A pale shadow

The chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, gave a 15-minute-long speech at a National Democratic Alliance rally at Nawada and took his seat next to the prime minister, Narendra Modi, who went on to appreciate the speech. The CM folded his hands and touched Modi’s knees to show his gratitude. This small gesture triggered a political storm with the Opposition leaders quickly trying to portray it as Nitish bowing down and surrendering before the man who boasts of a 56-inch chest. On the other hand, the gesture also raised concerns about Nitish’s health amidst rumours that he is suffering from dementia. Those close to him recounted that he has developed this tendency to touch the feet of people younger than him in the last couple of years. At times, he appeals to them, including public servants, with folded hands while requesting them to expedite some work. Coupled with this, traits like suddenly getting excited, agitated, and angry on several occasions have increased worries about Nitish’s health. “I met him recently at a ceremony. He asked me how my health was. I told him I was okay and asked him to tell me about his own, at which he just smiled sheepishly and kept quiet. He is not his normal self, but just a shadow of himself. It pained me a lot,” an old friend of Nitish shared. A section of politicians said that the Opposition could have shown some humanity instead of grabbing the opportunity to score a point in the poll season. “Nitishji never made fun of Lalu Prasad’s illness. On the contrary, Lalu poked fun at the symptoms of dementia at a rally last month. And now his son, Tejashwi, has joined in,” one of them said.

Master politician

The Biju Janata Dal president and Odisha CM, Naveen Patnaik, is a seasoned politician and knows how to outsmart the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state. After alliance talks with the BJD failed, the BJP started poaching leaders from the former. A number of BJD leaders who fell out of favour with the party and were unlikely to get party tickets joined the BJP and started criticising the BJD and the functioning of the leadership. This put the leadership in an embarrassing situation.

Patnaik then played a masterstroke, ripping apart the BJP in the state by bringing two vice-presidents of the BJP state unit — Lekhashree Samantsinghar, once a bitter critic of his government, and Bhrugu Baxipatra — over to the BJD. Both were once acolytes of the Union minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, and have been rewarded with party tickets by the BJD to contest the Lok Sabha elections. While Samantsinghar has been pitted against the former Union minister, Pratap Chandra Sarangi, in Balasore, Baxipatra will take on Pradeep Panigrahy, once a BJD MLA whom the party expelled on disciplinary grounds, in Berhampur. Besides these two, several other BJP leaders have joined the BJD, sending shockwaves in the state unit. Naveen has turned the tables on his rival.

Pronounced guilty

All hell broke loose when Misa Bharti, the eldest daughter of the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief, Lalu Prasad, told people to give the INDIA bloc a chance to form the government at the Centre so that the PM and other BJP leaders could be put behind the bars soon. She is a Rajya Sabha member and is currently contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Pataliputra in Bihar. Her words invited a severe backlash from senior BJP and NDA leaders, who blamed her for having a vindictive streak. She backtracked by blaming the media for twisting her words.

On the other hand, the Union home minister, Amit Shah, asserted at a public rally in Gaya: “Let the Opposition protest as much as it wants, the Modi government will send the corrupt to jail. Narendra Modi has promised to send every corrupt person to jail and return the money of the poor people.” There was no protest over this statement, despite several people noting that deciding if an accused is corrupt and sending him to jail is the work of the judiciary. The executive, at best, can just arrest somebody.

Last resort

HD Kumaraswamy is busy convincing his traditional Vokkaliga vote bank that the Janata Dal (Secular) would maintain its core pro-farmer, pro-secular ideology even though it is in partnership with the BJP. In a last-ditch attempt to regain lost ground, Kumaraswamy wants his supporters to believe his words and not get swayed by the Congress’s campaign. According to him, even his father and the former PM, HD Deve Gowda, who had promised in April 2014 to leave the country if Narendra Modi became the PM, has shared the party’s goals with the current PM. While it is no secret that the alliance with the BJP was to save the JD(S) from political redundancy, the only saving grace for the Gowda family is that the party will not be merging with the BJP.