Making a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Friday warned that the country faced the biggest threat from communal forces and their ideology even as the AICC resolution called upon "like-minded political and social forces to come together at this critical juncture".
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.
'She is tough. She can be stern. She can be unpleasant. Rajiv was none of these things.' 'The Congress cannot survive without the Gandhi family. If Sonia were to quit, their Lok Sabha seats would drop from 44 to four.' K Natwar Singh shares his bitterness about the Nehru family with Rashme Sehgal.
The black bands were worn as a mark of protest against the alleged attack on the Constitution of India with the passage of the amended citizenship act by the government, leaders said.
Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Gandhi noted that lakhs of migrants continue to walk hundreds of kilometres to reach back their homes without food, water, medicines and cash. She also accused the central government and the Railways of completely ignoring the demands made by the Congress for ensuring the safe and free travel of migrant workers and labourers to their homes.
Sharma claimed he has received complaints that neither any virtual nor any physical meeting was held to finalise the electoral rolls, the sources said.
It was a spectacle of bonhomie in the Central Hall of Parliament as Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted his political adversary Rahul Gandhi warmly grabbing his hand, while Congress President Sonia Gandhi chatted intermittently with BJP veteran L K Advani.
It was soon after that call that Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav spoke to each other.
A day after a stormy Congress Working Committee meeting, Sibal made the remarks in a cryptic tweet.
In a letter to Gandhi, Amarinder Singh is learnt to have mentioned that there could be an adverse impact on the party's prospects in the upcoming and crucial 2022 assembly polls by ignoring the old guard and other senior party leaders representing Hindu and Dalit communities, sources said.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi also decided to convene a 'Chintan Shivir', a brainstorming session from May 13-15 in Udaipur.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday suggested that if the Congress comes to power, it would redistribute wealth of people to Muslims and cited former PM Manmohan Singh's remark that the minority community had the first claim on the country's resources.
Several top Congress leaders from party chief Mallikarjun Kharge to former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were involved in the hectic parleys with Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar, which finally helped to break the logjam over the top post in Karnataka.
'There are too many competent people better suited and poised to take on Modi. The Gandhis are not among them,' argues Harishchandra.
Moitra said she has been found guilty of breaching a code of ethics that does not exist and that there was no evidence of cash or gift given to her.
He asserted that the BJP does not carry out any action with a vindictive approach.
Could this reluctance be tied to the family's projection of themselves as the last bastion of the aam-aadmi's interests? Do they fear that a full disclosure of their not-inconsiderable assets would go against their carefully-cultivated pro-poor image, wonders Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
"I am contesting the organisational election. There is a saying 'Bakrid mein bachenge toh Muharram mein nachenge'. First, let these elections get over and let me become president, then we will see," Kharge said at a press conference held at Pradesh Congress Committee office in Bhopal.
Seat sharing and campaign is likely to be top of the agenda, they added.
'If Rahul couldn't persuade his colleagues without resorting to theatrics, then maybe politics wasn't his calling
Amid strains in the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi alliance over Rahul Gandhi's strident criticism of V D Savarkar, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar has stepped in to play the peacemaker by conveying the Shiv Sena's concerns on the issue to the Congress leadership.
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday met Sonia Gandhi and expressed his intention to contest the upcoming AICC chief polls, while the Congress president conveyed that she would stay "neutral" in the elections, sources said.
Congress sources told ANI on the condition of anonymity that 'Rahul Gandhi left the country on May 19 to participate in various public programs in London that were held on May 20 to May 23. Since then, he has not returned to India'.
Gandhi's flying into Srinagar to meet Mehbooba assumes significance as there are reports that the PDP and the BJP are bargaining afresh over the formation of a new government.
"Congress state in-charge Harish Rawat is my good friend but who gave him the right to take such a big decision about Punjab at his level? What is the meaning of Captain's leadership now after the Kharge committee's decision to contest elections under Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi?" Congress MLA Pargat Singh said.
Opposition parties on Tuesday submitted a notice to move a motion for removing Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar for allegedly conducting the House in a partisan manner.
A number of high-profile electoral battles, starring veterans and debutants, formidable opponents and unlikely contestants, feature in Tuesday's outcome.
They are likely to meet Sitaram Yechury following the meeting with Gandhi.
'They hate him so much that if PM Modi says the Sun rises in the east the Congress will say the Sun rises in the west.'
What stood out in his 15-year journey as a member of the political executive at the Centre was his glowing record as India's most successful and effective finance minister. Both as prime minister and finance minister, he understood the importance of gradualism, except when the economy or the polity was in a crisis.
All India Congress Committee in-charge for Chhattisgarh P L Punia and AICC general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal were also present during the meeting convened by Rahul Gandhi at his residence.
The nation on Friday remembered Mahatma Gandhi on his 146th birth anniversary.
For the first time, Modi is eyeball to eyeball with his bete noire, sitting a few feet across him. Given the last 10 years, a confrontation between them was unavoidable, inevitable, points out Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'He told senior journalists a few days after the Babri Masjid demolition, 'Jo hua theek hua. Maine isliye hone diya ki BJP ki rajniti hamesha ke liye khatam ho jaye.'
Immediately after the House met, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla paid tributes to sitting MPs Rattan Lal Kataria and Balubhau alias Suresh Narayan Dhanorkar. He also said that 11 former members passed away in the last few months and read out their names.
The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday resumed its raids at the office of Young Indian (YI), the holding company of Congress owned newspaper National Herald, after senior party leader Mallikarjun Kharge presented himself before agency officials at the Herald House building in New Delhi.
The coming assembly and Lok Sabha elections -- the choice of candidates, the campaign strategies and the negotiations with other Opposition parties --0 represent the real test for Mallikarjun Kharge.
Rahul Gandhi succeeds Sonia Gandhi, who led the party for the last 19 years.
The 'war room' has been running since 2008, and all the important party meetings were held there.
