Congress meeting chaired by Scindia descends into chaos as members spar

Senior Congress leaders appear utterly helpless in containing fights among local leaders. A meeting chaired by party general secretary Jyotiraditya Scindia, AICC in-charge of west Uttar Pradesh, apparently ended up in fisticuffs among members, which continued even after the members emerged from the party's war room at 15 Gurudwara Rakabganj Road in Delhi, and moved to another location. In the meeting held on Tuesday, some leaders raised questions over ticket distribution and blamed senior party leaders for the poll debacle in the state. An argument on the issue quickly descended into an exchange of blows, bizarrely in the presence of national leaders like Scindia and Raj Babbar.  

Offering a credible alternative

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has had a terrible Lok Sabha election. It is now hoping to align with the Congress party in West Bengal. At the meeting of its central committee, the CPI (M) said the Congress unit in the state committed a mistake by not aligning with the Left parties, which led to their supporters voting for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state as they did not think of either of the two as credible alternative to the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress. The CPI (M) is hopeful that the Congress state unit will see reason and join hands with it for the next Assembly polls, due in the first half of 2021. However, many in the CPI (M) and Congress believe the Banerjee-led government might be dismissed and election held under central rule earlier than 2021.

No power cut at 'power centre' 

Unscheduled power cuts have become an issue of great concern for the Madhya Pradesh government. As expected, a blame game has ensued. Chief minister Kamal Nath has accused "BJP-minded" officials of sabotaging power supply; the Bharatiya Janata Party, on its part, has labelled the government "inefficient". But there is good news from the Chief Minister's home district, Chhindwara. On Tuesday, as the rest of the state suffered intermittent power cuts, Chhindwara faced a minor outage, of just 38 seconds. The nearby districts of Jabalpur and Siwni faced at least an hour of power cut each. Nath has represented Chhindwara eight times in the Lok Sabha. After he took over as CM, his son Nakul Nath is representing the seat in the lower house. The state produces 19,000 MW of electricity every day and its average consumption, in summer months, is 9,500 MW.