In the Vice-Presidential polls, the Opposition may have fielded a candidate against Jagdeep Dhankhar knowing fully well that it was a losing battle but once the NDA candidate won, almost all senior opposition leaders — among them Sonia Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Sitaram Yechury, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav — congratulated him. However, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee did not put out any congratulatory message on her social media handle. There were a flurry of tweets from her congratulating the CWG medal winners. The Trinamool Congress had abstained from voting in the Vice-Presidential elections, drawing flak from some of the Opposition parties. In fact, Margaret Alva, while congratulating her opponent, noted that some Opposition parties had chosen to directly or indirectly support the BJP in an attempt to derail the idea of a united Opposition. On Paper IT HAS been close to three months since Congress president Sonia Gandhi set up a political affairs group, as announced by her at the Udaipur Chintan Shivir. She had included G 23 leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma in the panel, which in her words was to be an advisory group that would meet regularly to discuss and deliberate upon political issues and challenges before the party. Incidentally, the group has not met even once since its formation. Sonia had made it clear that the group would not be a collective decision-making body. Besides Azad and Sharma, the group has Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ambika Soni, Digvijaya Singh, K C Venugopal and Jitendra Singh as members. The Jibe AS JANATA Dal (United)’s internal fight became public after the party accused its former chief R C P Singh of “huge irregularities” in immovable properties, prompting him to quit, Lok Janshakti Party national president Chirag Paswan took a jibe at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday. Chirag said despite Nitish admitting that Singh indulged in corruption, he calls himself “Sushashan Babu”. The LJP chief added, “There is now discord in the house of the one who broke the house of others.”
