The Congress, under pressure from INDIA bloc allies, has finally made a move to thrash out the contentious issue of seat-sharing. Sources said party leaders are reaching out to allies for seat sharing and adjustments across the country. Senior leader Mukul Wasnik has dialled various Opposition party chiefs. If required, the Congress will go to states to meet Opposition leaders too if required.

Sources indicated that the party hopes to finalise the seat-sharing agreements before the next phase of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which will begin on January 14. The idea is to get on with campaigning as the Manipur-to-Mumbai march begins.

With that mind, the list of candidates, too, is expected to be finalised sooner rather than later.

The Congress decision came at a meeting held this evening at the party headquarters in Delhi. A second meeting was held at the home of party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, where besides Rahul Gandhi, the committee on seat-sharing — headed by Mukul Wasnik — was also present. Former chief ministers Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Baghel are the members of the seat-sharing committee.

The path to seat sharing, though, is expected to be rocky, with leaders of various Opposition parties signalling their unwillingness to share turf.

“INDIA alliance will be present in entire India and in Bengal the Trinamool Congress will fight. In Bengal it is only the Trinamool Congress that can teach the BJP a lesson. It can show the entire country the path to victory, not any other party,” Mamata Banerjee has said.  

The Shiv Sena UBT, too, has telegraphed reluctance.

“This is Maharashtra, and Shiv Sena is the biggest party here. Congress is a national party… We have always said that Shiv Sena has always been fighting on 23 seats in the Lok Sabha elections including Dadra and Nagar Haveli and that will be firm,” senior party leader Sanjay Raut had said.

Maharashtra has 48 seats and some will be claimed by Maha Vikas Aghadi ally — the Sharad Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party. While the Congress is part of the alliance, its say is limited given the number of seats it won in the 288-member assembly in the 2019 polls was only 44.  

Leaders of Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party have also indicated that they would not like to share any of the 21 seats in Delhi and Punjab.

While AAP has kept the Congress hemmed in both states, the party’s showing in the 2019 general elections had not been steller.

Though AAP won four of the 13 seats in Punjab, it ended up losing them to factionalism and party-hopping. In Delhi, AAP lost all 8 seats to the BJP.

In Bihar too, the Opposition bloc participants have a very clear idea about their claims, though there have been no on-record comments on the subject from the ruling Janata Dal United and ally Rashtriya Janata Dal.

The Congress’s poor showing in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh assembly elections, is expected to further erode its heft.

The seat-sharing situation in Uttar Pradesh, which has the biggest chunk of Lok Sabha seats, 80, is expected to draw much attention.   

Deprived of the six seats he sought in Madhya Pradesh by the state leaders of the Congress, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is not expected to yield ground in his home territory. Akhilesh Yadav has openly expressed his displeasure with the Congress ahead of the election in Madhya Pradesh.

In 2019, the Congress had managed to win only one seat in Uttar Pradesh – Raebareli, which is the stronghold of Sonia Gandhi. The state hold the key to power in Delhi.

Former model Divya Pahuja was killed at a Gurgaon hotel on Tuesday, with CCTV footage showing killers dragging her body out of the hotel to a car. Police have managed to identify and arrest three of the five accused through the footage and also recovered the BMW used, but the body of Divya Pahuja is yet to be found.

The 27-year-old was taken to a hotel room on Tuesday by five men. She was shot in the head as she had allegedly been blackmailing the hotel owner with his obscene pictures, police said.

CCTV footage recovered from the hotel shows two men dragging Pahuja’s body, wrapped in a blanket, down a corridor of the hotel at 10.45 pm on Tuesday. One of the men is later seen walking back. Police said the body was carried to a blue BMW owned by Singh and disposed of.

Cops said Abhijeet Singh – the main accused in the murder case – had handed over the car with the body to Balraj Gill alias Hemraj (28) around a kilometre away from the hotel.

Gurgaon Police found the BMW car on Thursday evening at a bus stand in Punjab’s Patiala. But the former model’s body was not in the car and police are now questioning the three arrested about where they dumped the body.

Divya Pahuja was in jail for her alleged involvement in the fake encounter of her then-boyfriend and Gurugram gangster Sandeep Gadoli in 2016. She had been granted bail in June last year.  

Several police officials were later arrested when it was alleged that the encounter was fake. Pahuja and her mother were also taken into custody for allegedly revealing the gangster’s whereabouts and facilitating the “fake encounter”.

Pahuja was in prison since 2016 and was granted bail by the Bombay High Court in June last year.

In more trouble for the Aam Aadmi Party and its convenor Arvind Kejriwal, a fresh “scam” has rocked the party that is already under the scanner of probe agencies.

Allegations have now been levelled against the AAP’s flagship healthcare project in Delhi – the Mohalla Clinics. The neighbourhood clinics set up to provide free primary healthcare to the people of Delhi have allegedly run hundreds of “fake” lab tests.

This comes days after reports of substandard medicines being supplied to Delhi’s state-run hospitals surfaced and the Enforcement Directorate sent its third summons to Arvind Kejriwal in the Delhi excise policy “scam”.

What Is The Mohalla Clinic “Scam”?

The Mohalla Clinics, central to the AAP’s welfare model, allegedly ordered and ran lakhs of “fake” pathology and radiology tests on non-existent patients, sources have claimed.

The alleged scam runs into hundreds of crores of rupees, sources said.

According to sources, the Mohalla Clinics – which provide primary health care services to the people of Delhi – reportedly ordered lakhs of fake pathology and radiology tests on “ghost” patients.

According to officials, “grave” fraudulent practices were prevalent in the lab tests being done in the name of patients visiting Delhi government hospitals and Mohalla Clinics with payments being made to private labs.

“Fake and non-existent mobile numbers were used to register the patients,” the office of the Delhi Lt Governor said.

Phone numbers were also duplicated, the sources said, adding that payments were made to private labs referred to by the Mohalla Clinics, the sources said.

“It is indicative of a scam running in hundreds of crores (of rupees). Saxena had issued these directions while clearing a file about the extension of lab testing services to private parties for patients visiting the Mohalla Clinics and Delhi government hospitals in December 2022,” an official said, reported news agency PTI.

The Delhi government’s Vigilance and Health Departments investigated the lab tests that were outsourced to private diagnostic centres.

Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation, or the CBI, to probe the allegations of corruption against Mohalla Clinics run by the AAP in Delhi.

What The BJP Said

BJP Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi slammed the AAP government in Delhi over the allegations. “The Delhi government had made arrangements for pathological tests at the so-called Mohalla Clinics. However, the clinics have come under a cloud of suspicion after the vigilance department reports and department findings came out,” he said.

What AAP Said

The AAP defended its welfare scheme and demanded the Delhi health secretary be sacked over several issues.

Addressing a press conference, Delhi Health Minister and AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said his government had last year de-empanelled several doctors and staffers at Mohalla Clinics over wrongdoings.

“The Mohalla Clinic is an individual entity and not a massive set-up. We brought in a video application system to record the attendance of the staff. Now some disgraceful doctors took advantage of this. We fired 26 people – seven doctors and their staff who helped them,” Mr Bharadwaj said.