Withdrawal date not over, don't know if there will be Cong prez poll on Oct 17: Jairam Ramesh
Gundlupet, Sep 30: Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Friday said he does not know if there would be a party presidential election on October 17, as the last date for withdrawal of nomination is not over yet.
The party General Secretary in-charge of Communications said both M Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor, who filed their nomination papers, are multi-dimensional personalities.
"All I can say is the election will be free, fair and transparent," Ramesh said.
"Congress is a more internally democratic party than the BJP and is the only political party that has the system to elect its President and has elected presidents," Ramesh added.
In response to a question on Kharge's Dalit identity and electoral prospects for the Congress with him as a president, Ramesh said, Kharge has had a long public life having occupied various positions, and he cannot be looked at with only one lens.
"He (Kharge) is a multi-dimensional personality and so is Shashi Tharoor (other candidate). As of now, it is a contest between two multi-dimensional personalities. The last date for withdrawal is still not over, we don't know whether there will be an election on October 17 or not," he added.
The last date for withdrawal of nominations is October 8.
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Sharad Pawar praised RSS after seeing how it burst fake narrative balloon of LS polls: Fadnavis
Nagpur, Jan 10: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar praised the RSS after realising how the outfit managed to overcome the fake narrative spread by the opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The opposition had claimed BJP wanted to win 400 seats to change the Constitution and end reservations, a narrative which BJP leaders later claimed hit the party hard.
On Pawar praising the RSS recently, the CM said the MVA was successful in creating a fake narrative during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
"When assembly polls were approaching, many people from diverse fields who are inspired by the RSS played their role and burst the balloon of this fake narrative. Sharad Pawar saheb is very intelligent. He would have certainly studied this aspect. He realised that this (RSS) is not a regular political power but a nationalist power. In any competition it is good to praise others," he added.
That is why Pawar may have praised the RSS, Fadnavis said.
Speaking at an interaction with senior editor Vivek Ghalsasi at Late Vilasji Fadnis Jivhala programme here, Fadnavis also said he had asked for organisational work when Eknath Shinde was made chief minister in June 2022, but senior leaders asked him to join the government.
He also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked him not to behave like an extra-constitutional authority in the government.
He said the decision to become deputy chief minister on the command of the party leadership earned him a lot of praise from the cadre.
After the massive mandate the ruling alliance received in the 2024 assembly polls, Fadnavis said people and party workers would not have been happy if the CM was not from the BJP.
Shinde himself agreed within minutes that the CM must be from the BJP, which itself got 132 seats and was close to a majority of its own in the 288-member assembly, he added.
On Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray meeting him during the winter sessions of the legislature in Nagpur, Fadnavis said he had announced he would not indulge in politics of revenge after becoming CM and all leaders responded positively to it.
On chances of the NCP (SP) and NCP coming closer or reuniting, Fadnavis said, "If you see the developments that took place from 2019 to 2024, I realised never say never and anything can happen. Uddhav Thackeray goes to some other party and Ajit Pawar comes to us. In politics anything can happen though I am not saying this should happen."
He praised BJP leader Arun Gujarati from whom he learnt patience, which he claimed was an important quality in politics along with the ability to take criticism.
In a lighter vein, he said, "I only get angry when I am hungry. If you see me angry then give me something to eat and my anger will go away."
