Indomitable
Realising to his woe that Doiwala is proving a slippery slope for his political fortunes, the BJP national secretary Trivendra Singh Rawat might leave it for a much safer one, Raipur. However, compounding his woes, Raipur is not interested either. Rawat tried his electoral luck from Raipur Assembly constituency in 2012. He tasted defeat. Undaunted, he threw his hat in the ring for the Assembly by-election from Doiwala in July this year. He was humbled again. However, the battle-hardened politician is singularly reluctant to leave the ground. Invincibly convinced that he is not yet ‘spent –up’, he has decided to resurrect himself through Raipur. With focus unwaveringly fixed, he recently staged a protest rally at the Dehradun District Magistrate’s office to ventilate the pent-up grievances of the people there. He seems to have had his arithmetic right. Raipur being mostly an urban constituency, he feels his party being an urban-centric one would stand him in good stead.
Glorifying Switch
Was there any political design in facilitating the homecoming of the former rebel Durgapal to the Congress the day the media was dishing out the nationally crucial Assembly election mandate from Jammu and Kashmir and JharkhandIJ Given the Chief Minister Harish Rawat’s penchant to hijack focus, such speculation is justified. And if things were so the ploy seemed to have paid off well. Most of the local media swallowed the bait. Particularly, a regional channel, supposedly in the good book of the State Government, was engaged throughout the day in splashing the viewers with the ‘Breaking News’ of the Independent MlA switching over to the ruling party. It seemed, the switch would prove to be nothing short of a ‘panacea for all the troubles the Chief Minister, the State Government and the Congress had been negotiating together with for some time. Durgapal was gratified with his ‘switch’ being thus glorified.