
An agitated Congress condemned the anti-party act of Thomas and said he will face stern action for violating the order of the high command.
Tharoor said the message is also that the Congress is the party that can unite India and if the public is sufficiently inspired by this message, it will indeed inaugurate the revival of the party.
Bishnoi said the Congress has deviated from its ideology and is no longer what it was during Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi's time.
After Punjab, the party high command has shifted its focus to Rajasthan, where demands for Cabinet expansion and political appointments gained momentum after reports of resentment in the camp led by former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, who along with 18 MLAs had rebelled against the leadership of Gehlot last year.
The 79-year-old widely respected and popular leader steered the Congress in 2017 to a landslide victory in the 117-member assembly to occupy the chief minister's post for the second time.
The Congress on Friday questioned the silence of the government on the veracity of a video which purportedly shows injured Indian soldiers in captivity of the Chinese and said if it is genuine, then Prime Minister Narendra Modi must ensure that China is held globally accountable for indulging in war crimes.
Sources said the process was stuck since Rahul Gandhi is not willing to contest the election for the post of Congress president, although all the efforts to convince him are still going on.
Attacking the BJP, he said that the saffron party has remained a complete failure in the areas of COVID-19 management, livelihood, tourism.
Congress leaders expressed their solidarity with 21-year-old climate activist from Bengaluru Disha Ravi, who was arrested by Delhi Police for allegedly editing and disseminating the "toolkit" on social media and sent to five days police custody.
Indicating a shift in stand, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Thursday said his party is open to consider quitting Maharashtra's ruling alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) if the rebel MLAs camping in Assam return and discuss their grievances with CM Uddhav Thackeray, while coalition allies Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress vowed support to the beleaguered governing bloc and asserted its majority can only be determined in the assembly and not outside.
Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu on Sunday said the state must concentrate on real issues that concern every Punjabi even as MP Manish Tewari said he never saw "such chaos and anarchy" being played out in the party's state unit.
In a letter to Gandhi, Amarinder Singh is learnt to have mentioned that there could be an adverse impact on the party's prospects in the upcoming and crucial 2022 assembly polls by ignoring the old guard and other senior party leaders representing Hindu and Dalit communities, sources said.
Mallikarjun Kharge was on Wednesday elected the Congress president after defeating Shashi Tharoor in an electoral contest, the sixth in the party's 137-year-old history.
Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said Singh was 'not fully committed' towards the party's ideology and that is why he left this fight midway to join the saffron party.
Babulal Chourasia, who had quit the Congress six years back, re-joined the party on Thursday in the presence of its state unit chief Kamal Nath in Bhopal. The move comes ahead of the local body elections in the state.
In yet another blow to the Congress in poll-bound Kerala, All India Congress Committee member and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee vice-president K C Rosakutty on Monday resigned from the party's primary membership and decided to associate with the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF.
The ambit of the G-23 grouping increased this time as some more leaders -- Patiala MP Preneet Kaur, former Gujarat chief minister Shankar Singh Vaghela, former union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar and former Haryana speaker Kuldeep Sharma -- joined them.
In a shot in the arm for the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiromani Akali Dal ahead of Punjab assembly polls, their alliance on Tuesday defeated Congress in the Chandigarh municipal corporation election in which demonetisation had emerged as a key issue.
