Badminton lovers it’s time to celebrate! Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy on Sunday won their first title of 2023 at the Swiss Open 2023 happening in Basel.

By beating Ren Xiang Yu and Tang Qiang of China in the finals, the duo created history and became the first Indian pair ever to win at the Swiss Open badminton. Shetty and Rankireddy won against the World No. 21 21-19, 24-22 in 54 minutes to get off the mark in the new season.

The title is Shetty and Rankireddy’s first one on the tour since their French Open Super 750 triumph on October 2022. The pair had earlier won 3 titles in 2022 including the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games and also finished with a bronze medal at the World Championships.

In another huge victory for India, Boxers Nitu Ghanghas and Saweety Boora scripted history by becoming the sixth and seventh Indian boxers to win the Women’s World Boxing Championship.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the duo for their remarkable victory.

Ghanghas won against Mongolia’s Lutsaikhan Altansetseg in the 48 kg final and registered a dominating 5-0 win in the 81 kg category. Boora won the gold medal via a split verdict and registered a 4-3 win against China’s Wang Lina.

Congress on Sunday staged a nationwide “Sankalp Satyagraha” in support of former party President Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha following his conviction and two-year prison sentence by a court in Gujarat’s Surat city in a 2019 criminal defamation case.

In national capital Delhi, the Congress kicked off its day-long protest at Rajghat and despite the Delhi Police denying permission for the protest, Congress top brass including chief Mallikarjun Kharge, general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, senior leaders KC Venugopal, P Chidambaram and Salman Khurshid took part in the Satyagraha.

Senior Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Mukul Wasnik, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Saktisinh Gohil, Jothimani, Pratibha Singh and Manish Chatrath were also present at the protest.

Several leaders of the party’s Delhi chapter also took part in the protest while a large number of party workers gathered outside the venue.

Addressing the protesters, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi said that the son of a martyr who walked thousands of kilometers for national unity, can never insult the country, referring to her brother Rahul Gandhi and her father Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991.

Priyanka also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “insulting” Kashmiri Pandits by questioning why the Gandhi family doesn’t use the Nehru surname.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the Congress held a day-long ‘Sankalp Satyagraha’ in Srinagar with former Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) chief Ghulam Ahmad Mir accusing the PM Modi-led ruling BJP of taking “illegal and undemocratic” to hush the opposition.

Scores of Congress workers and leaders also staged protests in various Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat.

In Rajasthan, the party’s state unit chief Govind Singh Dotasra, minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas and several other leaders participated in the protest at the Collectorate Circle.

Dotasra said the protest is against the Centre’s suppression of the opposition’s voice.

The Punjab and Haryana units of Congress also held a day-long satyagraha against the former Wayanad MP’s disqualification.

Both units held separate events at the state headquarters as part of the protest programme in which many senior leaders participated.

Talking to newsmen, Punjab Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring alleged that the action against Rahul Gandhi was taken because the BJP-led Centre was “scared” of his next speech in Parliament on the Adani issue.

In Gujarat, state Congress chief Jagdish Tahor, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Amit Chavda and party leader Bharatsinh Solanki, along with Congress workers were detained by the police as they attempted to stage a protest at Ahmedabad’s Lal Darwaza.

The protesters were taken to the police stadium where they continued to shout slogans against PM Modi and the BJP.

In Jharkhand, senior Congress leaders including Jharkhand ministers—Rameshwar Oraon and Banna Gupta— assembled at Bapu Vatika at Morabadi ground in Ranchi to lodge their protest, claiming that the PM Modi’s BJP regime at the Centre is scared of Gandhi’s “vociferous voice” on Adani issue.

Meanwhile, the BJP tore into Congress for the satyagraha protest, accusing the grand old party of protesting against the nation’s Constitution the court’s verdict against Rahul Gandhi to justify his remarks against the “entire backward community” of the country.

Rahul Gandhi was disqualified from the Lok Sabha on Friday, a day after a Surat court convicted him in a 2019 defamation case and sentenced him to a two-year jail term. The disqualification will prevent 52-year-old Gandhi, a four-time MP, from contesting elections for eight years unless a higher court stays the conviction.

Former Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, who was disqualified from the Lok Sabha on Frida, has now updated his Twitter bio on Sunday.

Gandhi displayed the disqualification on his official Twitter account which is followed by more than 20 million people. He mentioned ‘Disqualified MP’ in his bio on the day when his party members are carrying out Sankalp Satyagrah and protesting against his disqualification from the Parliament across the country.

Have a look:

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Varda are protesting at the Raj Ghat in New Delhi. Earlier today, the Delhi Police denied permission to the party to carry out a protest at Raj Ghat citing the management of traffic as the reason and also imposed Section 144 of CrPc in the area.

Heavy security is also deployed in the capital today.

Rahul Gandhi on Thursday was sentenced to 2 years in jail in connection with the 2019 defamation case over the Modi surname remark. A Surat court suspended his arrest and granted him bail on a bail bond of Rs 15,000.

While addressing a rally at Kolar in Karnataka ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he argued why the names of all thieves have Modi as their surname. The case against Rahul Gandhi was filed before the Surat court under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 499 and 500 (dealing with defamation).

On Friday, Gandhi’s Lok Sabha membership was cancelled and he was disqualified from the Parliament.

On Saturday, Gandhi conducted a press conference and attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party over the Gautam Adani row involving a Hindenburg Report. Addressing to media, Gandhi said he is not afraid of any disqualification and will continue to fight for the democracy of India.

He also claimed that his disqualification is a distraction from the Adani row.