Days before Haryana polls, BJP's Ashok Tanwar joins Cong at Rahul Gandhi's rally
Chandigarh (PTI): In a setback to the BJP, its senior leader and former MP Ashok Tanwar joined the Congress at a rally of Rahul Gandhi in Mahendragarh district in Haryana on Thursday, two days before the state goes to polls.
As Gandhi was winding up his speech, an announcement was made from the stage asking the audience to wait for a few minutes.
Soon after, Tanwar, who had joined the BJP earlier this year, walked onto the stage and it was announced that "aaj unki ghar vapsi ho gayi ha (today, he has returned to the Congress fold)".
Tanwar, who was considered close to Gandhi and had left the Congress in 2019 following differences with senior party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda, joined the party hours before the campaigning for the October 5 Haryana Assembly polls comes to an end at 6 pm.
The Dalit leader's return to the Congress is likely to come as a boost for the party, which is looking to wrest power from the BJP after a decade.
Tanwar, a former Haryana Congress president, shook hands with Gandhi and greeted Hooda, who welcomed him into the party fold and patted his back.
Senior Congress leader K C Venugopal was also present on stage.
Tanwar had joined the AAP in April 2022. Before joining the AAP, he was with the Trinamool Congress briefly.
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Railways Ministry refuses to shift Maharaja Saloon Coach from Delhi National Rail Museum to Mysuru
Mysuru: The Ministry of Railways has turned down the local MP’s request to shift the Mysore Maharaja Saloon Coach, which is currently placed at the National Rail Museum in New Delhi, to the Mysuru Rail Museum.
Mysuru MP Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar and his predecessor Pratap Simha in 2022 had requested that the coach be shifted. The MPs had stated that Mysuru was the seat of power of the Mysore Maharajas and placing the coach for display at the city museum rather than in New Delhi made greater sense, The Hindu has reported.
The Ministry of Railway, in its official response dated September 30, called the saloon coach of the Mysore Maharaja, which was more than 125 years old, one of the prestigious exhibits at the National Rail Museum and explained that it could suffer irreparable damage during the long-distance transportation from New Delhi to Mysuru.
Aashima Mehrotra, Executive Director, Heritage, Railway Board, addressed a letter to the General Manager of the South Western Railway, stating that the Mysuru Rail Museum already has the Maharani’s Royal Carriage and a dining-cum-kitchen car as an exhibit.
The Railway authorities had reportedly not literally rejected the MP’s plea to shift the coach to Mysuru, the local authorities have drawn this inference based on the contents of the letter from the higher authorities. The communiqué from the Railway Board has also stated that a virtual tour of the Maharaja’s Saloon was accessible to all on the Google Art and Culture platform, which has also been considered a clarification that the Maharaja’s saloon coach would not be shifted.
The saloon was used by Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar and the coach was built in 1899 at the Bangalore Workshop of Mysore State Railway, reportedly as a three-carriage rake inclusive of the Maharani’s coach and the dining-cum-kitchen car. The undercarriage of the coach was designed in a manner that would enable its use on broad gauge and metre gauge tracks as well, sources added. The cost of fabricating and building the coach was ₹29,508 each and the Maharani’s coach was built in 1914.
