News Analysis India

Tag: KC Venugopal

  • Did INDIA Bloc Offer PM Position To Nitish Kumar? Congress Reacts |

    The Congress party on Saturday responded to the claims of Janta Dal (United) leader KC Tyagi about Nitish Kumar being offered the Prime Minister’s position by the INDIA bloc. “We don’t have any such information,” stated Congress general secretary KC Venugopal in a press conference following the Congress Working Committee’s meeting in Delhi.  

    The JD(U) senior leaders pointed fingers at the coalition for mistreating Nitish Kumar; he alleged that those who previously rejected Nitish Kumar as the INDIA bloc’s national convenor are now proposing to make him Prime Minister. He further said that this is the ‘game of politics’ and the JDU will not run back to the INDI Alliance.  

    With 12 seats in Bihar, Kumar’s JD (U) has become a significant ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party within the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to reach the magic number of 272 seats in the Lok Sabha. JD (U) was crucial in the formation of INDIA bloc last year. However, it returned to the NDA in January after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s name was suggested as the potential prime ministerial candidate for the INDIA bloc.  

    On Friday, while supporting the NDA proposal to name Narendra Modi as the leader of the coalition, Kumar expressed his confidence by saying, “Next time when you come, those who have won here and there this time will lose. I am confident about it. They never worked for the nation. They never served the country. The country will progress under your (PM Modi) leadership.”  

    He added that all the pending work in Bihar will be completed. It is very good that all of us have come together, and we will all work together with you (PM Modi). 

  • Alappuzha: LS Polls 2024: KC Venugopal ups stakes to wrest CPM seat, says Pinarayi Vijayan speaks Modi lingo

    As one enters Alappuzha, the citadel of the Communists in Kerala and the land of the historic Punnapra-Vayalar uprising and the martyrs column, huge hoardings of KC Venugopal, the influential AICC general secretary (organisation) and a close associate of Rahul Gandhi, are all over. Venugopal is fighting to wrest the CPM seat, the only Lok Sabha constituency that stood by the Left in 2019 when the Congress-led UDF swept 19 of the 20 seats from the state. If that explains the Left’s political resilience here, Venugopal’s entry has upped the stakes for both sides.”This is an election to save Indian democracy and to save our Constitution,” Venugopal said when ET caught up with him at Aryad on the outskirts of the town. “The Congress is leading that fight, along with the INDIA alliance parties, against the Modi government. Every single seat, every single vote counts. I am sure the people of Alappuzha will stand by the Congress in this historic battle”.Venugopal has trained expertise in taking the fight to the Left strongholds; he cut his teeth in the Congress student’s wing in his birthplace of Payyanur in Kannur, another Communist base. As he progressed to the party leadership, the Congress politically relocated Venugopal to Alappuzha where he won three consecutive assembly polls from 1996 and two Lok Sabha polls in 2009 and 2014. CPM reclaimed the seat in 2019 — when Venugopal took a break from electoral contest due to organisational preoccupation with the leadership placing him in the RS from Rajasthan. Venugopal is now back for the retrieval act. AllUttar PradeshMaharashtraTamil NaduWest BengalBiharKarnatakaAndhra PradeshTelanganaKeralaMadhya PradeshRajasthanDelhiOther StatesAs Venugopal reached a street corner meeting venue, an enthusiastic crowd greeted him. “If anyone examines the political life of a Congress worker called KC Venugopal, he will find its foundation was laid when the people of Alappuzha elected me as their MLA way back in 1996. You have made me MLA and MP many times. Whatever I am today, all credit goes to you people. As my party has sent me here to fight this all-important election, I once again place my politics and my future in your hands,” Venugopal tells the responsive crowd.

    He is pitted against a local CPM leader and sitting MP AM Arif, who won the seat in 2019 by a slender margin of 10,474 votes, and senior BJP leader Shobha Surendran, who has a track-record of lifting the BJP vote percentage wherever she contested, albeit losing the elections. But whose vote, in addition to that of the BJP here, she will cut into this time is keeping both Congress and the Left sides guessing.

    As Venugopal moved forward through the crowds, he told ET about his twin concerns and his twin targets. “Can you imagine the way the PM is speaking at his rallies these days? Such blatant communal talk! Shocking. The PM has become desperate after the first phase of election. And here in Kerala, look at the way the CM (and CPI-M leader) Pinarayi Vijayan is speaking, the way he has targeted Rahul Ji. Modi and Pinarayi speak the same language in this election”. CPM’s sitting MP, Arif, 59, told ET that he is fighting to retain his party’s Lok Sabha seat. “I have placed before the people the details of the development works I have done, including the steps to modernise and beautify Alappuzha as a throbbing tourism destination.”