With 20 days left for polling in Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi and Rae Bareli, Congress is yet to announce its candidates from the two seats that have been the last bastions of the Gandhi family in India’s most populous state.
A senior Congress leader indicated that the names might be announced on Tuesday.
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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too, is yet to announce its candidate for Rae Bareli even as Union minister Smriti Irani has filed her nomination from Amethi on Monday.
Irani defeated then Congress chief Rahul Gandhi from Amethi in 2019 and former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi remained the lone Congress MP from UP.
Meanwhile, people aware of the developments and close to BJP MP Varun Gandhi maintained that the party wanted him to contest from Rae Bareli, but he refused.
Nomination for Amethi, Rae Bareli ends on May 3.
The Congress move of keeping the suspense going on the possible candidates for Rae Bareli and Amethi Lok Sabha seats is turning out to be a political riddle that most political leaders or commentators want to solve. And when the suspense finally ends, this may spring a surprise, writes Umesh Raghuvanshi.
“You will get some sort of surprise in Rae Bareli and Amethi,” said Congress president Mallikarjuna Kharge to a news channel recently when asked whether Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will contest the 2024 polls from Rae Bareli or Amethi Lok Sabha seats considered to be Congress bastions till the 2019 polls when Rahul lost to Union minister Irani.
SC stays CBI probe into recruitment case in Bengal
The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from carrying out any “precipitative steps” in connection with the West Bengal teacher recruitment case, even as it pulled up the state for “fraud” in appointing 23,000 persons whose services have been terminated by a recent Calcutta high court order.
But it is unlikely to give any political relief to the ruling Trinamool Congress. Raising questions over the alleged irregularities in the recruitment process, the top court said, “We are on the way this whole process has gone about. Originally, the agency NYSA (appointed for conducting the selection examination) was appointed without a public tender. The chairman of the WB school service commission (SSC) said I do not know how they came in. The OMR sheets were deleted from the server and the people not in the panel get recruited. This is complete fraud.”
AAP-Cong holds first meeting at Chandni Chowk
Even as the Congress and AAP have joined hands in an alliance for Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat, there are serious doubts if the vote transfer between the two erstwhile rival parties would happen smoothly.
Showcasing a joint front, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday held their first joint meeting for the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi in the Shakur Basti area of the Chandni Chowk parliamentary constituency to campaign for Congress candidate Jai Prakash Agarwal.
Shakur Basti is an AAP stronghold and is the assembly constituency from where jailed party leader Satyendra Jain has won the last three state elections. Speaking at the joint party meet, Agarwal said that the Congress-AAP alliance is working “seamlessly”.
“In Allahabad, two rivers — the Ganga and the Yamuna, both with different moods — meet but flow onwards with no difference. The Congress and AAP alliance is working seamlessly. These (BJP) leaders started saying that they will cross 400 seats and change the Constitution, so that nobody is able to stand against them. That is when all parties had to come together and think about how this dictatorship can be stopped,” Agarwal said.
Delhi Police summons Telangana CM; Congress fumes
The Delhi Police on Monday issued summons to Telangana chief minister Revanth Reddy in connection with the alleged doctored video of Union home minister Amit Shah being circulated on social media, asking him to appear before the force in the national Capital on May 1.
The development came on a day the Assam Police arrested a 31-year-old man, identified as Reetam Singh, who is said to be the Congress’s “war room coordinator” in the north-eastern state, over his alleged involvement in making the doctored video and sharing it online, officers in Guwahati said.
