Fifteen years after taking charge, Sonia Gandhi seeks to reinvent Congress

March 15, 2013

Sonia_GandhiNew Delhi, Mar 15: Sonia Gandhi completed 15 years as Congress president on Thursday and thanked partymen for helping her accomplish the tough responsibly.

As leaders lined up to felicitate her at 10, Janpath, she told them, "The real credit belongs to millions of Congress workers whose toil ensured that the faith of the poor and the vulnerable in Congress did not sap even when we were not in office. I congratulate the legions who are the most extraordinary cadre any party can hope for, and who have been our priceless asset."

The comment was seen to underplay her own achievement, with Sonia widely credited with reviving the party's fortunes in the last 15 years after it had touched a low, the worst being the nine years out of power after the Narasimha Rao government.

Already the longest serving Congress chief, Sonia's 16th year coincides with the decisive step towards another transition in party leadership. Watching son Rahul ease into the job of No.2, meeting MPs and senior office-bearers daily, seems to be comforting Sonia who is known to have been all nerves when he was reluctant to move to the leadership position.

The uncertainty has been rankling Congressmen as much in the wake of Sonia's health problems. Rahul was elevated as vice-president at the Jaipur 'chintan shivir' in January.

The settling of the succession conundrum has assured Congressmen who thanked Sonia for resurrecting the party after the barren years post-1995 when the party faced divisions and watched the ascendancy of rival BJP helplessly.

Partymen underlined that Sonia's toughest challenge since 2004 would be the coming Lok Sabha polls, with a sense of drift in UPA and charges of corruption and malgovernance dogging the government. That it would also be a comment on Rahul's leadership adds to the challenge.

The political wheel seems to be coming a full circle with Sonia having taken the plunge in 1998 to extricate the party from virtual oblivion.

Congress then faced divisions and cut a sorry picture of rudderlessness under Sitaram Kesri.

In 1998, faced with persistent requests from partymen, Sonia campaigned vigorously despite Atal Bihari Vajpayee's soaring popularity that propelled the saffron alliance to power for the first time. The bad year saw Congress even lose the Gandhi stronghold of Amethi and Kesri paved way for Sonia to take charge officially as AICC president in March 1998.

Despite a withering attack on her "foreign origin", Sonia stayed the course, even contesting elections from Amethi and taking up the role of leader of opposition to pull Congressmen together.

The 2004 elections turned the tide as a confident BJP was humbled by Sonia's stewardship, an achievement that remains undefeated with the repeat victory in 2009.

Her decision to decline the prime ministership in 2004 and instead put Manmohan Singh in the chair won her rare plaudits and helped defang the BJP attack about her 'foreign origin".

While Congress has floundered recently, tripping on old weaknesses of corruption and infighting, AICC managers say Sonia is focused on reviving the party fortunes.

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News Network
August 3,2020

Aug 3: Iqbal Ansari, who was a litigant in the Ayodhya land dispute case, has decided to gift a 'Ram nami' stole and a copy of the Ramcharitmanas to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he attends the bhoomi pujan ceremony for the Ram temple here on Wednesday.

"Yes, I have received the invitation from Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust for the bhoomi pujan ceremony. I will certainly attend it. The dispute is over now after the court's verdict," Ansari, 69, told .

"Our Prime Minister is coming. I will meet him and give him a 'Ramnami' stole (with Ram's name written on it) and Ramcharitmanas as a present," Ansari said.

His father Hashim Ansari, the oldest litigant in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi land dispute case, died at the age of 95 in 2016 after which the son started pursuing the case in the court.

Talking about Wednesday's ground-breaking ceremony to mark the beginning of the construction of a grand Ram temple here, Ansari said, "I belong to Ayodhya. All this (temple's construction) will change the fate of Ayodhya. We all want our child to get better opportunities".

He further said, "I respect sadhus and saints. I am happy to have received the invitation for the ceremony. I think it is Lord Ram's will that I attend it".

When asked what he would have done had the court decided the case in his favour, Ansari said he had wanted the construction of a school and a hospital on the disputed land.

"I feel the city needs development. The future of our children should be safe and secure and they should get employment. Dispute in the name of religion should end now and we should let the city witness a new beginning," he said.

The Supreme Court had in November last year paved the way for the construction of a Ram temple by a Trust at the disputed site of the Babri Masjid's demolition in Ayodhya, and directed the Centre to allot an alternative 5-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for building a new mosque at a "prominent" place in the holy town in Uttar Pradesh.

The state government has allotted a five-acre land in Dhannipur village in Sohaval Tehsil of Ayodhya for the mosque's construction.

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News Network
March 5,2020

Lucknow, Mar 5: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said last night that the role of teachers would come under the scanner when "anti-India" slogans are raised at universities and institutions of higher education.

"When anti-India slogans are raised at institutions of higher education, we should be prepared to ask why this type of distortion occurrs among our students?" he said at a programme organised by the Basic Shiksha Parishad in Lucknow.

"We begin our work with pledge for the country's unity and integrity and today slogans are raised for the division of the nation. In such a situation, questions are raised over the role of teachers who are considered equal to god in society," he said.

"Who all are involved in this sin and chaos? Governments can provide resources, but the one who has given them basic education, who has given them secondary education and who has led them to that place, all of them should evaluate their actions today," the chief minister said.

Speaking about the condition of education in the state when his government came to power three years ago, he said there was an atmosphere of chaos and anarchy in the state and the condition of basic education was very bad.

"The worst problem was that of proxy teachers. Our government started the process of prohibiting proxy teachers in the first phase," he said.

Adityanath said that a teacher is not just a government servant, but the fate of the nation. He said teachers should learn from Chanakya.

Had Chanakya confined himself to Nalanda University, he would not have been able to make India a superpower of the world during that period. Teachers will have to prepare themselves according to the challenges and need of society, he added.

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Agencies
February 11,2020

New Delhi, Feb 11: Cheaper lending rates in the country along with the government's booster via tax cuts seem to have had little effect on vehicle sales in January, with car sales decreasing by over 14,531 units, or slightly over 8 per cent, compared to January last year.

According to Rajan Wadhera, President of industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), which gives out the auto sales numbers, the overall slump in vehicle sales in India was due to the "rising cost of vehicle ownership and slower growth in GDP".

Barring three-wheelers, all other segments showed de-growth.

Vehicle sales across segments have been declining for over a year now. SIAM sales data last month compared with that of January 2019 showed that domestic passenger vehicle sales slipped 6.2 per cent to 262,714 units. The decline in car sales stood at 8.1 per cent, and two-wheelers 16.06 per cent.

Sales of commercial vehicles, an indicator of industrial health in the economy, slipped by 14.04 per cent to 75,289 units last month, while the vehicle sales across categories registered a de-growth of 13.83 per cent to 17,39,975 units from 20,19,253 units in January 2019, SIAM said.

However, Wadhera said, they were hopeful that recent government announcements on infrastructure and rural economy would support growth of vehicle sales, especially in the commercial and two-wheeler segments.

"We are looking forward to the early announcement of an incentive-based scrappage policy in the context of the recent assurances by the government," Wadhera said.

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