Mister Popular

Settling into his new role as the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi seems to have already caused consternation in the saffron camp. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, who till now had dismissed him as ‘pappu’ and ‘shehzada’, are dismayed by the significant amount of attention that he is getting in Parliament. While the BJP’s high command is still coming to terms with Rahul’s rise as a seasoned politician, privately, many BJP members have been singing his praises. “So far, he has conducted himself very well as [the] LoP,” a senior BJP parliamentarian acknowledged. On Friday, minutes after the House was adjourned over the Opposition’s demand for a discussion on NEET irregularities and other national-level exam fiascos, some BJP members were spotted exchanging pleasantries with Rahul. As Rahul and other Opposition leaders walked across the treasury benches towards the canteen in the new Parliament building, some BJP members even went to meet him. Rahul greeted them with a smile and they extended their arms to shake his hand. Later, some BJP members were left wondering about the scene in the House if Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, too, wins the election from Wayanad, a seat which has been vacated by Rahul.

Plug the leaks

The Rashtriya Janata Dal chief, Lalu Prasad, has called for a probe into the construction of the Ram mandir after reports emerged of rainwater leaking from the roof into the sanctum sanctorum. Rejecting the excuses of the temple trust, Lalu pointed out that the sewers of the Rampath, the road leading to the temple, had also subsided and a wall of the new Ayodhya Dham railway station had collapsed.

Lalu Prasad

“They have not spared Lord Ram. The temple’s chief priest had asserted that it was impossible to complete the construction work even by July 2025, but it was inaugurated in a hurried manner to exploit the emotions of the people in the polls,” Prasad said. He pointed out that while the voters have already taught the BJP a lesson — it lost the Faizabad seat — a probe is required to nab the culprits. He also wondered whether the godi media would make a beeline for Ayodhya to report on the leakage.

Scary pattern

Janata Dal (United) leaders in Bihar are a worried lot in the wake of the poll debacle faced by Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal in Odisha. Their concern stems from the fact that a veteran bureaucrat yields considerable sway over the chief minister, Nitish Kumar, and his close associates. There are growing murmurs that the said bureaucrat controls everything in a very clever manner — he stays in the shadows and thus ends up exercising more power than any of his predecessors. Several JD(U) leaders speculate that the concerned official dances to the tunes of the BJP leadership at the Centre, and even played a key role in Kumar’s switch from the Mahagatbandhan to the National Democratic Alliance earlier this year.

“There is something fishy in this arrangement... Maybe the BJP bigwigs have his reins in their hands,” a JD(U) leader said. Another pointed out that Naveen’s over-dependence on his close aide and bureaucrat-turned-politician, VK Pandian, did him in. The general consensus in the JD(U) is that if Nitish wants the party to do well in the assembly polls, he will have to stop relying on bureaucratic help and start making shrewd decisions on his own. Else he will meet the same fate as that of Patnaik.

Flight path

Responding to a demand that is more than a decade old, the Tamil Nadu CM, MK Stalin, recently announced the building of a new international airport in Hosur, one of India’s fastest-growing cities that is located close to Bengaluru. An industrial hub, Hosur has a maintenance aerodrome that is just 80 kilometres from the Bengaluru airport.

Pre-empting opposition from Karnataka, the Tamil Nadu government is reportedly in talks with the Bengaluru airport, which has an agreement with the Centre that disallows the construction of another airport within a 150-km radius. Further, the government in Karnataka led by the Congress, an ally of the Dravidra Munnetra Kazhagam, has been cold towards extending the Bengaluru metro rail to Hosur for fear of the tech city losing its economic edge to the less congested Tamil counterpart.

Prodigal son

MV Nikesh Kumar recently quit his role as the editor-in-chief of Reporter TV to join politics. The son of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) veteran, MV Raghavan, who turned a rebel and launched his own Communist Marxist Party, Nikesh is likely to rejoin the CPI(M). Having unsuccessfully contested as a Left candidate in the 2016 polls, Nikesh’s return to the CPI(M) fold has led critics to question the rationale of once again embracing the party that his father detested.