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Khurshid: Cong lacks direction

New Delhi: Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid has blamed lack of “ideological direction” from Rahul Gandhi as the root cause of problems which the Congress party is facing today.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Khurshid said, “Until now, we have only seen cameos of his thought and ideas like democratising elections to the Youth Congress. But he has not weaved all of this into a grand announcement. This is a period of waiting.”

“We need a new ideology to meet contemporary challenges. Reforms in the 1990s were the emergence of a new ideology. But today we need an ideology to be given by our next generation leader Rahul Gandhi to move forward. We have to be clear about what we want to go ahead with in the next elections,” he added.

 According to the minister, it is a “waiting time” for the Congress and the government until that happens.

Khurshid admitted that Rahul was still not ready to take complete charge. The party can do nothing about it but wait for him to make up his mind, he conceded.

SC to hear President's reference in 2G case

New Delhi: The Supreme Court will begin hearing from Tuesday the Centre's Presidential Reference seeking its opinion on various issues arising out of the apex court's 2G spectrum case verdict including whether auctioning of natural resources across all sectors is mandatory.

A five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia will commence hearing the Reference which has sought the apex court's view on whether the verdict in the 2G case can be given retrospective effect for radio waves granted since 1994.

The court on May 11 had issued notices and sought responses also from state governments and industrial chambers FICCI and CII on behalf of the private industries along with those of the NGO, Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) and Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy.

It was on the petitions by CPIL and Swamy that a bench of justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly (since retired) had delivered its February 2 verdict, which cancelled 122 telecom licences holding that the first-come-first-served policy was illegal and unconstitutional.

Karnataka: Shettar to be elected party leader today

Bangalore:  The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators in Karnataka will on Tuesday elect Jagadish Shettar as their new leader to make him the party's third chief minister in the state in four years.

"The BJP legislature party meeting has been convened here at 11am on Tuesday to unanimously elect Shettar as the new leader through a resolution. The meeting will be presided by central observers Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley," a party spokesman said.

A day after BJP president Nitin Gadkari announced in New Delhi on Sunday that Shettar would replace incumbent chief minister DV Sadananda Gowda, hectic parleys were held throughout Monday in the party state unit, with ministers, lawmakers and cadres discussing the legislature meeting and formation of the new government, including cabinet representations.

Party state in charge Dharmendra Pradhan held discussions with leaders and legislators at the party office in the city and called on Shettar, Gowda and party general secretary Ananth Kumar for a smooth change of the government.