Amid crisis within Congress, party leaders meet Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi: After being incommunicado for a day, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday held a series of meetings with party leaders including his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and his deputy Sachin Pilot amid his insistence on quitting and also rumblings of discontent in the northern state.
While Pilot met him earlier and Gehlot followed later, Priyanka was present during their meetings, sources said.
Party general secretary K C Venugopal and chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also held discussions at the residence of the Congress chief, who is adamant on having a non-Gandhi installed as the party head.
Gandhi had cancelled all meetings on Monday and had become incommunicado, even though he visited a local hotel in the evening, the sources said.
With senior party leaders trying to convince Rahul not to resign, Congress leader and former Rajya Sabha member Pramod Tiwari after meeting the former said, "Instead of resigning, he should seek resignations of leaders at all levels and restructure the party.
He also indicated that the CWC resolution, which had turned down his offer of resignation and urged him to revamp and restructure the party at all levels, is all pervasive.
Leaders point out that the CWC being the highest decision-making body of the party has already put down in writing in its resolution in its meeting on May 25.
Faced with a colossal electoral defeat, the Congress has been riven by internal turmoil. As the party grapples with a severe existential crisis, its governments in both Karnataka and Rajasthan teeter on the brink with reports suggesting the BJP may try to wrest power in both states.
Rahul has asked senior party leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Venugopal to rush to Bengaluru to set things right in the state which is faced with dissensions.
The Congress drew a blank in Rajasthan as the NDA won all 25 Lok Sabha seats. In Karnataka, where it formed a government with the JD(S) in May last year, the Congress managed to win only one Lok Sabha seat out of 28.
On Monday, Rahul cancelled all his appointments for the day and Gehlot could not meet him.
After Rahul gave Gehlot a tongue lashing for putting his son above the party at a CWC meeting on Saturday, two days after the Lok Sabha votes were counted, several Rajasthan ministers and MLAs are demanding that accountability be fixed and action taken for the Lok Sabha poll debacle.
According to some leaders who attended the Congress Working Committee meeting, Rahul did a lot of "plain-speaking" in his surgical analysis of the role of several party leaders while himself offering to quit as the party president.
Ticking-off Gehlot for camping in Jodhpur for his son Vaibhav's election, Rahul said the chief minister spent days campaigning there and neglected the rest of the state.
The CWC meeting was held in the backdrop of the Congress winning just 52 Lok Sabha seats and drawing a nought in 18 states and Union Territories. Gandhi himself lost from the family bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, though he won from Wayanad in Kerala.
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Another North Goa nightclub sealed; Kejriwal says corruption led to fire tragedy
Panaji (PTI): As part of a crackdown against tourist establishments violating laws and safety norms in the aftermath of the Arpora fire tragedy, Goa authorities on Saturday sealed a renowned club at Vagator and revoked the fire department NOC of another club.
Cafe CO2 Goa, located on a cliff overlooking the Arabian Sea at Vagator beach in North Goa, was sealed. The move came two days after Goya Club, also in Vagator, was shut down for alleged violations of rules.
Elsewhere, campaigning for local body polls, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal said the fire incident at Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub at Arpora, which claimed 25 lives on December 6, happened because the BJP government in the state was corrupt.
An inspection of Cafe CO2 Goa by a state government-appointed team revealed that the establishment, with a seating capacity of 250, did not possess a no-objection certificate (NOC) of the Fire and Emergency Services Department. The club, which sits atop Ozrant Cliff, also did not have structural stability, the team found.
The Fire and Emergency Services on Saturday also revoked the NOC issued to Diaz Pool Club and Bar at Anjuna as the fire extinguishers installed in the establishment were found to be inadequate, said divisional fire officer Shripad Gawas.
A notice was issued to Nitin Wadhwa, the partner of the club, he said in the order.
Campaigning at Chimbel village near Panaji in support of his party's Zilla Panchayat election candidate, Aam Aadmi Party leader Kejriwal said the nightclub fire at Arpora happened because of the "corruption of the Pramod Sawant-led state government."
"Why this fire incident happened? I read in the newspapers that the nightclub had no occupancy certificate, no building licence, no excise licence, no construction licence or trade licence. The entire club was illegal but still it was going on," he said.
"How could it go on? Couldn't Pramod Sawant or anyone else see it? I was told that hafta (bribe) was being paid," the former Delhi chief minister said.
A person can not work without bribing officials in the coastal state, Kejriwal said, alleging that officers, MLAs and even ministers are accepting bribes.
