High powered book launch
Congress leader Manish Tewari’s book launch in the capital was a high profile one with Dr Manmohan Singh, Farooq Abdullah, Pavan Varma and Tewari on the dais. It was here that Dr Singh advised the PM to “exercise
Congress out, others in
It does look as if the BSP and SP have finalised the seat sharing for 2019. What’s interesting here is that while the RLD is in, the Congress is not part of the alliance, though they have decided not to contest any candidates from Rae Bareli and Amethi. While Mayawati was always against accommodating the Congress, Akhilesh Yadav had been keen to include them. He had been told if he wanted to, he could give the Congress seats from his quota. But now, post the Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh elections, where the Congress did not agree to any of Akhilesh’s demands for seat sharing (for instance, the seat that was offered to Akhilesh in Rajashtan was one that the BSP was contesting. Not keen to make it a BSP vs SP fight, he had asked for another one, but was refused.) So now, the miffed SP chief is not going to go out of his way to accommodate the Congress in his home turf. Clearly, you win some and lose some.