On call

‘Oops!’, everybody present at a recent Congress function in Patna thought. But nobody knew whether it was a faux pas or a deliberate act by the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief, Lalu Prasad. Speaking in his inimitable style, he revealed that he had talked to Sonia Gandhi over the phone during his imprisonment in 2018, when the Bihar Congress president, Akhilesh Prasad Singh, met him to seek his support for Rajya Sabha candidacy. The RJD chief was serving a sentence in the fodder scam case and was lodged at the Hotwar jail in Ranchi. “I telephoned Sonia Gandhi from there. I called top Congress leaders, I called Ahmed Patel, and asked them to declare Akhilesh as the candidate. He is continuing as a Rajya Sabha member since then,” Lalu said. Calling people from jail while being incarcerated is unlawful. Expectedly, the revelation
did not go down well with most, including Congress leaders. However, the Grand Old Party neither protested nor contradicted the statement. The Bharatiya Janata Party gleefully lapped up the opportunity and asserted that Lalu never obeyed the prison rules, indulged in illegal activities, and led a luxurious life instead of reforming himself. The saffron leaders are now demanding that Lalu be sent back to prison and made to undergo the sentence properly, giving RJD whips a lot to worry about.

Retirement plans

The president, Droupadi Murmu, has announced her retirement plans. While launching the fourth edition of Bihar’s agriculture roadmap at a recent function in Patna, Murmu asserted that she was “kisaan ki beti (daughter of a farmer)” and “President ke baad jana hai gaon kheti karne (will go back to my village [Uparbeda in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha] and take up farming after the president’s tenure is over)”.

Murmu added that she would keep coming back to Bihar to learn from farmers about cultivation. At this, the farmers wondered whether the president’s assertion could act as a balm for their hardships.

High hopes

The BJP leadership has unleashed chief ministerial aspirations for a bunch of Lok Sabha members by fielding them in the upcoming assembly elections in several states. Rajasthan is a case in point. There is the former Union minister, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who fancies himself for the top job. Then there is Diya Kumari. Her supporters feel that she is the perfect choice, given the passage of the women’s reservation bill. Further, Diya hails from the royal family of Jaipur and is thus an ideal person to replace Vasundhara Raje Scindia, another royal family member.

A monk-cum-parliamentarian, Balaknath, is also in the race. The supporters of the Union minister, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, have been claiming that he enjoys the trust of Amit Shah. But it is a no-brainer that whoever has the confidence of Narendra Modi will get the nomination.

Annual event

The annual blame game between the Delhi government and the Centre regarding the worsening pollution in the capital has begun. Last week, the Aam Aadmi Party lashed out at the Delhi Pollution Control Committee for stalling a study conducted by IIT Kanpur which reported that the major sources of pollution are from outside the capital. After changes to the Central law, the Centre has the upper hand in managing Delhi’s bureaucrats, including the pollution committee’s chairman. The government is thus facing an uphill task implementing a campaign for drivers to turn off their engines at red lights. The salaries of civil defence volunteers, who will be implementing the scheme, have been pending for months due to the standoff between the government and the lieutenant-governor.

Online security

The army has issued a directive to its personnel about excessive use of social media, warning them against sharing photos in uniform as profile pictures and revealing their ranks, unit name and location, as part of cyber security protocols. The directive had been issued because some personnel had inadvertently leaked sensitive information to foreign agencies.

Powerful presence

The BJP just can’t do away with BS Yediyurappa. After the Lingayat leader was eased out of the CM’s office in 2021, the party leadership had to placate him by inducting him into the BJP’s parliamentary board. His son, BY Vijayendra, was given a ticket to contest from his father’s long-held Shikaripura seat in the 2023 state polls. Vijayendra is now a frontrunner for the state BJP president’s post along with the Union minister, Shobha Karandlaje, a Yediyurappa protege.