The Kerala unit of the Congress instantly gets a headache when Shashi Tharoor lets loose one of his observations showering flowers on enemy territory. With every such action triggering controversy within a nervous Congress party, some feel it is high time Tharoor showed a degree of solidarity with the ideals of his party, notes Shyam G Menon.
On April 3, Gandhi's roadshow, on the way to filing his nomination in Wayanad was visibly different from that of 2019 in the hill constituency when the green flags of ally IUML outnumbered the Congress's in the crowd. There were no flags of any party or affiliated organisations.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday pulled off a stunning performance in Maharashtra winning a record number of seats to propel the party-led ruling Mahayuti alliance to a landslide victory while the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) stormed back to power in Jharkhand on the back of a spectacular showing by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.
Meanwhile, the Congress and RSP whole-heartedly backed the Kollam MP.
Farmers from various parts of the country are protesting at Delhi borders against the three farm laws brought by the Centre, alleging that the legislations will hamper farming.
Amid widespread outrage over the brutal ragging incident at the Government Nursing College in Kottayam, the Kerala Nurses and Midwives Council (KNMC) on Saturday decided to bar all five accused students from continuing their studies.
Veteran Communist leader and former chief minister V S Achuthanandan, one of the most popular and crowd-puller leaders in the history of the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist in the state, turned 100 on Friday.
Proceedings of both Houses of Parliament were disrupted on Monday as the treasury benches accused top Congress leaders of colluding with billionaire investor George Soros to destabilise the country, triggering protests from opposition members.
During the Zero Hour of the Lok Sabha, BJP MP Anurag Thakur tried to corner the Leader of Opposition and Congress MP, Rahul Gandhi, by alleging that he has not spoken about ensuring the safety of minorities in Bangladesh.
The Congress and the Left parties have not only extended support to the Samajwadi Party candidate but are also campaigning for him, in accordance with the spirit of the new opposition togetherness ahead of next year's general election.
A delegation of 21 Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc MPs will pay a two-day visit to Manipur beginning Saturday to assess the ground situation first-hand and then make recommendations to the government and Parliament for a solution to the problems in the violence-hit state.
Chowdhury said that the visiting MPs will present their observations on Manipur in Parliament.
Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi held a virtual meeting on Friday evening with leaders of 19 Opposition parties, including the chief ministers of some Opposition-ruled states, amid efforts to boost Opposition unity and evolve a common strategy against the National Democratic Alliance government.
The final round of voting for the Jharkhand Assembly elections is taking place on Wednesday, with the JMM-Congress-RJD coalition seeking to retain power while the BJP-led NDA aims to take control. The election will decide the fate of Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, his wife, and several other candidates. Key issues during the campaign included alleged infiltration from Bangladesh, corruption, and Hindutva.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren expanded his cabinet on Thursday, inducting 11 new ministers, including six first-timers and two women. The swearing-in ceremony was held at the Raj Bhavan in Ranchi. The new ministers include six from the JMM and four from the Congress. One minister is from the RJD. The expansion comes after the JMM-led alliance won the recent assembly elections with a comfortable majority. The cabinet expansion is expected to give the government a fresh impetus to push its agenda and accelerate development in the state.
The Election Commission has said it will allow suspected fake voters to cast their ballots in the Palakkad assembly by-poll, but will take action against them later. The CPI(M), Congress, and BJP have accused each other of enrolling fake voters. The by-poll is scheduled for November 20.
With challenges such as raising the legal age of marriage for women, combating malnutrition among women and children, and addressing women's safety issues, the new ministers face a formidable agenda.
Opposition leaders on Monday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his comments made at an elections rally in Rajasthan, with some leaders also appealing to people to reach out to the Election Commission of India.
The TMC-led West Bengal government has already started laying the groundwork for the election, setting the tone with the recent Bengal Global Business Summit and the state Budget.
The KPCC made this decision simultaneously as Sarin announced a press conference in Palakkad, declaring his intention to work with the Left Democratic Front moving forward.
The Congress was fighting the elections in a pre-poll alliance with National Conference and had fielded 32 candidates, mostly in Jammu region, compared to 51 by the regional party.
The 84-year-old Marxist veteran also likened the party's action on Saturday to suspend him and state party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan to 'punishing children when they commit mistakes'.
'After the 2024 election results, I have had the realisation that electoral politics is simply not for me. I am therefore quitting all forms of electoral politics with immediate effect.'
The Saffron party alleged that the accused was a DMK office-bearer, which was denied by the ruling party.
Fissures surfaced among Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) partners ahead of the Jharkhand assembly elections as the Rashtriya Janata Dal on Saturday expressed disappointment over the announcement of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Congress contesting 70 of 81 seats in the state.
A CBI court in Kerala sentenced 10 individuals to life imprisonment for the murder of two Youth Congress workers in 2019. Four others, including a former CPI(M) MLA, received five years in prison. The court found the accused guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy, citing political rivalry as the motive. The case involved the deaths of Kripesh and Sarath Lal P K, who were allegedly killed by CPI(M) workers in Kasaragod district. The verdict sparked reactions from both the Congress and CPI(M), with the Congress calling it a blow to the CPI(M)'s violent political culture and the CPI(M) challenging the verdict and claiming political motives in the CBI investigation.
Chief ministers of three Congress-ruled states -- Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal Pradesh's Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Telangana's Revanth Reddy -- have announced they will not attend the NITI Aayog meeting over alleged bias against their states in the Union Budget.
Political observers lauded the SP's choices in fielding several non-Yadav and Scheduled Caste candidates, the party's alliance with the Congress, and Rahul Gandhi's campaign around the danger to the Constitution if the BJP won a big majority.
Jan Suraaj founder Prashant Kishor has begun a fast unto death in Patna, demanding the cancellation of a recent examination held by the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC). Kishor's hunger strike comes after he gave a 48-hour ultimatum to the Nitish Kumar government to act on the demand, raised by aggrieved candidates who allege the exam was rigged. The administration has declared the hunger strike illegal as it is not the designated site for protests.
In an unprecedented admission, Communist Party of India-Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu on Friday said he had breached party discipline by openly canvassing for maverick West Bengal transport minister Subhas Chakraborty's induction into the Central Committee as well as the state secretariat.
The INDIA bloc has 95 MPs in Rajya Sabha of which 45 were suspended on Monday.
Corporate donations to political parties are to be welcomed only if they are subject to full disclosure.
Former Tripura chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Biplab Kumar Deb is congratulated by BJP national Spokesperson Dr Sambit Patra on being elected to the Rajya Sabha in Agartala.
The "unknown" sources are income declared in the annual audit report by these parties but without giving the source of income, according to the ADR.
Kumar will be administered the oath of office by Governor Phagu Chauhan at a simple ceremony inside the Raj Bhavan at 2 pm.
Ruling parties held sway in most of the 13 states in the assembly byelection results declared on Saturday, with the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies wresting seats in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan and the Trinamool Congress sweeping West Bengal.
Sources said the Congress, which has 19 legislators in the Bihar assembly, will go by what the Rashtriya Janata Dal decides and its presence will help strengthen the coalition.
The RJD polled the highest vote share in Bihar, but it was not reflected in the number of seats it won.
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.
Jaishankar briefed the leaders of all parties about the situation in the violence-hit nation and the steps taken by the Indian government.
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