Ever since, he has remained Thiruvananthapuram preferred MP, winning four elections on the trot, including the closely fought battle with Bharatiya Janata Party's Rajeev Chandrasekhar in 2024. This could well be his swansong from the capital segment.
The Union government has ordered the complete withdrawal of the counter-terrorist commando force NSG from VIP security duties and handing over its nine "high-risk" VIPs to the CRPF by next month, official sources said Wednesday.
Senior leader P Chidambaram whose Rajya Sabha tenure is ending from Maharashtra is under consideration from Tamil Nadu as the Congress is all set to get the support of alliance partner the DMK. The G-23 leaders, including Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and Vivek Tankha, are also said to be in contention.
The Congress may stand a better chance in the assembly polls if it followed the 'Himachal model', suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
The 79-year old leader, who served as the chief minister of Kerala twice, breathed his last in a private hospital in Bengaluru at 4.25 am. His end came while undergoing treatment for cancer, party sources said.
On February 1, grappling with the intractable issue of the AMU's minority status, the top court said the 1981 amendment to the AMU Act, which effectively accorded it a minority status, only did a "half-hearted job" and did not restore the institution the position it had prior to 1951.
Strengthening the party's communication strategy to improve public engagement is foremost on the Congress agenda after Rahul Gandhi had stressed that they "have to go back to the people" at the Udaipur meeting.
Jitin Prasada was once considered as among Rahul Gandhi's 'young Turks' and was a minister in successive Manmohan Singh governments but defected from the Congress to the BJP in 2021, where he has again established himself as a prominent Brahmin face of Uttar Pradesh.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who heads the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), has held a meeting with Union Home Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Amit Shah in Delhi.
Healthcare services remained affected at state-run hospitals in West Bengal as junior doctors continued their cease-work protest.
Gandhi said the party will defeat the saffron party and Narendra Modi in Gujarat just the way it was defeated in Ayodhya.
Azad, who was part of the group of 23 which has been critical of the party leadership and has sought an organisational overhaul, has also been awarded the Padma Bhushan for his contribution to public affairs.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clinched 23 out of 27 Scheduled Tribe seats in Gujarat as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the new entrant in the state's politics, swept aside the Congress to find a footing in the state's tribal belt.
Udhayanidhi's 'untimely' elevation as deputy CM may be used against the party, for critics to argue that the DMK's 'first family's is not concerned about anything else but their clan's welfare. If packaged and delivered properly, some of the sting may stick at election time, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
If the BJP has to work as a junior partner of Vijay's TVK, then either the party will have to change the state leader, or the latter should change himself. Incidentally, ever since Vijay started talking politics and elections, the pro-BJP/Hindutva social media had stopped dragging his name into any non-existing issue.' In particular, they have stopped referring to him by his Christian name, 'Joseph Vijay', observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Senior Congress leader M Mallikarjun Kharge is not averse to running for the AICC president's election if party chief Sonia Gandhi asks him to contest, sources close to the veteran leader said on Wednesday.
Even as the race for the Congress president's post is hotting up, its veteran leader and Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh on Friday said he is not interested in becoming the party chief.
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.
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.
Patil has claimed the concept of jihad was not just in Islam but also in the Bhagavad Gita and in Christianity.
The bench allowed the rejoinder affidavit to be filed by petitioners in two weeks thereafter and posted the matter for final hearing in January, 2025.
While Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala mockingly called the CM as "the most knowledgeable" person in the state who has the habit of terming priests "wretched creatures" and "ignorant", BJP leader V Muraleedharan said that Vijayan's remarks indicate that he continues to be intolerant towards those who disagree with him.
Within a week of assuming power, the Congress government in Karnataka has expanded its cabinet on Saturday, filling all posts.
If Priyanka wins the Lok Sabha bypolls, it would be for the first time that three members of the Gandhi family will be in Parliament. Her mother Sonia Gandhi is a Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan.
He said, during a press meet in Kannur, that during the LS polls, alliances were being formed in various states as part of the platform and its result was that the Bharatiya Janata Party was being largely isolated.
The mortal remains of the former Union minister were consigned to flames by his son Shantanu Bundela and daughter Subhasini in his ancestral village Ankhmau at around 5 pm.
Shah also challenged the Congress to implement its Lok Sabha election promise of providing Rs 8500 monthly to women in states ruled by the party.
'Modiji has a vision for the country, not just to fight the elections but about achieving certain goals for the country.' 'Congress does not even have a vision for 25 days.'
The Yatra comes a day after the Congress was left high and dry with former ally Nitish Kumar, the Bihar chief minister, making a return to the BJP-led NDA.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party falling short of a majority in the Lok Sabha and needing the National Democratic Alliance partners to form the government at the Centre, Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United head Nitish Kumar and Telugu Desam Party's N Chandrababu Naidu have emerged as potential kingmakers.
The former Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee chief accused the AICC of embarking upon a policy of phasing out senior and elderly people.
West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose on Friday filed a defamation case against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the Calcutta high court, a day after she said that women complained to her saying that they were afraid to visit the Raj Bhavan because of the activities there, a source said.
Notably, Madhya Pradesh minister Kailash Vijayvargiya recently said the BJP does not need Kamal Nath and its doors are closed for him.
Days after his Delhi visit led to speculation about plans to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress veteran Kamal Nath on Friday took to social media to drum up support for 'our leader' Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra which will enter Madhya Pradesh next month.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
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.
The media is under the pressure of the central government but they should see the interest of the public, Gehlot told reporters.
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.
Veteran party leader Anil Vij will seek re-election from his Ambala Cantt stronghold.
