CAPITAL GUPSHUP

There is an unusual scenario emerging in Bihar, which goes for assembly polls in November first week. Both Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who belongs to the JD(U), and deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who comes from the BJP, are unlikely to contest the election and continue with their safe passage to the Legislative Assembly. Grapevine has it that given the simmering tension between the two poll partners, neither of the two leaders want to take chance given the high chance of sabotage in the polls. Thus there is going to be Mahabharat where the Maharathi would not be entering polls Kuruskshetra. 

The ruckus which ensued in the Rajya Sabha on Sunday over the issue of the passage of the agriculture reforms bill saw emergence of instant political alliances. Rivals in regional politics like the Trinamool Congresss and the Congress resisted the government move hand-in-hand. However, what caught everybody’s attention was senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh’s stout resistance to the marshals who arrived to take Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member Sanjay Singh away. Congress and AAP are bitter rivals in Delhi and also have no love lost between them in Punjab, but there always been section within the Congress which have supported an alliance with Arvind Kejriwal’s party. Whether Digvijaya Singh’s act on Sunday was for a fellow Thakur or do we read more into it, only time would tell. 

Given the recent tone and tenor of the Election Commission, it looks like plans are on to hold polls to Bihar Legislative Assembly ontime. This has led to the preliminary political activities, that is seat sharing between the allaince partners. BJP is in alliance with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) but the new age BJP leaders unlike 2010 don’t want to play second fiddle to the regional party. Be it BJP national president JP Nadda, who spent his childhood and youth in Bihar, or party general secretary Bhupendra Yadav, they want a tough bargain on equal footing. However, their plans are being put paid to by party leader and deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi. He is pushing is known softline towards Nitish Kumar, saying that an alliance was necessary for the BJP to do well in the polls. How far will BJP suffer Sushil Modi is something to be watched.

Till a few days back Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was making tall claims about how his government planned defeat of Corona pandemic in Delhi. There was publicity blitzkrieg and also Kejriwal handing over, unsolicited, advise to his counterparts in the other states to follow Delhi Model. This was contested by the local BJP leaders, who said that the pandemic was controlled because Union Home Minister Amit Shah took charge of the situation. But for the past few days both Kejriwal and his BJP rivals have gone quite over their much tom-tommed Delhi Model, as cases have once again surged in the national Capital breaking records of the past many days. It has been left to the local Health Minister Satyender Jain to fend for the government, and he is doing what he does best, blaming outsiders for the spread.

In 1962, the Defence Ministry was in the hands of Krishna Menon, a suave gentleman with a longstanding reputation of being an astute diplomat. Menon, like any diplomat would, wanted a negotiated settlement of border dispute with China. He disagreed with Generals and as they say rest is history. In the current times, another suave diplomat Foreign Minister S Jaishankar is in disagreement with the military leadership and says that “a solution for the ongoing border conflict between India and China would only be found through the domain of diplomacy.” These words may not be music to the ears of hawks within the government specially the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who is seen as patron angel of Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and Chief of Army Staff General MM Narvane. Moreover, Jaishankar’s observation are like a discordant note when the establishment is bent on orchestrating an aggressive narrative vis-à-vis China.