Rahul Gandhi's maiden public meeting after disqualification from LS postponed to April 16
Bengaluru (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's event, which was supposed to take place on April 10, has been postponed further and now it will be held on April 16 at Kolar, Karnataka Congress unit president D K Shivakumar said on Saturday.
Gandhi had planned to address people on April 10 at the same place where his speech during 2019 Lok Sabha elections had led to his disqualification from the lower house of the Parliament, Shivakumar told reporters here.
However, due to the Assembly election related works and the selection of candidates, the party leaders requested him to extend it by a week.
"We had requested Rahul Gandhi to extend the public meeting by a week and he gave his consent. Gandhi and all leaders will come on April 16 for the 'Jai Bharat' event at Kolar," Shivakumar said.
He added that this will be Gandhi's first public address in Kolar after his disqualification from the Lok Sabha. He also said that Gandhi's disqualification was an insult to democracy.
"Cancelling the Lok Sabha membership of Rahul Gandhi, who had won with a margin of seven lakh votes, is an insult to the entire democracy," Shivakumar said.
According to the Congress sources, Gandhi's event was earlier planned on April 5, which was changed to April 6. Then it was again planned on April 9, which clashed with Prime Minister's 'Project Tiger' event in Mysuru. The date was then resheduled to April 10 and now once again it has been postponed to April 16.
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Novak Djokovic declines to address a past interview about getting sick in Australia in 2022
Melbourne, Jan 10: Novak Djokovic did not want to rehash — or even discuss at all, really — what he said Friday was a months-old interview with GQ magazine in which he recalled having high levels of metal in his blood from food he was served while detained before being deported from Australia in 2022.
“I would appreciate not talking more in detail about that, as I would like to focus on the tennis and why I'm here,” Djokovic said ahead of the Australian Open, which starts Sunday (Saturday EST).
“If you want to see what I've said and get more info on that, you can always revert to the article,” Djokovic said about the piece posted online this week.
Djokovic is working with Andy Murray as his coach in Australia in a bid to become the first player in tennis history with 25 Grand Slam singles titles.
In a lengthy GQ story that covered several topics, Djokovic spoke about what happened three years ago, when he was not vaccinated against COVID-19 and was kicked out of Australia.
“I had some health issues. And I realized that in that hotel in Melbourne, I was fed with some food that poisoned me," he said. "I had some discoveries when I came back to Serbia. I never told this to anybody publicly, but ... I had a really high level of heavy metal. Heavy metal. I had ... very high level of lead and mercury.”
The 37-year-old Serbian did not directly answer at the end of Friday's news conference when asked whether he had any evidence linking the blood levels he described to GQ to the food he ate in detention.
