After defeat in poll, Congress once again bounced back to power
Here is a complete details on strategies like call record app, change of hotels
New Delhi, May 20: After election drubbing in the Karnataka Assembly election, the Congress has come out as a phoenix in its post-election strategies to win over the BJP. It has a clarity on its strategies right from extending support to JDS if the Congress got less than 100 seats in the election, changing of hotels of Congress MLAs, downloading the call record application to record the calls of BJP leaders who will lure the Congress MLAs, to arranging a special flight to bring Abhishek Manu Singhvi from Chandigarh and it has got fruits for its strategies.
Party sources said that the party leadership has planned strategies after going through all developments well-in advance. AICC president Rahul Gandhi had met party leaders Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ashok Gehlot and KC Venugopal on May 14 morning and planned the strategy. The decision to extend its unconditional support to JDS if it got less than half of the total seats was also taken there only.
Interestingly, this message was given to JDS. All five AICC general secretaries Manicka Tagore, PC Vishnunath, Madhu Yashki Goud, Sheik Sailajanath and Yashomati Tagore were directed to be in the designated counting centres and Azad, Gehlot and Venugopal have camped in Bengaluru. As soon as they knew that the BJP would not get the majority, they were asked to contact all the MLAs and bring them to Bengaluru. On the next day of the result, political high drama was started in Delhi and Bengaluru.
Congress-JDS combine has prevailed upon the Governor on May 15 to invite them to form the government. Soon after they confirmed that Yeddyurappa would place his claim for forming the government, the Congress leadership held a meeting in New Delhi and decided to take up legal fight. For this reason, Abhishek Manu Singhvi was brought from Chandigarh in a special flight. Both Ahmed Patel and Randeep Surjewala have spoken to Singhvi over phone and finalized the draft. Even, they have spoken to Congress leader MB Patil over the present situation.
As Singhvi missed the flight, the Congress has made special flight for him thinking that train journey would be delayed. So, the combined efforts of all Congress leaders have turned the defeat as victory.
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Israel says rabbi who went missing in UAE was killed
Tel Aviv, Nov 24: Israel said Sunday that the body of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi who went missing in the United Arab Emirates has been found after he was killed in what it described as a “heinous antisemitic terror incident.”
The statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Israel “will act with all means to seek justice with the criminals responsible for his death.” There was no immediate comment from the UAE.
Zvi Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Thursday, ran a Kosher grocery store in the futuristic city of Dubai, where Israelis have flocked for commerce and tourism since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords.
The agreement has held through more than a year of soaring regional tensions unleashed by Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack into southern Israel. But Israel's devastating retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, after months of fighting with the Hezbollah group, have stoked anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals and others living in the the UAE.
Iran, which supports Hamas and Hezbollah, has also been threatening to retaliate against Israel after a wave of airstrikes Israel carried out in October in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack.
The Emirati government did not respond to a request for comment.
Early Sunday, the UAE's state-run WAM news agency acknowledged Kogan's disappearance but pointedly did not acknowledge he held Israeli citizenship, referring to him only as being Moldovan. The Emirati Interior Ministry described Kogan as being “missing and out of contact.”
“Specialised authorities immediately began search and investigation operations upon receiving the report,” the Interior Ministry said.
Netanyahu told a regular Cabinet meeting later Sunday that he was “deeply shocked” by Kogan's disappearance and death. He said he appreciated the cooperation of the UAE in the investigation and said that ties between the two countries would continue to be strengthened.
Israel's largely ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the killing and thanked Emirati authorities for "their swift action." He said he trusts they “will work tirelessly to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Kogan was an emissary of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, a prominent and highly observant branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism based in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood in New York City. It said he was last seen in Dubai. The UAE has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering to kosher diners.
The Rimon Market, a Kosher grocery store that Kogan managed on Dubai's busy Al Wasl Road, was shut Sunday. As the wars have roiled the region, the store has been the target of online protests by supporters of the Palestinians. Mezuzahs on the front and the back doors of the market appeared to have been ripped off when an Associated Press journalist stopped by on Sunday.
Kogan's wife, Rivky, is a US citizen who lived with him in the UAE. She is the niece of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, who was killed in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The UAE is an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and is also home to Abu Dhabi. Local Jewish officials in the UAE declined to comment.
While the Israeli statement did not mention Iran, Iranian intelligence services have carried out past kidnappings in the UAE.
Western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations in the UAE and keeps tabs on the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.
Iran is suspected of kidnapping and later killing British Iranian national Abbas Yazdi in Dubai in 2013, though Tehran has denied involvement. Iran also kidnapped Iranian German national Jamshid Sharmahd in 2020 from Dubai, taking him back to Tehran, where he was executed in October.
