Competitive streak
The Union home minister, Amit Shah, has started campaigning for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. A bunch of states are also going to the polls this year. Shah is campaigning for them, but he is also addressing rallies in states where assembly polls are not due. He has addressed rallies in Maharashtra and will be in Bihar next week, both due for assembly elections after the Lok Sabha polls. Whenever elections are around the corner, Shah betrays a desperate desire to be seen as the most visible face of the party after the prime minister, Narendra Modi. Shah is the only Union minister who has started canvassing for the general elections. As the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party during the first stint of the Modi government, Shah was the only face in all campaign material along with the PM. This drove the perception of the current regime being a Modi-Shah duopoly. That optics has been lost after he joined the government and thus the desperation. According to rumours, post 2024, the tussle over Modi’s successor is likely to unfold and Shah cannot lag behind at a time when Yogi Adityanath is also eyeing the top post.
Dream sequence
Tej Pratap Yadav, the eldest son of the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief, Lalu Prasad, got ready for office, donned a green cap, shunned his automobile and jumped on a simple crossbar bicycle. Asked about the switch, he revealed that it was because of a dream. “I was going to Vrindavan. Deceased Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav’s village, Safai, was on the route and I paid a visit. He was there and blessed me to work for the people. I decided to ride the bicycle as a mark of respect to him,” he said. The bicycle is the election symbol of the Samajwadi Party. Political circles were abuzz after learning about this incident. Old-timers remembered that Lalu, too, had such dreams. “Once he dreamed about the gods telling him to quit eating non-vegetarian food. He did so and suffered a lot because he is a person who enjoys eating tasty mutton, chicken and fish preparations. When it became unbearable, the Gods again came in his dream and allowed him to eat non-veg food,” a senior RJD leader said. One wonders what the younger son and deputy chief minister of Bihar, Tejashwi Yadav, is dreaming of. The chief minister’s chair perhaps.
Cut it short
When the Bihar CM, Nitish Kumar, gets up to deliver an address, his colleagues and the audience brace for a barrage of names. He makes sure to read the name of each and every significant person and official present at the event before delving into his speech which runs into 40 minutes. “Reading out the names is fine. It makes the people whose names he takes feel important. The officers also feel happy that the chief minister is taking their name,” a politician close to Nitish said. “However, the actual problem happens when he begins his speech. He keeps a few things written on paper, but largely goes impromptu and digresses left and right. This also makes him mumble and become incoherent at times, much to the discomfiture of everybody present there,” the politician added and wished that the CM used a teleprompter like the PM.
Offence is the best defence
The Aam Aadmi Party leader and Delhi CM, Arvind Kejriwal, and his party’s top leaders were in Mumbai to firm up ties with the beleaguered Uddhav Thackeray. In spite of unseating the BJP after 15 years from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi last year, the AAP has been unable to properly take office. Clashes between the two parties ensured that Kejriwal could not launch the latest edition of his national expansion plans. But in true AAP fashion of disrupting the narrative, Kejriwal, the Punjab CM, Bhagwant Mann, and members of Parliament, Raghav Chadha and Sanjay Singh, dashed off to meet Thackeray in their attempt to build a non-Congress national Opposition. Kejriwal will visit Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh next month where his party plans to contest assembly polls. The focus will be on Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, where the Congress seems to be in a disarray.
Internal rifts
The Left Democratic Front convener, EP Jayarajan, has a knack for landing in controversies. The latest one being his absence at the CPI(M)’s People’s Resistance March from the north to the south of Kerala organised by its state secretary, MV Govindan. The latter dismissed talks about differences with Jayarajan and said that the LDF convener could join the march at any stage. But the absence of Jayarajan when the march started from Kasaragod, despite him being present in that district, has raised so many eyebrows in the state that even the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s well-oiled public relations machinery is finding it difficult to provide a convincing answer. Many attribute Jayarajan’s absence to a controversy about an illegal Ayurvedic resort in his native Kannur as a possible reason for staying away from the march aimed at strengthening federalism and secularism.
Footnote
The tennis legend, Björn Borg, had to walk away from a felicitation as the chief guest, the Karnataka CM, Basavaraj Bommai, was late. The incident, on the sidelines of the Bengaluru Tennis Open, has brought to light the tardiness of most politicians. Borg left as he would rather watch his son, Leo Borg, play. The Swedish legend then politely told the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association officials, who informed him of Bommai’s arrival, that he wouldn’t move until after the match. The felicitation was eventually cancelled.
