Ajit Jogi had walked out of the Congress two years ago.
WILL THE Congress be ready to do business with Ajit Jogi again? With Assembly elections just months away in Chhattisgarh, Congress leaders are claiming that they have got feelers from Jogi, who had walked out of the party two years ago. The party’s Chhattisgarh leaders are clear they will not allow the former chief minister to return. In fact, the AICC had described Jogi’s exit in 2016 as good riddance. Interestingly, Congress president Rahul Gandhi called up Jogi’s wife Renu, who is still in the Congress and is an MLA, to inquire about his health earlier this week. Jogi is suffering from pneumonia and was shifted to a private hospital near Delhi. Jogi’s son Amit thanked Rahul for inquiring about his father’s health in a social media post.
Raising Pitch
AFTER SHARPLY reacting to reports that Walmart will purchase an initial 77 per cent stake in Flipkart and writing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi against the deal, RSS’s economic wing Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) has decided to go public on the issue. On Saturday, it will organise a seminar in Delhi titled “Flipkart-Walmart deal: rising issues”. It has also got veteran BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi to preside over the programme to amplify the pitch with other participants drawn from other RSS-affiliated organisations such as Laghu Udyog Bharti and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh.
Missing Flight
FOURTEEN INDIAN Railway probationers will not be able to board the plane for Berlin along with their batchmates on Monday for the first-ever pre-posting study tour of Deutsche Bahn. Passports of 40 probationers from the batch of 240 were sent to the German Embassy for visa. When the passports came back on Friday, it was discovered that 14 had not got the visa and Saturday being weekend, the embassy would be closed. Each visiting lot is of 40 probationers, so it is being thought that these 14 would probably have to be adjusted in the subsequent batches unless they have some serious issues with their passports for which visa cannot be arranged.
Keeping Silent
TOP CPM and CPI leaders, despite their fight with the Congress in West Bengal in the heydays of the Left in the 1980s and 1990s, maintained cordial relations with Pranab Mukherjee. The CPM even supported Mukherjee when he contested the Presidential elections while the CPI abstained. Given the bonhomie, leaders of the CPM and CPI such as Sitaram Yechury and D Raja have refrained from questioning Mukherjee’s decision to attend an RSS event at its Nagpur headquarters. It is another matter that many of the senior Congress leaders have openly hit out at Mukherjee. While not criticising Mukherjee, both Yechury and Raja said they would not have gone for an RSS event had they been invited.