Today in Politics: Mamata Banerjee to meet Muslim clerics in Kolkata, Haryana Congress feud goes on – The Indian Express

Earlier this month, Banerjee told the West Bengal Assembly that her government was doing its best for the welfare of minorities and funds allocated for these communities had risen eight-fold since 2011, when the TMC came to power. Banerjee said the allocated expenditure for the state Minority Affairs Department in the 2023-’24 financial year is Rs 4,233 crore against Rs 472 crore in 2010-’11.

In the Congress, a major objective of its president Mallikarjun Kharge’s exercise to reconstitute the Congress Working Committee (CWC) was to balance the equations in states where its top leaders do not get along well with each other.

As Manoj C G reported, Kharge has inducted Himachal Pradesh Congress chief Pratibha Singh as a permanent invitee. Last year, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukh pipped Singh to the post in the race for the top job. Similarly, Chhattisgarh Home Minister Tamaradhwaj Sahu and former Gujarat Congress chief Jagadish Thakor were among the leaders accommodated. While the move to induct the new faces may keep internal battles in check in their state units, the Congress’s troubles in Haryana are only likely to grow a year before the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls.

From Haryana, both Kumari Selja, who was brought into the CWC last year, and Randeep Singh Surjewala, now in charge of the party’s efforts to win back Madhya Pradesh, retained their place in the top decision-making body. The two are fierce rivals of Haryana Leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda whose writ runs in Haryana Congress and have joined forces with Haryana MLA Kiran Choudhry to oppose Hooda. Varinder Bhatia wrote last month that the three have been open critics of Hooda, his Rajya Sabha MP son Deepender Hooda, and Pradesh Congress Committee president Udai Bhan. “With the Lok Sabha polls next year, and Assembly elections soon after, the three have started positioning themselves as a parallel power centre within the Haryana party unit.”

Today, Choudhry will address a rally in Bhiwani and Surjewala and Selja are also likely to be in attendance. The three have claimed it will be a massive show of strength. All three have started touring the state without any formal clearance from either Hooda or Bhan and are rarely seen at state unit meetings called by the two men in charge. Late in June and then July, Kharge held meetings with warring factions in the Congress in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra and managed to get them to stop fighting in public. This unexpected peace has lasted till now but the question is if the Congress president will similarly step in and put an end to the feud in Haryana Congress. If this does not stop, the party is likely to face an uphill task in dislodging the BJP-Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) coalition from power despite reports of emerging differences between the ruling allies.

Speaking of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi has been on a tour of Ladakh and his bike ride to Pangong Lake on Saturday, on the eve of his father’s birth anniversary, seems to have riled Union Minister Kiiren Rijiju who posted a video showing the poor condition of the road to Pangong in 2012 and compared it to the beautiful roads that now connect Leh and the lake.

Rijiju made his point but he seemed to be fuming even on Sunday, tweeting, “Rahul Gandhi is working as a perfect spokesman of China. He has become China’s propaganda machinery. He is the great-grandson of India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru Ji, who gifted huge part of Indian territory to China. He supports Tukde-Tukde gang who wants to split India. He is a disaster for Congress party & harmful for India.”

Expect more responses from Union Ministers and BJP leaders as Rahul continues his Ladakh trip. The Wayanad MP on Sunday left for Nubra Valley, where he was scheduled to stay overnight before returning to Leh. He is expected to visit Kargil either today or tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will resume hearing the batch of pleas challenging the Patna High Court’s decision to uphold the Bihar government’s caste survey. Last week, the top court asked the petitioners what the violation of privacy was in asking people to disclose their caste. The court’s question came after the petitioners argued that the exercise violated the court’s nine-judge decision in the privacy case in which it was held that the state cannot encroach on the privacy of individuals without a law to back it.

In Bhopal, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will distribute 5,000 appointment letters to teachers at an event.

Watch out for: Road to 2024, our weekly tracker on the BJP and the Opposition where we decode how the battle for the Lok Sabha is shaping up.

— With PTI inputs