Unique bond

The chief minister of Karnataka, Basavaraj Bommai, has found an easy way to deflect talks about a rift with his predecessor and party stalwart, BS Yediyurappa. He has been claiming a ‘father-son’ relationship with the party veteran who still wields clout with the dominant Lingayat community. With hardly five months to go for the state elections and Bommai trying his best to keep his head above water amidst talks of a leadership change if the party manages to buck anti-incumbency and win, he knows all too well that it would be catastrophic to take on the veteran who is still active in mainstream politics.

Sudden activity

The former Union minister and Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament from Sundargarh, Jual Oram, lost his prominence during the second term of the National Democratic Alliance and is trying hard to grab the limelight ahead of the 2024 general elections. The veteran tribal leader has been meeting Union ministers and other prominent politicians to highlight issues relating to his constituency.

On December 15, he met the minister of railways, and communications, electronics and information technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, in New Delhi with a delegation from the Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Rourkela — a part of Oram’s Lok Sabha constituency. Vaishnaw, who is aware of the fact that Oram was the first tribal affairs minister of India, assured all possible help. He made the delegation comfortable with his behaviour. Oram is now also active on social media and retweets almost all of Modi’s tweets from his account. This, he apparently hopes, will bring him back into the prime minister’s good books.

Mixed messages

Earlier this week, Rohini Acharya, the daughter of the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief, Lalu Prasad, who donated one of her kidneys to him, set alarm bells ringing. She tweeted asking people to pray for her father because he was a bit ill and in a hospital in Singapore after the transplant. It has been quite a few days since Prasad underwent the surgery and people were worried about the well-being of their leader. However, his youngest son and Bihar deputy chief minister, Tejashwi Yadav, cleared the air by saying that his father was recuperating nicely and has been shifted from the ICU to the ward. Tejashwi added that his father’s kidneys were functioning at 88% in comparison to the 10% before the transplant. His creatinine level was also 0.5 whereas it used to be between 7 and 8. But the junior RJD leader added a caveat: his father would not immediately return to India after being discharged from the hospital and will stay in Singapore for a few months. This led to more speculation among supporters and politicians as they pointed out that no video messages from the veteran had been posted since the day after the surgery.

Catch the signal

Nitish Kumar is considered a past master in subtle politics and at killing many birds with one stone. When he recently declared that the deputy CM and RJD leader, Tejashwi Yadav, will lead the Grand Alliance in the 2025 Bihar assembly elections, people assumed many things. Some said that Nitish would not abdicate before his present term is over, others thought he was dangling a carrot before Tejashwi so that the latter sticks with him for another three years, others still were of the opinion that he deflected the pressure being mounted on him by a section of RJD leaders to install Tejashwi as the CM.

But people outside Bihar took notice of the announcement for a different reason. They felt that Nitish is signalling his eagerness to take centrestage in Opposition politics at the national level and projecting himself as a prime ministerial candidate, one dedicated to countering the BJP. Time will tell if he hit all the birds successfully.

Complicated history

The Kerala CM, Pinarayi Vijayan, drew flak online for hosting Israeli consul-general, Tammy Ben-Haim, and tweeting, “Recalled the age old ties between Israel and Kerala.” In a double whammy, Leftist twitterati slammed Vijayan for equating Kerala’s centuries-old Jewish community with Israel. Many alleged hypocrisy by pointing to the Left’s opposition of Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel in 2017 during which he did not visit the Palestinian Authority.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has long opposed ties with Israel owing to its occupation of Palestinian territory. But late CPI(M) leaders — Somnath Chatterjee and Jyoti Basu — also visited Israel to seek investments for Bengal.

Footnote

AH Vishwanath is becoming a major liability for the BJP. A Congress lawmaker who defected to the BJP, triggering the downfall of the Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress coalition in 2019, life has not been the same for Vishwanath. Currently a member of the legislative council, Vishwanath has been taking potshots at the BJP, the latest being an allegation that he was offered money to join the party. Now negotiating a return to the Congress, Vishwanath has promised more explosive details of the ‘Operation Lotus’ engineered by the BJP.