'In some quarters it has been suggested that there will be an 'official candidate' backed by the leadership but on the contrary, it has been repeatedly stressed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in my conversations with them over the last two weeks that the Nehru-Gandhi family welcomes these elections'
'@IamSanjuSamson, who hit a century in his last ODI, has not been picked for ODIs, while @IamAbhiSharma4, who hit a T20I century in the #INDvZIM series, has not been picked at all/'
Tharoor said the Congress should stand up for its foundational principles.
Congress presidential candidate Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday claimed many electors have been instructed by 'their leaders' to support his rival but they may eventually vote for him in a secret ballot.
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.
Tharoor also said the Congress must decentralise authority and truly empower the grassroots office-bearers of the party.
Amid questions over his future, many political observers believe he has enhanced his political stature.
Sharing a poster of the movie, Tharoor had tweeted on Sunday, "It may be 'your' Kerala story. It is not 'our' Kerala story."
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 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.
The Congress on Saturday accused the Centre of insulting Dr Manmohan Singh, the country's first Sikh prime minister, by carrying out his last rites at the Nigambodh Ghat instead of a designated spot that could later become his memorial.
Even as the dust settles on one election, glory in Thiruvananthapuram has come with a new question on the horizon: Who will be UDF's candidate in the next Lok Sabha election given Shashi Tharoor has said 2024 would be his last? It isn't a vacancy that can be easily filled, points out Shyam G Menon.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
The Leader of Opposition assured the parents of raising the issue in Parliament.
I am here to stay the course. Please come and vote on October 17. For me, 'Think tomorrow, think Tharoor', he said
Misri is also likely to brief the parliamentary panel on the recent upswing in India's ties with China following the agreement to resume patrolling at friction points along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh.
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.
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.
His pa is famed film-maker Vidhu Vinod Chopra, his ma is celebrated movie commentator Anupama Chopra, but Agni Dev Chopra's passion is not movies, but cricket.
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)".
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.
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".
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'.
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.
While 39 members of the all-important panel are general members, it has 32 permanent invitees, including some in-charges of state and 13 special invitees.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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 Thiruvananthapuram MP, who was speaking at the Kerala Literature Festival in Kozhikode on Friday, said while he concedes the BJP's dominance, it is also a fact that they have lost many states and them losing the central government is not impossible.
He said the answer to the Congress' current challenges lies in a combination of effective leadership and organisational reforms.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has alleged that former Congress president Sonia Gandhi has links to an organisation financed by the George Soros Foundation, which has reportedly supported the idea of an independent Kashmir. The party claims this connection demonstrates foreign influence in Indian internal affairs. This comes after BJP's claims of US involvement in destabilizing India, which the US has denied. The BJP also accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of collaborating with the Soros-funded OCCRP to damage India's economy and reputation. The allegations have drawn criticism from the US embassy and the opposition Congress.
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".
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