Kamal Nath told me he will remain in party: Madhya Pradesh Cong chief Jitu Patwari
Bhopa (PTI): Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Jitu Patwari has said his senior colleague Kamal Nath told him he was not going anywhere and would remain in the party.
Speculation has been rife for the past few days that Nath and his Lok Sabha MP son Nakul Nath are on their way to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
"The BJP misuses the media and questions the integrity of a person. I had a talk with Kamal Nath ji who told me that the reports floating in the media were part of a conspiracy. He told me he was a Congressman and will remain in the Congress," Patwari told PTI on Sunday evening.
"His relationship with the Gandhi family is unshakable. He has lived with the ideology of Congress and will remain with it till the end. This is what he told me," the Congress leader said.
Asked why Nath was not putting forth his side, Patwari said the former chief minister would speak at the right time. "What I said was on his behalf," he claimed.
Nath and his son and Chhindwara MP Nakul Nath arrived in the national capital on Saturday afternoon. Nakul Nath has dropped Congress from his bio on social media. Around half a dozen Madhya Pradesh MLAs loyal to Kamal Nath reached Delhi on Sunday, accentuating the speculation that the father-son duo was set to join the ruling BJP.
In Bhopal, Nath's party colleague Digvijaya Singh expressed confidence his old friend would not forsake the party from where he began his political journey.
Meanwhile, in Delhi, Congress leader Sajjan Singh Verma, known to be close to Kamal Nath, met the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister.
"I had a discussion with him. He was sitting with a chart on how Lok Sabha tickets will be distributed and what will be the caste equations. He (Nath) said 'My focus is to figure out what the caste equations will be on 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh'. He said he has not thought about anything like that (of leaving the party) and neither has he spoken on it with anyone," Verma said after meeting Nath.
"When I said media is are saying you did not deny it (speculation), he (Nath) said media raised it and it should answer," Verma said.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
