NEWS

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will visit Ahmedabad on Monday to inaugurate the state office of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a party spokesperson said on Saturday. The AAP national convener was invited by the state AAP unit to visit Ahmedabad to inaugurate the party’s office located in the city’s Navrangpura locality, and he has consented to it, said party’s state spokesperson Tuli Banerjee.

“A detailed itinerary of Kejriwal’s visit will be issued on Sunday,” Banerjee added. This will be Kejriwal’s second visit to Gujarat this year. He lad last visited Surat in February after the AAP’s encouraging performance in the city’s municipal corporation elections wherein it emerged as the main opposition to the ruling BJP. The AAP is aiming to contest the December 2022 Assembly elections in the BJP ruled Gujarat and trying to become an alternative to the Congress, which is beset by desertions and defeat in the local body polls held in February this year.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) President Sharad Pawar hosted poll strategist Prashant Kishor for over three hours Friday, fuelling talks of the octogenarian making yet another attempt at uniting opposition parties against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the 2024 general election.

Kishor visited Pawar at the latter’s Mumbai residence, Silver Oak. The meeting started at about 11 am, followed by lunch at the NCP president’s house. Kishor left Silver Oak a little after 2 pm, following which Pawar too left his Mumbai residence for Pune, NCP sources said.

Former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot on Thursday denied that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Rita Bahuguna Joshi reached out to him and urged him to join their fold, something the latter claimed on a news channel .

Joshi, who joined the BJP in 2016 after quitting the Congress, said Pilot was unhappy in the Congress and that she talked to him about joining the BJP.

Bahuguna told a news channel that, “Congress has... lost its ground in north India and their party people are losing faith. I welcome him and for long was asking Jitin ji. I even called Sachin ji and told that people like you should be into positive politics to take the country ahead, support Narendra Modi and BJP.”

After assuming charge as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh on May 30, 2019, Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy's top priority was 'Navaratnalu' —literally nine gems, but in this case, a reference to the nine welfare schemes he had promised to implement if voted to power. The schemes were in keeping with the poll promises outlined in the YSRCP (Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party) manifesto for the 2019 assembly election. "By increasing per capita income through these initiatives, we can grow into a model not only for the country but also the world," Reddy had claimed.

The welfare drive gathered momentum during his second year, and in the gushy words of Perni Venkataramaiah, state minister for information and public relations: "In two years of governance, ending May 30, 2021, the CM has fulfilled 107 of the 129 pre-poll promises, spending a staggering Rs 1.31 lakh crore in the process." Apart from direct cash transfer of Rs 95,528.5 crore to beneficiary accounts, the state has also indirectly spent over Rs 36,197 crore on various schemes, including free power to farmers.