Cong's Tripura woes: Pradyot quits, accuses Faleiro of taking BJP's advice

Difficult choice
 

Is everything all right between cricketer-turned-politician Gautam Gambhir (pictured) and singer-actor-turned-politician Manoj Tiwari? The two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faces have been avoiding each other’s company for quite some time now. During a recent event in Delhi, Gambhir’s team was not sure when Tiwari would turn up. To avoid a confrontation, Gambhir decided to give the event a miss. Tiwari too has maintained a distance from all meetings that are held under Gambhir’s charge. All eyes, meanwhile, are on the party leadership, which is expected to announce the chief ministerial candidate for the Delhi Assembly elections. If no party elections are held in Delhi and he continues as the BJP’s Delhi unit president, this is a signal that Tiwari would be the party’s choice for chief minister.

Price of happiness
 

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat, in the presence of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, released a survey of the socio-economic status of women and their decision-making space, in New Delhi on Tuesday. The Drishti Stree Adhyayan Prabodhan Kendra, a Pune-based outfit that did the survey, interviewed more than 75,000 women over two years for this. Among other things, it found that more than 90 per cent of the respondents with no family and no income “possess a very high level of happiness and wellbeing”. “This indicates that family incomes have no influence on the level of happiness and wellbeing,” the survey stated.

 

Congress' Tripura woes
 

There is no let-up in infighting at the state units of the Congress. While resigning, the president of the Tripura unit, Pradyot Manikya Deb Barman, has highlighted in a letter, leaked to the media, that he fell out with the central leadership over the Assam Citizens’ list and accused Congress leader Luizinho Faleiro of colluding with Bharatiya Janata Party leaders. Last week, Deb Barman had threatened to resign over his petition in the Supreme Court in which he requested an Assam-like citizens’ list in the state. The 41-year-old alleged that Faleiro, who is in charge of the seven north-eastern states, was urging him to withdraw the petition. He also alleged that Faleiro was seeking advice from MLAs who had switched from the Congress to the BJP and that he had misused party funds.