In the event that like in the 17th Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi again gets locked out of the House, the Congress needs a second-in-command who will keep the momentum going inside Parliament, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
The trouble arose when the youths entered Udit Narayan Inter College where Rahul's meeting was underway and chanted slogans and distributed pamphlets, official sources said.
Days after the Karnataka governor granted sanction for the prosecution of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in the Mysuru Urban Development Authority case, the Congress' top leadership on Friday expressed its backing for him and alleged that the Centre had unleashed a systematic assault through a 'puppet governor' to destabilise an elected government.
Giving impetus to Congress' election campaign in Haryana ahead of next month's assembly polls, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, party chief Sonia Gandhi and general secretary Rahul Gandhi will address public rallies in various parts of the state.
Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday said 'there is no need for socialism in India', adding 'secularism is not the core of our culture'.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has strongly criticised Maharashtra Minister Nitesh Rane for calling Kerala a "mini Pakistan", saying the remark is "highly provocative and condemnable". Vijayan said Rane's comments expose the Sangh Parivar's approach towards Kerala, which he said involves alienating and spreading hate campaigns against the state. He also criticised the leadership of the ruling party for not reacting to Rane's "serious breach of oath". Vijayan called for all democratic and secular forces to unite against the Sangh Parivar's "hateful propaganda".
In a major development in the Congress, the party has formed an informal committee comprising General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, spokesperson Janardan Dwivedi, political secretary to Sonia Gandhi Ahmed Patel and Defence Minister AK Antony to look into the party's affairs, as the Congress president will be away since she is undergoing treatment in the United States.
Gandhi asserted that the Congress is going to defeat the BJP and its ideology.
Punjab Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu met party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday morning, and is learnt to have discussed his role in the revamp in the party's state unit ahead of assembly polls.
Sharma was the key person who looked after Rae Bareli and Amethi constituencies on behalf of the Gandhis.
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.
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, along with Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, on Tuesday met members of women self-help groups in Amethi and asked them to make use of several schemes run by the Centre for improving their lot. On a day-long visit to his Parliamentary constituency Amethi, Gandhi told women members to take advantage of several schemes run by the Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojna and the Union government for their development.
Caste census politics took centre stage on Thursday with the Congress terming the government's decision as a 'diversionary tactic' and a move for headlines management and the Bharatiya Janata Party saying it has exposed the difference between the Centre's 'true intentions' and the 'empty sloganeering' of the opposition party.
All-India Congress Committee general secretary Rahul Gandhi began his two-day tour to Bundelkhand from Wednesday to assess the drought by directly interacting with people.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will have to resign within two weeks from one of the two seats he won in the just-held Lok Sabha elections, a constitutional expert said citing provisions in the law as well as the Constitution.
The outlawed anti-talks faction of the United Liberation Front of Assam on Sunday took exception to All Indian Congress Committee general secretary, Rahul Gandhi's comment referring to 'suspected illegal migrants from Bangladesh' lodged in camps of violence-displaced people in western Assam as Indian citizens.
The Gandhi siblings first drove from their hotel in Srinagar to the shrine of Ragnya Devi, popularly known as Mata Kheer Bhawani temple, in Tullamula area of the central Kashmir's Ganderbal district, the officials said.
All India Congress Committee General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, who is on a three-day visit to Tamil Nadu, visited Thanjavur on Wednesday and held meetings with Youth Congress activists and farmers.
The Congress has proposed AAP should contest five seats while the Samajwadi Party and Left parties could contest one seat each.
The Jawahar Bhavan Trust has been reshuffled.
Former Union ministers Arjun Singh, M L Fotedar and Mohsina Kidwai have retired as trustees.
Ahmed Patel, Sonia Gandhi's political secretary, has relinquished the post of secretary to the trust; he remains a trustee.
The opening speech Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi gave while chairing the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies' 20th anniversary lecture -- Globalisation, Justice and Rights, which was delivered by Professor Thomas Pogge of the Yale University.
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi traveled in the chair car of the Shatabdi Express on Tuesday to reach Ludhiana from Delhi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge were among the top leaders who paid homage to former prime minister Manmohan Singh at his home in New Delhi on Friday.
Targeting All India Congress Committee general secretary Rahul Gandhi, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray said the Congress leader has no prospects of becoming prime minister of the country.
"Tributes to former PM Shri Rajiv Gandhi on his death anniversary," Modi tweeted.
In his post, Gandhi urged people to elect the Congress and said, "Rajasthan will choose free treatment. Rajasthan will choose cheaper gas cylinder. Rajasthan will choose interest-free agricultural loan. Rajasthan will choose English education. Rajasthan will choose OPS. Rajasthan will choose caste census."
People say Rahul Gandhi does not feel cold even in winter, this is because "he is wearing the shield of truth," the Congress leader said.
The Shatabdi Express in which Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi was traveling from Ludhiana to New Delhi was pelted with stones on Tuesday evening.
Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi's dramatic act of tearing up a paper with a list of election promises of political opponents at a poll rally drew a sarcastic reaction with the Samajwadi Party saying he may now jump from the stage to vent his anger.
At the culmination of his much-hyped farmers' rally - Kisan Mahapanchayat - Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said that the Mayawati government was not being sensitive towards the farmers of her state.
Rahul's remarks in a press conference on September 10, welcoming Rajnikanth into the party as he had no criminal background, have not gone down well with the fans.
Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi is 'much more talented' than his father, the late Rajiv Gandhi who was 'not really a leader' but 'a boy scout' with some 'good ideas but none of them extraordinary.' That's writer Khushwant Singh in his latest book
Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi on Thursday held discussions with office bearers in Goa, during his first ever visit to the state after his party faced humiliating defeat in the assembly elections early this year.
The clarification came amid a demand, including from Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, that the landslide tragedy in Kerala's Wayanad be declared a national disaster.
Janshakti Party chief Uma Bharti has advised Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi against following the guidance of senior party leader Digvijay Singh, warning that the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister's advice could land him in a real soup.Bharti was reacting to the observations made by Gandhi about 'saffron terror' during his conversation with United States Ambassador Timothy Roemer, which was exposed by WikiLeaks on Friday.
Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday evening asked Delhi Police Commissioner B K Gupta to revoke the detention orders against veteran activist Anna Hazare and all his supporters with immediate effect, sources told rediff.com.
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday requested photojournalists in Lucknow not to flash lights during the press conference as it 'disturbs' him while answering their queries.
Voting to elect 60 members of the state assembly in Meghalaya is scheduled for Monday, February 27. The results will be declared on Thursday, March 2.
The principal opposition party though appeared content securing 99 of the 543 seats in the 2024 national elections as against its all-time low of 44 in 2014 and then 52 in 2019.
The meeting started under the presidency of Mallikarjun Kharge but former presidents Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were yet to arrive and are unlikely to attend the steering committee meeting.
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