Senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor, in the race for the post of Congress president, not only possess contrasting demeanour but have had an equally disparate political journey.
While Tharoor declined to comment on whether he would throw his hat into the ring, he has written an article for the Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi calling for a 'free and fair' election.
Tharoor also said the Congress must decentralise authority and truly empower the grassroots office-bearers of the party.
Tharoor said the Congress should stand up for its foundational principles.
Amid questions over his future, many political observers believe he has enhanced his political stature.
'If you don't fulfil whatever they ask, you are in trouble.'
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has written to the party's central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry seeking the publication of electoral rolls for the upcoming election to the post of All India Congress Committee president, sources said.
Tharoor said people may judge him as an underdog and think it will be a difficult contest for him, but asserted that he never ran away from difficulties.
Reddy alleged that contracts worth thousands of crores were awarded to people close to Modi, who then purchased Rafale aircraft.
In his 'last appeal' to the over 9,000 Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates who constitute the electoral college to pick the next All India Congress Committee (AICC) chief, Tharoor noted that from his conversations over the last few days he gathered that many of them may have concerns or hesitation about change.
Denying rumours that he may opt out of the presidential race due to meagre support, Tharoor said he was very much in the fray and has been receiving support from various quarters.
Tharoor on Friday called Kharge, 80, a "candidate of continuity", an apparent reference to the impression in some quarters that the Karnataka leader is the choice of the Gandhis.
The Delhi police on Thursday approached the high court challenging a trial court's 2021 order discharging Congress leader Shashi Tharoor in connection with his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death case.
India succeeded in busting the Pakistani narrative on Operation Sindoor, particularly among the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) member nations, where Islamabad sought succour after carrying out terror activities across the border, Shiv Sena leader Shrikant Shinde said.
I am here to stay the course. Please come and vote on October 17. For me, 'Think tomorrow, think Tharoor', he said
We have nothing to gain by raising our concerns internationally as our narrative has got entangled with several controversial concepts in the United Nations, asserts Ambassador T N Sreenivasan.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday claimed he has the support of party workers from across the country for his bid to fight the AICC president polls.
Counting of votes began on Wednesday in the Congress presidential polls in which senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor faced-off for the post of All India Congress Committee (AICC) chief.
Sharing a poster of the movie, Tharoor had tweeted on Sunday, "It may be 'your' Kerala story. It is not 'our' Kerala story."
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, known for his penchant for rarely used, difficult-to-pronounce English words, on Friday threw in another head scratcher -- floccinaucinihilipilification.
Tharoor thanked the judge, and said it was "an absolute torture for last seven-and-a-half-years" and that it was a "great relief".
'The Pataudi Trophy vanished overnight -- no farewell, no tribute, just a quiet replacement.' 'If a name can be erased this easily, what faith can we place in the permanence of Tendulkar-Anderson?'
His remarks came a day after Kharge said he told Tharoor that it would be better to have a consensus candidate but the Lok Sabha MP insisted on a contest for the "sake of democracy".
All-party parliamentary delegations on Monday met with the leaders of several countries and highlighted India's resolve to combat terrorism, which they stressed must be eradicated in the interests of all humanity.
Although the leaders are not on same page on many matters related to the party, they have apparently come together to check Tharoor's larger political ambition in the state, they said.
Tharoor reached the AICC headquarters in New Delhi and spoke to Mistry at his office, a day before the Congress' central election authority is to issue the notification for the polls to elect the next Congress president.
Will Indian democracy benefit from the potential that Shashi Tharoor stores in his mind, spirit and intellect? Or will it be the saga of another leader who promised much but delivered too little, asks Dr Sudhir Bisht.
References to freedom fighter and India's first education minister Azad have been removed from the new class 11 political science textbook by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
Apparently rattled by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's Malabar tour, Leader of Opposition in the Kerala assembly, V D Satheesan on Tuesday said any kind of sectarianism or parallel activities would not be allowed in the party and warned that such moves would be dealt with 'seriously'.
The Congress on Wednesday expressed sadness over 'pictures of Indians getting handcuffed and humiliated' while being deported from the United States and recalled that America had to express regret over the treatment meted out to India diplomat Devyani Khobragade in 2013 after the then United Progressive Alliance government retaliated sharply.
Tharoor's social media post condoling Musharraf's demise evoked a sharp response from the Bharatiya Janata Party which accused the Congress of "Pakistan parasti (worshipping)".
Tharoor's close aide Aalim Javeri collected the forms from the office of the party's central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry on the first day of the start of the nomination process, all but confirming an electoral face-off for the top party post with Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot.
Mistry said the poll body satisfied the candidate on every complaint but despite that he raised all those points in the media before bringing them to "our notice".
Sources close to Gehlot said that Rahul Gandhi is his first choice for the top party post.
Singh met the party MP from Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday after collecting nomination papers for the polls.
No one from the Gandhi family was present at the All India Congress Committee headquarters when the leaders filed their nominations for the election.
The Congress on Tuesday claimed the bill on holding simultaneous polls was against federalism and 'anti-constitutional', and said the voting at its introduction stage in Lok Sabha showed the Bharatiya Janata Party lacks the two-thirds majority required to pass a constitutional amendment.
Tharoor, among the group of 23 leaders who had written to party chief Sonia Gandhi in 2020 seeking large-scale reforms, said 'reformists' at the end of the day wanted a more consultative process where a wide variety of voices would be heard and taken into account before decisions were made.
Senior Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor will face-off in an electoral contest on Monday for the post of All India Congress Committee chief, as the party gets set to have a non-Gandhi president in over 24 years.
He said the answer to the Congress' current challenges lies in a combination of effective leadership and organisational reforms.
