Hard at work

The leading duo within the Bharatiya Janata Party, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, wants every member of the party to toil and prove his or her worth. Several ministers of the political dispensation who have been elected through the easier Rajya Sabha route have thus come in the line of fire. The party’s high command has directed these leaders to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. This has led to serious concern among some senior ministers: they are scared of losing their portfolios in the event of failing to secure mandates in the 2024 general elections. Insiders say that even the BJP president, JP Nadda, has been prodded to lead by example. Interestingly, Nadda was recently in Himachal Pradesh, his home state, to launch the campaign for parliamentary elections as well as to prepare the ground for his candidature. During the visit, he exhorted party leaders to work hard and ensure that all four Lok Sabha seats in the hill state were won by the party. The Rajya Sabha terms of Nadda and other key ministers will expire in April. Consequently, they have been asked by the party’s top brass to provide a choice of three seats that they would like to contest from in the general elections. The whispers in the party corridors are that there is a rush among these ministers for some of the seats in Delhi which are not only easy to win but will also spare them the labour of campaigning in rural areas. The leadership, however, wants the ministers to prioritise their home states while listing their seats of choice.

Modern Nostradamus

While the writ of the prime minister seems to be the last word in the saffron party, in Bihar, another Modi is currently in demand in the political circles after a spate of predictions by him came true. Known as ‘Chhota Modi’ (Little Modi), the senior Rajya Sabha BJP member and former Bihar deputy chief minister, Sushil Kumar Modi, had predicted that the CM, Nitish Kumar, would replace Rajiv Ranjan Singh aka Lalan
Singh as the Janata Dal (United) national president. The prophecy had rattled the members of the ruling dispensation to such an extent that they had scoffed at him, asking whether he was so close to Nitish to have gained access to the latter’s thoughts or if he had been studying astrology.

Sushil Kumar Modi

Nitish was elected the JD(U) chief following Lalan Singh’s resignation during the party’s national executive on December 29. Having had his psychic abilities thus vindicated, Sushil Kumar Modi made three more political forecasts for the new year — Narendra Modi will be re-elected as the PM, Nitish will quit the CM’s position, and the JD(U) will split. However, something has changed since making those predictions and Sushil Kumar Modi has now gone soft on the JD(U) and instead shifted his focus to Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Opposition’s INDIA bloc. While people are busy hazarding guesses about this sudden shift, they are steering clear of making any prediction and waiting for Modi to read the tea leaves.

Wait and watch

The partners of the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar have been befuddled over the sudden shift in activities in state politics. Not being able to gauge the turn of events, they have fallen silent, preferring to wait and watch while keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that the changes do not end up hurting their fortunes. While some of these partners had deserted Nitish Kumar and the Grand Alliance in the past owing to bitter differences, others have always been staunch critics of Nitish.

“People are saying that he is going to shake hands again with the BJP. This has left us in panic because if he comes to the NDA, we could be left [with] nowhere [to go] with our hopes dashed. We don’t even know whether the BJP will give us the same importance that it is giving us right now. There should be some justice in such situations because Nitish may choose to ignore our criticisms,” said a senior leader whose party is an ally of the NDA.

Loyal companion

HD Kumaraswamy has been working for the BJP in right earnest since he led the Janata Dal (Secular) into the NDA fold last year. Apart from taking regular potshots at his old colleague-turned-adversary and current CM, PC Siddaramaiah, Kumaraswamy has been shielding Vikram Simha, who is an accused in an illegal tree-felling case.

It must be noted that Vikram is the brother of Pratap Simha, who represents the BJP from the Mysore-Kodagu Lok Sabha seat. Vikram was arrested in the case and recently got bail. Kumaraswamy, however, has alleged that Vikram was framed to tarnish his brother’s reputation as part of Siddaramaiah’s plan to get his son, Yathindra, elected from the Mysore-Kodagu seat.