The panel, chaired by Mallikarjun Kharge, has been tasked with addressing differences between Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and former minister Navjot Singh Sidhu.
The Congress is likely to declare its chief ministerial face for Punjab on February 6 when former party chief Rahul Gandhi will visit the poll-bound state, party sources said.
Amid the ongoing crisis within the Congress in Punjab, its national spokesperson Supriya Shrinate on Friday expressed the hope that its leaders "talk more in private and less in public."
Two former MLAs Neeraj Basoya and Nasseb Singh resigned from the primary membership of the party putting the party's Lok Sabha preparations in doubt.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday claimed that the Congress and Samajwadi Party will run a bulldozer over the Ram temple if elected to power, and asked them to take 'tuition' from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath 'where to run bulldozers'.
Sharma was the key person who looked after Rae Bareli and Amethi constituencies on behalf of the Gandhis.
The row over Bharatiya Janata Party MP Anurag Thakur's remarks in Lok Sabha escalated on Wednesday with the Congress submitting a notice to move a privilege motion against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for posting on 'X' a video that allegedly also contained expunged portions of Thakur's speech.
Noting that the Bahujan Samaj Party had held a dialogue with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the past, Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar on Wednesday said no decision on the Mayawati-led party's inclusion in Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc can be taken until there is clarity on whose side she is on.
The Congress has consciously contested on a lesser number of seats in this Lok Sabha election as part of a strategy to keep the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) together and defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has said.
Modi brought up the emotive issue of the gurdwara in Kartarpur Sahib, a place sacred to Sikhs as Guru Nanak Dev spent the last years of his life there, and blamed the Congress for country's partition, saying they did it for sake of power.
The cricketer-turned-politician thanked the party leadership for appointing him head of the Punjab unit and said he would work with every 'member of the Cong family' to fulfil the 'Jittega Punjab' mission and strengthen the party's organisation in the state.
Noting that the young girl belonged to a Dalit migrant family from Bihar, Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Nirmala Sitharaman also took a swipe at Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, questioning if he had asked Rahul Gandhi about the issue while holding a joint poll campaign with him in the state.
Sources said senior leaders of the party have been told to reach out to other leaders of the alliance and talks with some parties have begun.
The party also promised to end the mafia raj by creating corporations for the sale of liquor and sand mining.
The MPs criticised the Shiromani Akali Dal leadership for being in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA even after these bills were proposed by the government.
The Bharatiya Janata Party also slammed Kejriwal's continuation as the chief minister of Delhi despite being under arrest, saying it is the most unfortunate moment in the country's political journey and the worst kind of politics.
The Congress on Friday claimed that a 'silent undercurrent' is brewing across western Uttar Pradesh against the 'failures' of the Modi government, as it flagged issues such as 'neglect' of sugarcane farmers and examination paper leaks.
The Akali Dal-BJP alliance won on four seats and the AAP bagged one.
The committee, of which Mukul Wasnik is the convener and has former chief ministers Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel as well as Mohan Prakash and Salman Khurshid in it, held final talks and suggested the way forward to the party leadership.
Here are some day's snippets of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections:
The petition was filed ahead of the Chandigarh mayoral polls on Thursday. The polls for the posts of mayor, senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor will be held.
Seven Congress legislators and three Aam Aadmi Party MLAs who recently switched over to the ruling party also said Navjot Singh Sidhu was a celebrity and was no doubt an asset to the party but condemning and criticising his own party and government in public has only created a "rift in the cadres and weakened it".
BJP president J P Nadda also appointed former Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill its national spokesperson.
Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari, who is an MP from Punjab, on Friday quoted from an affidavit filed by the Punjab government in court which said that 70 per cent of the youth in Punjab are on drugs of various kinds. It is the same Akali-BJP government, which filed the affidavit in the court.
Garcetti reportedly said the violence and killings in Manipur are a matter of "human concern" and the US is "ready to assist" India in dealing with the situation "if asked".
In a major organisational rejig ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress on Saturday appointed Avinash Pande the general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, replacing Priyanka Gandhi Vadra while Sachin Pilot was made the general secretary in-charge of Chhattisgarh.
Party treasurer Ajay Maken has claimed that "democracy will be over if the action of probe agencies goes unchecked" and said the Congress has full faith in the judiciary.
Asked how many seats the Congress would fight on, Singh said they would be flexible in seat sharing.
Kejriwal said that the ordinance must be defeated collectively in Parliament where it is likely to come up for voting as a law in the forthcoming session.
The opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) was in the grip of a crisis on Saturday with the Janata Dal-United saying the alliance was collapsing amid indications that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will switch back to the National Democratic Alliance, prompting the Congress to allege that the Bharatiya Janata Party is doing its best to cause a 'mini implosion' in the coalition.
With the assembly poll results in three states being a disappointment for the Congress, some rumblings have begun among the constituents of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) ahead of their meeting on December 6, with many leaders alleging that the grand old party ignored others, but was unable to win elections on its own.
'It is very unfortunate that the AAP seems to be looking at the issue through the prism of rivalry with Congress in Delhi and Punjab'
Punjab Assembly Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal on Thursday suspended nine opposition Congress MLAs for the day for their unparliamentary behaviour and insulting the chair of the House.
The exit poll results for the recently concluded assembly elections have projected that that BJP arty could emerge as the single-largest party in four of five states except Punjab.
Sunny Deol-starrer Gadar 2 was screened for all Lok Sabha members over three days starting August 25, marking the first time that a movie screening was arranged in the Parliament.
Senior Congress leader B K Hariprasad's statements regarding ministerial and chief ministerial posts, along with his veiled dig at Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah seems to have created a sense of unease within the ruling party in Karnataka.
At the meeting, many parties urged the Congress to publicly denounce the ordinance but the Congress refused to do so, claimed AAP, adding that the grand old party's "silence raises suspicions about its real intentions".
Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal's bullet-proof car was damaged and four people were injured in a clash between Congress and Akali workers during the filing of nomination papers for the Jalalabad municipal polls in Fazilka on Tuesday, officials said.
The Congress on Tuesday removed Amarinder Singh as its Punjab unit chief in the backdrop of the party's dismal show in assembly elections last year and appointed MP Pratap Singh Bajwa in his place.
Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury while making these points however, spoke out against any need for change in the top leadership of the party, stating that both Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi have been 'trying wholeheartedly'.
