Rising star
The status of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, continues to rise in the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is, at present, dominated by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the Union home minister, Amit Shah. On the day that votes were being counted in Karnataka, Adityanath gave the top leadership a reason to shed the gloom of losing the only southern state the party ruled. The BJP had swept the urban local body polls in UP. As the Opposition celebrated the BJP’s defeat in Karnataka, everyone in the ruling party latched on to the UP results to show that the BJP was still going strong. Modi tweeted that the BJP’s success was a result of the good work being done by the Adityanath government. The top leadership had been upset with Adityanath over the killing of the gangster and politician, Atiq Ahmed, and his brother in a shootout captured on camera. The killing had dealt a blow to the party’s drive to woo the backward castes among Muslims. The local body poll results, however, sealed the lips of the BJP leadership.
Feast on this
With eyes on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Janata Dal (United) national president and Munger member of Parliament, Rajiv Ranjan Singh aka Lalan Singh, has decided that the way to the heart of party workers and voters is through the stomach. He has been organising lavish mutton feasts in his parliamentary constituency. Around 35,000 people attended the last one. “A river of mutton and rice flows on such occasions. The best quality goats are procured from Champaran and Jharkhand. Around 3,000 to 4,000 goats are slaughtered... Excellent chefs are hired to prepare the dishes,” a JD(U) leader said.
Preliminary estimates suggest that several lakhs are spent on each such occasion. Whether the feasts will help Singh secure the Munger seat again remains to be seen. Meanwhile, JD(U) supporters in other constituencies have started clamouring for similar feasts. The BJP, though, found an opportunity to sling mud by alleging that thousands of stray dogs have vanished from the area where the feasts took place.
One-man show
After nine months in power in Bihar, the Grand Alliance of seven parties, among which Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal is the largest, has realised that numerical strength does not matter in a government led by Nitish Kumar. The governance is all about Nitish’s wishes. A senior RJD minister tried in vain to get his secretary replaced from a big department he heads before realising that “[m]any important departments might be with our party, but Nitish rules the roost with the help of his trusted IAS officers posted in them as additional chief secretaries, principal secretaries, and secretaries. He retains a chokehold on the departments and nothing moves without his nod.” He added that “for many in our party waiting for our leader, Tejashwi Yadav, to become the chief minister, I have warned them that it is not going to happen anytime soon. Nitish is not going to leave the perks that a chief minister has.” He then went back to brooding about his situation.
Stark difference
On the 19th death anniversary of former Kerala CM, EK Nayanar, many in the state and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) reminisced about the humour he had injected into public life. Known for his wisecracks and for amusing even political adversaries, Nayanar has lived on through video clips on social media. In total contrast is the incumbent CM, Pinarayi Vijayan, who is known as a tough and straightforward communist veteran who seldom minces his words and is rarely ever humourous. As some communists say, Vijayan is more old-school than Nayanar, especially in terms of humour.
Goodwill express
After its defeat in the Karnataka assembly elections, the BJP is trying to make the most of every possible opportunity to earn popular goodwill. The inaugural run of the Vande Bharat Express from Puri to Howrah on Thursday was one such opportunity that the party sought to encash on. After the train was flagged off virtually by the PM, Narendra Modi, from Delhi, the railways minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, a Rajya Sabha member from Odisha, himself boarded the train along with the Union minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, and many other BJP leaders to get first-hand knowledge of passengers travelling along with them.
Vaishnaw moved through the train, greeting passengers and media persons and inquiring about their experience and well-being. He was quick to instruct his staff to look into the needs and demands of his co-travellers when necessary. The passengers in the train were suitably impressed and the minister must have earned a lot of brownie points. He even got off at the stations where the train halted for a few minutes to exchange greetings with people and the BJP workers present there to see the Vande Bharat Express. One only has to see if this goodwill translates into votes for the party in the 2024 general elections.
