Shashi Tharoor invites BJP's Shatrughan Sinha to join the Congress

Tharoor's hero

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday invited the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Shatrughan Sinha to join the Congress. The two are colleagues in the Lok Sabha. Tharoor is an MP from Thiruvana-nthapuram and Sinha from Patna Sahib. Sinha was in Thiruvananthapuram to launch Tharoor's book The Paradoxical Prime Minister, Narendra Modi And His India. Tharoor said there was "room for a hero" like him in the Congress. In his speech, Sinha criticised the PM. Along with BJP Lok Sabha member Kirti Azad, Sinha has emerged one of the most vocal critics of the PM and party chief Amit Shah within the BJP. There is speculation that Sinha would contest the next Lok Sabha elections as part of the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led alliance in Bihar. The Congress, Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party and some others are constituents of this alliance.

Low-key celebrations

President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other dignitaries will be present at an event to dedicate to the nation a memorial of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (pictured) on Tuesday, the birth anniversary of the departed leader. The memorial has been constructed at the Rashtriya Smriti Sthal near Rajghat. The Atal Smriti Nyas Society has developed the memorial, Sadaiv Atal. The memorial is enclosed by nine bas-relief walls that have inscriptions of Vajpayee's poems. The BJP governments at the Centre and in the states have been celebrating Vajpayee's birthday as Good Governance Day, but this year's celebrations will likely be low-key after the party’s electoral losses in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

AAP vs BJP vs Congress

The last couple of days have seen many scuffles in Delhi. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) councillors in one of Delhi's civic bodies came to blows, while AAP also alleged that Youth Congress workers ransacked its office in central Delhi's Deendayal Upadhyaya Marg during a protest on Sunday evening. AAP warned such "action could lead to a reaction". The Delhi unit of the Youth Congress staged a protest outside the AAP office on Sunday against a resolution in the Delhi Assembly on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots demanding withdrawal of Bharat Ratna given to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Leaders in both the parties have been trying to reach some kind of an understanding for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls for Delhi's seven seats. However, there are also those in both the parties who are not keen on any electoral understanding, and the latest developments have strengthened their hands.