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Sonia Gandhi highlights ‘Mahalakshmi’ scheme; AAP tackles Swati Maliwal incident
Sonia Gandhi addressed women voters on Monday to highlight the party’s key guarantee of providing ₹1 lakh annually to the women head of every poor family
Rahul Gandhi doesn’t miss any opportunity to hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the latter’s comment that the Congress got black money stashed in tempo. As he landed in Lucknow on Monday, Gandhi took a dig at the Adani group (which operates the Lucknow airport) and reiterated his demand for a probe against Adani and Ambani.
“I was wondering how many tempos were required to do this thing at this tempo,” Gandhi quipped as he said that seven airports have been given to the Adani group for 50 years.
Rahul’s rally, townhall meetings in Delhi
Gandhi will hold a rally and a townhall in the Capital in the run-up to the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections, during which Delhi will cast its vote on May 25 across all seven parliamentary constituencies, Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav said on Monday.
“Congress has completed preparations to win the Lok Sabha elections across seven seats of Delhi. The backbone of a political organisation is its ‘booth’; the stronger the booth, the stronger the election can be fought. Booth management teams of Delhi Congress are training workers to directly contact 14.7 million voters across all 13,630 booths in Delhi,” Yadav said.
Addressing a press conference at the Delhi Congress office, Yadav said: “Training teams have been formed for this purpose. A control room has also been set up and 15 teams have been designated for each of the three constituencies to monitor the work of delivering the guarantees of the Congress to every household in the Capital.”
The Congress party has fielded three candidates from Delhi in this Lok Sabha polls as a part of its alliance with Aam Aadmi Party.
Swati Maliwal assaulted, Delhi Police gets two PCR calls
The Delhi Police on Monday received two calls from chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s residence, claiming AAP’s Rajya Sabha member Swati Maliwal was assaulted there, people aware of the matter said.
The people said Maliwal, who was out of the country for weeks and was largely absent during the chief minister’s internment in the excise police case, was at the residence to meet Kejriwal but his personal assistant Bibhav Kumar prevented her from doing so. HT reached out to Maliwal, a former chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women, for comments but she repeatedly disconnected the calls made.
An officer with the operations cell of the Delhi Police said that two calls were received regarding the alleged incident. “In the first call to 100 [emergency response number] made at around 9.10am, the caller did not mention her name. But in the second call at around 9.34am...the caller told the police that her name is Swati Maliwal and Delhi chief minister’s aide Bibhav Kumar is manhandling her,” said the officer, asking not to be named.
BJP to Kejriwal: How would you protect Delhi’s women?
BJP leader Bansuri Swaraj hit out at Kejriwal following Maliwal’s allegations. Condemning the alleged incident, Swaraj called it “shameful” and asked Kejriwal how he would protect Delhi’s women if his own party MP wasn’t safe in his presence.
“If it is true that after getting instigated by Arvind Kejriwal, his OSD has beaten up and misbehaved with one of their party MP Swati Maliwal, in the presence of the Delhi CM, then the BJP strongly condemns this. It is shameful and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal needs to answer that if their party MP is not safe in his presence, then how will he protect the women of Delhi?” Bansuri Swaraj said.
Sonia Gandhi campaigns for Mahalakshmi scheme
Amid the polling for the fourth phase, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi addressed women voters on Monday to highlight the party’s key guarantee of providing ₹1 lakh annually to the women head of every poor family.
“Under Congress’s ‘Mahalakshmi’ scheme, we will give ₹1 lakh every year to a woman from a poor family. Our guarantees have already changed the lives of crores of families in Karnataka and Telangana,” Gandhi said in her second video message for this election.
Earlier this year, citing health and age-related factors, Gandhi had shifted to Rajya Sabha after serving the Lok Sabha for nearly 25 years. Senior Congress leaders indicated that while Gandhi, who is credited for bringing the Congress to power in 2004, is unlikely to take part in the physical campaign she will extensively participate in online campaign.
AAP mocks BJP over ‘400 paar’ claim
Punjab chief minister and AAP leader Bhagwant Mann on Sunday took a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s target to win more than 400 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and said that there is no ‘400 paar’ this time.
“Iss Baar ‘No 400 Paar’...Iss Baar Toh Beda Paar Bhi Nai Ho Raha..Iss Baar Tadipaar (This time it’s not just about crossing 400. This time, not even the shore or border is being crossed; this time BJP is going to be completely defeated, even sent into exile),” Mann said.
Mann also spoke about Kejriwal’s interim bail and said, “We thank the Supreme Court. The apex court said that you can’t keep a national convenor of a national party in jail during elections. His (Arvind Kejriwal) release from jail is a big relief for the AAP.”
