Campaign for Y S Rajasekhara Reddy son runs into Sonia wall

With Congress president Sonia Gandhi deciding to crack the whip on regional leaders seeking to dictate terms in the Andhra Pradesh succession, senior party leader Digvijay Singh was sent to Hyderabad on Sunday to deliver a stern message to Rajya Sabha member Dr K V P Ramachandra Rao — the late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s right hand man, and perceived brain behind the feverish campaign to install YSR’s son Jaganmohan Reddy as chief minister.

Late on Sunday afternoon, Ramachandra Rao, widely known as KVP, gave a dramatic speech to members of YSR’s council of ministers, reminding them that in the Congress, “no one goes against the high command”.

Within an hour, all 34 members of the YSR’s former Cabinet took oath again and Konijeti Rosaiah took charge of the new government as interim chief minister in Hyderabad.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Sonia dares Maya: I’m ready to go to jail

Unfazed by the Mayawati government’s moves to scuttle her visit to Rae Bareli, Congress president Sonia Gandhi today landed in her Lok Sabha constituency, calling it her “karmabhoomi” and declaring she was “ready to go to jail” for the sake of development.

“Rae Bareli and Amethi have been the karmabhoomi of Feroze Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. It is also Rahul and my karmabhoomi. Rae Bareli and Amethi are like my home. Can anyone prevent me from coming home? No one can,” she told reporters in Lalganj.

Taking a swipe at Chief Minister Mayawati, Gandhi said that like the rail coach factory in Rae Bareli, allotment of land for which was cancelled by the UP government, several other schemes were being blocked by the state. “There are over a dozen such development projects that the Central government has funded and plans to bring to the state. But in each, the state government has put some hindrance or the other,” she said.

To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit:
http://epaper.indianexpress.com/IE/IEH/2008/10/15/index.shtml

Chinese Foreign Minister kept waiting for Sonia appointment

As New Delhi today expressed its “disappointment” over China’s role in the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), visiting Chinese Foreign minister Yang Jiechi, who had requested for a meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi, was kept waiting for an appointment.

Chinese Embassy officials told The Indian Express tonight they had asked for an appointment with Sonia before Yang left Beijing — while his schedule was being prepared — but had not heard from her office until late tonight.

In his first trip to India, the Minister has kept tomorrow morning aside for “sightseeing”, said officials, and will deliver a lecture on “India-China relations” in the afternoon.

After a meeting with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Yang denied that Beijing had attempted to block consensus at the NSG. “Facts speak louder than these reports,” he said.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Is it end-deal?

What the Congress kept delaying finally happened today: its moment of reckoning has come, after the Left made it clear it would not let the Government go to Vienna to confirm the safeguards agreement, the key first piece in the operationalisation of the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The party’s top brass went into a huddle at 10, Janpath faced with perhaps the toughest choice since they took charge four years ago: give in to the Left and freeze the Indo-US nuclear deal to keep the government alive and a line with the Left open in an election year or seize the historic opportunity and stamp the party’s commitment to the “national interest.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who spoke to Congress President Sonia Gandhi on the phone, was learnt to have argued in favour of going ahead with the deal after the Left issued a statement that it was of the “firm opinion” that “the government should not proceed to seek approval of the text of the India-specific safeguards agreement from the Board of Directors of the IAEA.”

This Left statement came a few hours after the government deferred today’s UPA-Left meeting to June 25 as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s discussions with CPM general secretary Prakash Karat on Monday and Tuesday failed to make any headway. The Left also said it did not get the full text of the agreement.

To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Chinese comrades invite Rahul to mark 20th year of his father's visit

Beijing may have summoned the Indian Ambassador at 2 am to protest against the Tibetans trying to scale their Embassy wall in New Delhi but all this was off the record today as a high-level delegation of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) came knocking on the Congress doors with a red carpet.

Signaling a readiness to look beyond its ideological brethren among the Left, the CPC came to the Congress with a proposal to hold a conference in Beijing to mark the 20th anniversary of the late Rajiv Gandhi's path-breaking visit to China in December 1988. The CPC also invited Rahul Gandhi to inaugurate the conference likely to be held towards the year-end.

The CPC proposed to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Congress Party to form an "institutional mechanism of collaboration" between the two. The Chinese delegation, led by Li Jinjun, Vice Minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, proposed that Rahul should come to China to inaugurate the conference. These proposals were accepted by the Congress delegation led by senior party leader Devendra Dwivedi.

To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com