The highlight of the five-hour meeting, which ended with a plan to hold a 'chintan shivir' at the earliest opportunity to chalk the Congress' future strategy, was a demand by Sonia Gandhi's loyalists that Rahul Gandhi should assume the party leadership again.
Top Congress leaders are learnt to be discussing the current political situation.
The Karnataka government can have 34 ministers. Ten of them, including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy D K Shivakumar, were sworn in on May 20.
He said he will be soon taking a decision on his political future and wants to contest the assembly polls from Kunigal seat.
Sidhu told Gandhi that he is working hard and will work harder now, and that he will join his duty as Punjab Congress president, Rawat said.
The alliance adopted a resolution to this effect and said its theme for the elections will be "Judega Bharat, Jeetega India, (India will unite, India will win)".
The Congress has pinned its hopes on many of the old-timers and also given representation to some new faces in its first list of candidates announced for the Chhattisgarh assembly polls scheduled next month.
He expressed confidence he and Pilot would work together after they agreed on a truce before the party high command.
The CPI-M's allegations were termed a political conspiracy by the opposition Congress which accused the Left party of stooping low to target its political opponents.
A look at the team behind the Congress' aggressive stance.
"The meeting was very fruitful and we all are very happy with the outcome. I could not attend the press conference after the conclave as I had to come back to Patna. My effort is to unite all opposition parties ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and now things are taking shape," the Janata Dal-United leader said.
Sources said that Congress leaders, including Kamal Nath, Digvijaya Singh, Mukul Wasnik, KC Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, AK Antony, Ambika Soni and Randeep Surjewala, are also taking part in the meeting at Sonia Gandhi's 10 Janpath residence.
'Shivakumar is an andhbhakt of Congress ideology and principles.'
The Congress has decided to hold its public rally against inflation in Jaipur on December 12 after the Delhi Police denied it permission to host the rally in the national capital.
All senior leaders will be along with Rahul Gandhi during these programmes and this will be the 'first leg' of the campaign by the Congress president.
Rahul Gandhi is neither Congress president, office-bearer nor Congress leader in Parliament. This technical leeway provides adequate cover for Shiv Sena-Congress ties taking a nosedive, says Rasheed Kidwai.
There is no mention of Kolar, the second seat from where senior party leader and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, wants to contest, in addition to Varuna, where his name is already cleared.
'There may be some planted stories here or there, people trying to create manufactured controversies but the party is fully united. We will make sure the yatra is even more successful than it has been in other states'
The Congress leadership is caught in a peculiar situation and wants to find a middle path to the issue, party sources said.
As part of the efforts to bring several opposition parties together on a common platform to defeat the BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Pawar met Kharge on Thursday evening.
'It is mind-boggling that a party can be in rigor mortis even after numerous electoral defeats,' observes Ramesh Menon.
On the eve of the meeting hosted by it, the Congress clarified that it will oppose the ordinance on Delhi services in Parliament, a key condition put by the AAP to attend the talks.
In an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana, the party said that while on the one hand the Bharatiya Janata Party has already started preparing for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress is in dire straits.
The discussions are mostly one-on-one, party insiders said on Thursday, a day of many meetings.
Yashpal Arya and his son, along with their supporters, joined the Congress in the presence of senior party leaders Harish Rawat, K C Venugopal and Randeep Surjewala in New Delhi.
Opposition parties, including the Congress, Trinamool Congress, Bharat Rashtra Party and Samajwadi Party, came together in a show of unity on Thursday and accused the Modi government of getting the second half of the budget session washed out, while asserting that if this attitude continues, the country will move towards a "dictatorship".
Congress leaders will also visit the families of the over 700 farmers who died during the agitation and will organise candle marches and rallies to pray for the departed souls.
Senior Congress leaders Venugopal, Ajay Maken and Ashok Gehlot had on Wednesday took stock of the preparations for the Chintan Shivir.
'I have never seen a common man tapping a chief minister on the shoulder and giving him his petition, like needing money for a child admitted in a hospital.'
A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and Manoj Misra will be hearing the petition filed by NGO Manipur Tribal Forum.
Amid his power tussle with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Pilot has announced that he will be among the people and Congress workers in various districts of Rajasthan between January 16 and 20.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Sunday said he was yet to receive minister T S Singh Deo's resignation from the panchayat department and that he learnt about the latter's move through media.
No one else filed papers till Sunday, according to Mullapally Ramachandran, the chairman of the party's Central Election Authority.
Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister P Chidambaram suffered a fracture in his left rib after he was pushed away by Delhi Police during the party's protest in support of Rahul Gandhi who was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the National Herald case, said the party on Monday.
With this, the Cabinet will reach its full strength of 34.
"I was told by people it was good," Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday remarked over Rahul Gandhi's first speech in the Budget session in which he made a scathing attack on the Narendra Modi government on farmers' issue.
A majority of Congress leaders said the party will face desertions if Rahul Gandhi does not remain the leader.
Unlike the LDF and NDA nominees who are at ground zero and campaigning hard every day, the Congress candidate's campaign is undertaken in absentia, dependent on an army of local and imported from the rest of Kerala Congresswomen and men.
Party leaders, sources said, maintained that Congress cannot afford to have a new leader at the helm for rebuilding the organisation at this juncture and that the responsibility for the defeat is collective and not individual.
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