"I thank the high command for imposing their trust on me and assigning me this big responsibility," she said soon after the announcement.
A star-studded week of poll campaign awaits Meghalaya with heavyweights Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi set to address election rallies while film star Shatrughan Sinha and Jaya Prada are slated to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party respectively. The Prime Minister will address an election rally in Shillong on February 27, while All India Congress Committee president Sonia Gandhi will campaign at Jowai.
Pandian joined the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) in 2011, and since then, he has been Patnaik's private secretary.
Some have been cherry-picked to assert the BJP's supremacy over its allies or, significantly, its leaders who charted an independent course in the recent past.
What the INDIA alliance needs is neither a counter to Modi's tall personality and undiminished charisma nor a counter-narrative to his Hindutva agenda, now centred on the Ayodhya temple consecration on January 22, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
All India Congress Committee general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi has created a flutter by saying that the "party leadership should not only speak, but also have the courage to listen".
Modi's inability to make peace with a renewed Opposition will only embolden his coalition partners and it is just a matter of time before they begin asking probing questions besides politely disagreeing with his tactics, predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Kishore said the Congress and its supporters are bigger than any individual and Gandhi should not be stubborn that it must be him who will deliver for the party despite repeated failures.
'That would be very bad for them and suicidal for both the Gandhis and the Congress party.'
The setback promises to have far-reaching ramifications within and outside the party as it is likely to fuel voices that have challenged the Gandhi family's leadership and also those who have been a votary of a non-Congress front to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party.
A day after the party's rout in Delhi elections, the knives are out in the Congress with leaders blaming each other and raising questions on whether the party has outsourced the task of defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party to others.
Rattled by the poll debacle, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Rahul on Monday got into a huddle with senior leaders to carry out a post-mortem of results in the four states amid talk that some heads could roll.
An open war broke out in the Congress over its whitewash in the Delhi elections with senior leader Sheila Dikshit attacking chief ministerial candidate Ajay Maken and the party virtually asking her to shut up.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday attacked the Congress, saying it skipped the meeting convened to select the new Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) as he is a Dalit and this reflected the anti-Scheduled Castes mindset of the main opposition party.
The former chief minister also sought to distance JD-S's alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the case, amid attacks by the ruling Congress seeking their response on the issue.
Priyanka Gandhi gets into rigorous damage control mode in wake of her party's eroding popularity ahead of the polls, reports Renu Mittal
'The people who were assigned the role to look after the affairs of the Congress in Maharashtra have failed.'
Moving forward following the decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh, the Congress on Tuesday night appointed separate Pradesh Congress Committee chiefs for Seemandhra and Telangana.
Ending days of suspense, the Congress on Thursday announced Siddaramaiah as the next chief minister of Karnataka and D K Shivakumar as his only deputy in the soon-to-formed cabinet.
Will he leave the party? Will he float a new one? Or join an existing one? As speculation is rife over Jyotiraditya Scindia's next move, the Madhya Pradesh Congress unit appears to be divided on the rift between him and Chief Minister Kamal Nath, reports Sandeep Kumar.
The Congress party continues to be racked by arbitrary decision-making and the absence of accountability.
'The moment a new election comes, new guarantees are announced.' 'The BJP is adept at diverting people's attention.'
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
Handed over the charge of BJP's campaign in the next Lok Sabha polls, Narendra Modi on Sunday virtually sounded the election bugle as he targeted the UPA government over various fronts and asked party cadres to work for "Congress-free Bharat Nirman".
The coming assembly and Lok Sabha elections -- the choice of candidates, the campaign strategies and the negotiations with other Opposition parties --0 represent the real test for Mallikarjun Kharge.
The curious onlookers that greet the candidates are, however, unaware about the importance of history. They are just there to catch a glimpse of 'Rani Ma' Amrita Roy or Mahua Moitra.
'...the Congress tally in 2028 would further plummet under 50.' 'A fresh face as CM would further strengthen the BJP and weaken the Congress in Madhya Pradesh.'
The body of the 22-year-old woman, who had gone missing two months ago, was recovered from a vacant plot near an ashram built by Fateh Bahadur Singh, a minister in the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government, police had said on Friday.
While it made sense for Capt Amarinder Singh to support the Gandhis since none of the 23 'rebels' had any mass base, the truce was important for his ambition to lead the party in the February 2022 state elections. Archis Mohan reports.
Controversial Punjabi singer Sidhu Mussewala, who joined the Congress sometime ago will contest from Mansa and actor Sonu Sood's sister Malvika Sood from Moga.
Only three of its candidates -- Arvinder Singh Lovely from Gandhi Nagar, Devender Yadav from Badli and Abhishek Dutt from Kasturba Nagar -- managed to save their deposits.
The Congress Legislature Party, which met at a private hotel in Bengaluru on Sunday evening, passed a unanimous resolution authorising the party chief to pick its leader.
Chowdhury, the leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha, claimed that his account was hacked as he was delivering a speech at a party office in West Bengal's Murshidabad district when the social media post was made.
'The life of his political career is dependent on success in this constituency.'
The winter session will begin on December 7 and will last until December 29.
Despite the strong anti-incumbency sentiment against the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, the Congress neither had the strategy nor an organisation to cash in, says N D Sharma
The recent offensive launched by the Congress against campaign committee head Narendra Modi is being viewed with a degree of apprehension by party seniors who believe that a sustained aggressive strategy against the Gujarat strongman could prove to be counter-productive, says Anita Katyal
"Whoever said all those words you mentioned, I did not respond in kind because it is not the way I am built and we now have to move on, let bygones be bygones, whatever was said, we need to forget and move forward. It is not about individuals or positions or someone's statements now. It is about the country and the party," Pilot said.
According to a senior Congress leader, the constituents of the opposition alliance intend to move forward with the theme "Main Nahin, Hum (We, Not Me)" at the meeting.
"Such are his core supporters that they will vote for him even if cooking oil sells for Rs 5,000 per litre under his leadership.' 'They don't think about inflation but Modi when they go out to vote.'
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances