Narendra Modi, the chief of the BJP’s election campaigning committee, has never targeted Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. But the rivalry between the two has emerged as one of the biggest talking points in this poll season.
Modi is already busy making plans to rout the Bihar strongman in his home turf. That is the reason why he has given prominence to social engineering in Bihar while preparing the party’s poll strategy. Interestingly, the first proposal to declare Modi as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate has come from Bihar.
Modi also wants the BJP to woo Pasmanda Muslims. The politics of Pasmanda Muslims first started in Bihar and it has now reached Uttar Pradesh. In Bihar, this group forms the core vote-bank of Nitish Kumar, who has sent its leader, Ali Anwar, to the Rajya Sabha for the second consecutive term.
The second core constituency of Nitish Kumar is that of the extremely backwards, and Modi is eying this segment of the electorate as well. In a bid to erode this vote-bank of the JD(U), the Bihar BJP unit is already projecting Modi as a ‘representative’ of the Extremely Backward Castes. Also, Upendra Kushwaha, who has left JD(U) to form his own party, is coming closer to the BJP and has backed Modi’s prime ministerial candidature. Kushwaha has said that coming from the Extremely Backward Caste (EBC) background, Modi is the right choice for the Prime Minister’s post given his credentials as an administrator. He has also alleged that Kumar harbours ill will against any EBC leader who dreams big. All these show that the Modi camp is leaving no stone unturned in its attempts to woo both Pasmanda Muslims and EBCs.
Rahul’s PROBlEMS
Rahul Gandhi has warned all Congress leaders to stop infighting. He has issued strict instructions to all factions of almost all the States, but infighting has not stopped yet. The Congress vice-president is particularly worried about the States where elections are going to be held shortly.
For example, after taking charge of the Congress in Chhattisgarh, Charandas Mahant has made at least 10 complaints against Ajit Jogi in the last one month. Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, the tussle among Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kamal Nath and Digvijay Singh has made Rahul worried. likewise in Delhi, he has held at least 10 meetings with Sheila Dikshit, Jai Prakash Agarwal and Ajay Maken, but the situation has not improved much. In Rajasthan, two big leaders have recently fought over the distribution of tickets.
The scenario doesn’t look good in other States as well. In Punjab, the hostility between former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and State party president Pratap Singh Bajwa has reached a crescendo. In Assam, after a brief lull, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has opened a new front against Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi by claiming the support of 40 MlAs. In Haryana, Chaudhary Virendra Singh is openly at loggerheads with Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. In Tamil Nadu, the story is three-fold — P Chidambaram versus Jayanthi Natarajan versus GK Wasan. In Kerala, there are factions of Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala. And in Karnataka, there are several groups within the Congress.
WHO CARES FOR ADVICEIJ
Recently, Rahul Gandhi had issued a diktat to party spokespersons asking them to control their tongues while talking to the media and be modest. Though the party leaders are mostly adhering to these directives, there remains an exception: On the issue of Narendra Modi, they get jittery enough to throw into thin air any semblance of party discipline. This explains why they have recently called Modi a monkey and a snake. Salman Khurshid went to the extent of calling him a frog just out of the well! Taking the diatribe further, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad has now compared Modi with “Gangu teli”. likewise, Union Minister Anand Sharma has termed Modi a national shame. We can also recollect senior Congressman Rashid Alvi’s act of comparing Modi with Yamraj. One wonders when such petty name-calling will stop.
No going back on telangana
The Congress has given a clear message to its leaders in Andhra Pradesh that the party will not reconsider its decision to create Telangana. Many Andhra leaders, including Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, thought the party high command would revisit its decision in the light of the Seemandhra protests and the growing clout of Jaganmohan Reddy.
The four-member committee, set up by Sonia Gandhi and presided by AK Antony, has made it clear that the decision to create a separate State will not be changed under any circumstances. It reached a consensus that there would be much political loss if the Telangana decision was reversed. The committee felt that though the party would lose in the Andhra region, it would be benefited in Telangana.
Bihar Modi-fied
Politics in Bihar has become Modi-centric, it seems. The entire political class in the State is either attacking Modi or singing praise for him. In other words, the divide between Modi-supporters and Modi-baiters is sharpening with every passing day. For example, Nawal Kishore Yadav of the RJD recently praised Modi and Sadhu Yadav of the Congress reached Ahmedabad to meet him, calling him a prime ministerial material. And when Bihar BJP unit passed a resolution to declare Modi as the party’s prime ministerial candidate, the JD(U)’s breakaway leaders, Upendra Kushwaha and Arun Kumar, who recently formed the Rashtriya lok Samata Party, supported it. There is also speculation that some more leaders from the RJD and the Congress will join the pro-Modi chorus and join the BJP.
COMMUNAl POlITICS IN UP
As the country is about to enter another election season, bubbles of communal polarisation have already started surfacing in the political landscape of Uttar Pradesh. The controversy started when the VHP leaders met Mulayam Singh Yadav and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. The VHP leaders claim that Mulayam had shown a positive response towards all the issues raised by them, including its plan to have the 84 Kosh Parikrama to the Ram temple. The Samajwadi Party, however, is saying that no such talks have happened.
The question is: Why did Mulayam meet the VHP leaders, and if he really met them, then why didn’t he issue a statementIJ This question has also been raised by Azam Khan, Yadav’s close aide. He says that this meeting has sent a wrong signal to the minorities. Is it the beginning of another Ram movementIJ
CONGRESS’s doublespeak
The Congress has made several recommendations to the law Commission for electoral reforms, some of which are quite amusing. The party has said that a panel setup by the CAG must check the accounts of all political parties. It must be noted that the Congress had earlier targeted the CAG. likewise, it has recommended that the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and other Election Commissioners should be stopped from accepting any post after retirement. This is also contrary to party’s own records as it was the Congress which made former CEC MS Gill an MP and Union Minister. Also, the election of the Youth Congress was held under the supervision of another former CEC, JM lyngdoh.