He served as an effective link between the party and government during the two terms of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) between 2004 and 2014. As political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, he had access to leadership that no other leader in the party had and worked the channels to work out various issues.
'The consecration of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya has demoralised them.' 'And, now it is reflecting in their individual reactions as they are losing hope to take on the BJP in 2024.'
Senior Congress leader Milind Deora on Saturday dismissed as 'rumours' the speculation that he was on his way out and would join the Shiv Sena led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
The CBI, tasked by the Calcutta high court to probe the case, received local court approval to conduct a polygraph test on the accused, days after performing a psychoanalysis test on him.
The poll panel said it found Kharge's letter, placed in the public domain in the middle of the ongoing electoral process, 'highly undesirable' and designed to create confusion, misdirection and impediment to the conduct of smooth, free and fair elections.
Congress general secretary Bhanwar Jitendra Singh on Tuesday said there is no truth in the speculation of senior party leader Kamal Nath joining the Bharatiya Janata Party and claimed such talks were a creation of the media and the saffron party.
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.
Every time we look at the Congress, its future, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, we find the situation more hopeless than even a few months earlier, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Former Congress MP Lakshman Singh has said Rahul Gandhi is an ordinary party worker and parliamentarian and he should not be highlighted so much.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Sunday took note of religious conversions, saying that an anti-conversion law should be made to stop such acts.
'If the Maha Vikas Aghadi thinks that they have won 30 (Lok Sabha) seats and that would translate to winning 180 assembly seats they would be living in a fool's paradise.'
In his letter to the Congress National President, Mallikarjun Kharge, Lovely said that all unanimous decisions taken by the senior Delhi Congress leaders have been unilaterally vetoed by the AICC general secretary (Delhi in-charge).
In private, questions are being raised about the wisdom of a 'dual-SIM' leadership during the long run-up to the 2026 assembly polls where 'family rule' could become an election issue, reports N Sathiya Moorthy.
While Brijlal Khabri, former BSP MP from Jalaun, is UP Congress Committee chairman, former UP cabinet minister and Mayawati's once close confidant Naseemuddin Siddiqui heads the party's state media department. Completing the ex-BSP troika, Nakul Dubey, former UP cabinet minister in the Mayawati dispensation (2007-12), is one of the six UP Congress regional presidents. He is reckoned among the most active of the three.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
Ruling Biju Janata Dal vice-president Soumya Ranjan Patnaik was removed from his post on Tuesday, months before the simultaneous assembly and Lok Sabha polls in Odisha for allegedly writing critical editorials in his Odia daily.
Some have been cherry-picked to assert the BJP's supremacy over its allies or, significantly, its leaders who charted an independent course in the recent past.
Pilot said rules and discipline of the party apply to all, adding that he hoped Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge would take a decision in the matter soon.
"Even Shashi Tharoor had said it is a friendly match and after elections Congress will be the winner," Gehlot said.
Polling is scheduled in all 20 seats of Kerala, 14 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, eight seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, six seats in Madhya Pradesh, five seats each in Assam and Bihar, three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and one seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
Sources said besides giving approval to the polls schedule, the members of the CWC, the party's highest decision-making body, could also express confidence in the leadership provided by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
The Congress on Saturday appointed 50-year-old Jitu Patwari, who belongs to the Other Backward Classes, as president of the party's Madhya Pradesh unit replacing veteran Kamal Nath.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Miffed over the Congress central leadership nominating poet-politician Imran Pratapgarhi, who hails from Uttar Pradesh, as its candidate from Maharashtra for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls, party functionary Ashish Deshmukh on Tuesday resigned from the post of Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary.
Asked how many seats INDIA bloc will get, Gandhi said, "Have you heard Sidhu Moose Wala's song '295'? So 295 (seats)."
Tamil Nadu's Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin has reacted to Andhra Pradesh counterpart Pawan Kalyan's out-of-turn taunts with a one-liner, 'Let's wait', and thereby hangs a tale, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The plea was filed by Pawar senior in his personal capacity through lawyer Abhishek Jebaraj on Monday evening.
The former Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee chief accused the AICC of embarking upon a policy of phasing out senior and elderly people.
'There was a time when a movie star could win an election just by stepping into politics. That era is over.'
Rane, 87, who has served as the chief minister of the coastal state for six times, had won from the Poriem assembly constituency as many as 11 consecutive times.
There is no use of the BJP targeting the likes of Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, directly by the party's political bosses, both in Delhi and the respective state capitals, or even using the Raj Bhavans to fire those salvos from. Successive elections have proved that it's counter-productive, if anything. But the BJP is yet to understand it, acknowledge it, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
He was a nine-time MLA, one-time Lok Sabha member and former finance minister of Tamil Nadu and a close friend of former Chief Minister late Karunanidhi.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh took a veiled dig at Azad who was conferred with the award.
The CPI-M leader was the chief minister of the state from 2000 to 2011.
'The politics of divisiveness won't work.' 'The janta is too clever not to see through it.'
'Just because the NDA has a majority and the BJP is the single largest party does not mean that this Modi government enjoys a majority in the Lok Sabha.' 'It is always possible that some members (of the NDA and even the BJP) may defect, some members may not want him to be the prime minister and they might vote differently (against Modi) in the confidence vote.'
As Prabhakaran was leaving his house, Rajiv Gandhi called his son Rahul and asked him to fetch his (Gandhi's) bulletproof jacket. He put the jacket on Prabhakaran's back and remarked with his usual charming smile: "Take care of yourself."
Exigencies of electoral politics and individual ambitions often stoke family feuds and sibling rivalries.
"We are confident that the people of Goa have given us a clear, simple majority. I am more confident today than I was, say last week, because I have spoken to every candidate," Chidambaram told NDTV.
Chakraborty, an ardent trade unionist and a former Rajya Sabha member, was admitted to the hospital after he tested positive for COVID-19 on July 30.
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