A group photo taken at the Bharatiya Janata Party office in Jaipur ahead of Tuesday's legislature party meeting showed Bhajan Lal Sharma in the very last row.
Khera told reporters in Hyderabad that the views of the newly-elected MLAs have been elicited and the central leadership is seized of the matter.
A day after the Bharatiya Janata Party scored big wins in three assembly polls, talk within the party shifted to the likely chief ministerial picks in these states, with senior leaders holding discussions on Monday.
Rajasthan minister and key Gehlot-loyalist Shanti Dhariwal on Monday launched a frontal attack on Congress's state in-charge Ajay Maken, alleging that he was talking to party MLAs in a partisan manner and canvassing for Sachin Pilot.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot will meet the Congress high command in New Delhi on Wednesday amid suspense over whether he will file nomination for the post of party president, sources in Jaipur said.
'Undeniably, Modi's position has stabilised and he has staged a comeback of sorts from the weeks after the Lok Sabha results.' 'Coalition partners are likely to be more tolerant of Modi... The forthcoming elections in Delhi and Bihar will determine whether this continues or not.' 'To win Delhi and Bihar, Modi will have to work in conjunction with the RSS.' 'However, because of the 'truce' that has been worked out within the Sangh Parivar, Modi will have to be more consultative than he has been in the past ten years,' reveals Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Two state ministers have also come out in the open to demand a detailed assessment by the top leadership.
According to the party leadership, it does not want to create a Punjab-like situation where it had been postponed till the last moment.
Scindia had left the Congress a few months back and joined the BJP as he believed that he was being marginalised by senior party leaders in Madhya Pradesh.
Celebs and commoners cast their votes in the second phase of the Lok Sabha election on Friday, April 26, 2024
Apart from Raje, Union ministers Arjun Ram Meghwal, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Ashwini Vaishnaw are said to be among the frontrunners for the chief minister's post in Rajasthan.
Contests in 13 seats would attract most attention during the Chhattisgarh assembly elections as they feature prominent leaders of the Congress and BJP.
Gehlot said there is no such tradition in the party to offer posts to any leader in order to pacify him.
The Congress top brass headed by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge held a review meeting on Thursday on the party's shock defeat in the Haryana assembly polls and discussed the possible reasons for the 'unexpected' results.
The high voltage elections of the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA) have been scheduled for December 19 even as uncertainty prevails over former IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi's participations in the poll.
Gehlot, one of the proposers of Kharge, said Tharoor is also a good man and has good thoughts but he is from the elite class.
Bharti accused the media of distorting her statement, attributing it to the BJP's agenda.
Gehlot and Pilot, however, dismissed suggestions that there was any infighting among the state leaders and asserted that they will unitedly take on the BJP.
Party sources said United Progressive Allinace chairperson Sonia Gandhi is likely to reach Delhi on Wednesday from Himachal Pradesh and is expected to meet some leaders who are part of the decision-making process in Karnataka.
Gandhi, on the other hand, has also reached out directly to the party workers in the three states to know their top choice for the chief minister post through an internal mobile messaging app, party leaders said.
Top Congress leadership led by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi held marathon discussions with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Pilot joined them later in the evening.
The Congress on Wednesday demanded a thorough probe into 'discrepancies' found in some Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the counting of votes of the Haryana assembly polls and demanded that such EVMs should be sealed and secured pending the inquiry.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Wednesday sought four additional companies of central forces following communal clashes in the state and said a battalion of the India Reserve Battalion will also be deployed in Nuh.
Mallikarjun Kharge, former Congress President Rahul Gandhi, General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attended the swearing in ceremony, while former AICC President Sonia Gandhi was absent. Chief Ministers of Congress ruled states Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan), Bhupesh Baghel (Chhattisgarh) and Sukhvinder Singh Sukku (Himachal Pradesh) and several top party leaders were also in attendance.
The Congress has said the assembly polls results were "unexpected" and have alleged discrepancies in the EVMs in some seats.
'As far as I know, Sachin Pilotji is not going to the BJP.'
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, along with several party leaders, embarked on the 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' from Kanyakumari on Thursday, marking the beginning of a challenging journey through which the party is seeking to reach out to people and rejuvenate its organisation.
Amid a plethora of Bharatiya Janata Party bigwigs, Manohar Lal Khattar and his council of ministers took the oath of office at Panchkula on Sunday.
Congress leader Sachin Pilot on Friday stressed that the party would fight the Rajasthan assembly polls "unitedly" and said that a decision on who would lead the next government would be taken by the high command after consultations with the newly-elected MLAs.
The controversy has sparked reactions across states. The famous Mankameshwar temple in Uttar Pradesh has now banned offerings of 'prasad' bought by devotees from outside and said they can offer homemade 'prasad' or fruits.
Singh, a veteran Congress leader, was a member of the Upper House of Parliament from Assam for almost three decades.
"There was 90 percent blockage in one of his coronary arteries and one stent was placed successfully. He is absolutely fine," Dr Sudhir Bhandari, principal of the SMS medical college, told reporters.
As Election 2024 hurtles towards result day in a medley of mangalsutra, mujra, mutton, machli and other barbs, these may sound like character names from Hindi comics of yore. Instead, these are the mocking, sometimes vicious monikers given by political rivals to each other.
Counting of votes will be held on Sunday in assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Telangana in what is seen as a semi-final contest ahead of the general elections in less than six months.
The crisis in Rajasthan Congress intensified with Gehlot and his deputy Sachin Pilot at loggerheads, while Gehlot is blaming the Bharatiya Janata Party for trying to destabilise the state government by poaching MLAs, Pilot is camping in Delhi to speak to the party leadership regarding the political turmoil in the state.
The discussions are mostly one-on-one, party insiders said on Thursday, a day of many meetings.
Keeping up his tradition of celebrating the festival with soldiers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Sir Creek near the Indo-Pak border in Gujarat's Kutch district and offered sweets to jawans.
The Congress picked Charanjit Singh Channi as the next chief minister of Punjab, making him the first Dailt to hold the post in the state, a day after Amarinder Singh resigned following a bitter power tussle in the party.
AICC General Secretary and Congress's chief campaigner in Rajasthan Ashok Ghelot said that the voters had cast their votes against 'Chief Minster Raje's rule of terror' and not the Mumbai attacks.
The accident took place around 1 pm near Leela Ki Dhani on the Jhunjhunu-Gudha Godji highway, they added.
