Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party of weakening the country by spreading fear and hatred, and said only the Congress can unite the country and take it to the path of progress.
The opposition party is set to stage protests across the country against the questioning of its chief and has slammed the agency's action against its top leadership as "political vendetta".
Strengthening the party's communication strategy to improve public engagement is foremost on the Congress agenda after Rahul Gandhi had stressed that they "have to go back to the people" at the Udaipur meeting.
Congress leaders and workers continued their protests in several states on Thursday against Rahul Gandhi's questioning by the Enforcement Directorate in the National Herald money-laundering case with many of them taken into preventive custody including former Union minister Renuka Chowdhury in Hyderabad after she allegedly grabbed the collar of a police official.
"This river-like journey will persist and in this river you will not find any trace of hate or violence. There will only be love and brotherhood as this is India's history and DNA," Gandhi told the gathering.
"We condemn this and resolve to continue and intensify our collective fight against the anti-people, anti-farmer, anti-Constitution policies of the Modi 'sarkar' that is destroying the social fabric of our society," they also said in the statement.
'Narendra Modi knows that the Congress without the Gandhis is a more formidable and more dangerous adversary.'
Senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani on Saturday slammed the government over the handling of affairs with Pakistan after the Pathankot attack, saying they are "not educated enough" to deal with the troubled nation.
The Congress, however, distanced itself from the statement made at the party's 'Satyagraha' protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi against the Centre's Agnipath scheme, saying it does not endorse any indecent remarks against the prime minister.
Sonia and Rahul, who came straight to the Congress headquarters from the court where they were granted bail in the National Herald case, asserted that they will continue to fight and "not bow down".
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy questioned the party's decision to suspend Kirti Azad over the DDCA row.
He said 'in 2011, 2012 and 2013, lynching cases were much more than three years of our government, but no one raised questions then'.
The Congress alleged that Delhi Police personnel forcibly entered its headquarters and beat up party workers and leaders on Wednesday, on a day the party staged vociferous protests against the questioning of Rahul Gandhi by the Enforcement Directorate for the third consecutive day.
Modi also stepped up attack on Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, saying it was the mindset of the 'sultanate' of the 'Naamdar' to abuse the deprived and treat them as slaves.
The Opposition said the judgement will strengthen the hands of a government.
As Congress president Sonia Gandhi appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED), party MPs and Congress Working Committee (CWC) members 'courted mass arrest' outside the All India Congress Committee headquarters in New Delhi on Thursday in a show of collective solidarity with her.
The year 2015 was a mixed bag for the Grand Old party --with the performance in Bihar being a consolation while the the National Herald case came back to haunt its leadership.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi has tested positive for COVID-19 and she has isolated herself under medical advice, party chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said on Thursday.
Called "Babuji", the former chief minister of undivided Madhya Pradesh and former Governor of Uttar Pradesh in the post-Babri Masjid demolition era was considered as a people's man and was accessible to all.
'Overnight, with zero qualification whatsoever for the responsibility of prime ministership, Priyanka is being projected as an alternative to Narendra Damodardas Modi!' says Nazarwala who predicted Mayawati's win in the 2007 UP elections, forecast her rout in the 2012 polls, and called right the 2017 UP assembly election result.
The Delhi high court on Friday issued summons to Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera and Netta D'Souza on a civil defamation suit filed by Union minister Smriti Irani seeking damages of over Rs 2 crore for allegedly making baseless allegations against her and her daughter.
Amid the raging row over National Herald case, the Congress on Sunday asserted that the allegations and "insinuations" against party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are "deliberately orchestrated", "patently false" and "defamatory" as they have "not received a rupee".
2019 was the Bharatiya Janata Party's breakout year, when it stretched the boundaries of what was thought possible and ended up with 303 seats on its own steam. Now it is forced to play defence, on a pitch queered by too many variables, asserts Prem Panicker.
This election will be remembered for being the first election where the Election Commission failed to take action on gross violations involving the ruling party that repeatedly used religion, communal slurs, lies and undocumented allegations, observes Ramesh Menon.
The transmogrification of Prime Minister Modi to Saint Modi began with the ground-breaking ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. By identifying himself with Lord Ram, Modi raised himself in popular imagination to a saintly person.
In a statement, the lawyer of Irani's daughter, said his client is neither an owner nor operating the restaurant called Silly Souls Goa.
It appears that the party has some kind of political death wish, observe Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
Generally, before adjourning the house sine die the chair reads out the statistics about the business transacted in the house in detail.
Senior Congress leaders, MPs among 459 protesters detained
The Congress released a booklet 'Nau saal, Nau sawaal', asking nine questions from Modi. The BJP rejected the Congress' criticism as a 'bundle of lies and mountain of deception' and said the questions are born out of 'pathological hatred' of the PM.
Modi said Congress's 'politics begins and ends with one family'.
'Now I will see how you escape...'
Modi believes that the Congress leadership does not have the political sagacity to undertake a course correction because of its preoccupation about not losing its current gains in the voter base, observes Shekhar Iyer.
While seven of the suspended MPs belonged to the TMC, six were from the DMK, three from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, two from the Communist Party of India-Marxist and one from the Communist Party of India.
Modi said the way each section of the society welcomed the verdict reflects India's ancient traditions of amity and harmony.
In keeping with the main theme of 'Tides Surging in Asia', the ceremony was about the intermingling of China, Asia and the world in the new era
Led by Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra, India will seek to showcase its ascendency as a sporting power at the Asian Games, which opens formally on Saturday after an unprecedented one-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
'It is a very clear case of an attempt to bend the media.'
FIR says that the officials by virtue of influence exercised over them by Karti, not only ignored the serious illegality on the part of INX Media on both the counts but also deliberately showed undue favours to INX Group.
'The Modi administration has access to so much evidence that it can rip apart the Congress, not just the Nehru-Gandhis, but almost the entire leadership structure of the party,' says T V R Shenoy.
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