Budget 2025 ruled the roost Sunday. It is not just the Delhi Assembly elections that are slated for February 5, but also the Milkipur bypolls. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had campaigned both in Delhi and Milkipur, seeking votes in the name of Modi and Mahakumbh. Besides, the BJP campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the 'awesome-twosome' training guns at the castaway former Delhi Chief Minister.

Modi and Shah have been telling any and everybody with a pair of ears that Arvind Kejriwal faced defeat after Modi's "budget masterstroke" that ended the famine on tax rebates for the Aam Aadmi and would decimate the Aam Aadmi Party in its capital bastion with capital punishment for Kejriwal, Chief Minister Atishi and former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia. Both the BJP and the AAP were at each other's throats on Sunday.

With the merits of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget 2025 spurring the attack and the counterattack. BJP’s national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi led from the front for the BJP, gloating “Delhi will benefit the most” from the Budget proposals, citing urban development, power and tax relief as the winner takes all projectiles.

Not to be left behind, AAP fielded Saurabh Bharadwaj who called the Modi government's hiked tax rebate a ploy to fool voters, saying if the BJP was honest, the Modi government would have announced the rebate much ahead of Budget 2025. True, the BJP's “honest intentions” didn't exactly shine through Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget proposals on Saturday.

On Sunday Trivedi couldn't hold himself. Delhi has around 10 million middle-class people and 3.6 million of them are tax-payers. "If 85% will not have to pay tax under the revised slabs," the BJP's national spokesperson spoke like he knew something that the Aam Aadmi Party did not know. Sudhanshu Trivedi can be a most irritating spokesperson than any other on 'Television'.

Saurabh Bharadwaj is no match. But the AAP spokesperson wasn't far off the mark than when he said that the Election Commission of India shouldn't have allowed the BJP to make such an announcement via the Budget and that it was a “conspiracy” specifically aimed against the Aam Aadmi Party, which was on its way to another strong showing in Delhi.

“If they were honest with their intentions, they should have brought the law before February 5,” the AAP spokesperson said. But Trivedi wasn't to be denied his brag. The BJP's so-called best and most direct "national spokesperson" termed Sitharaman's trending Budget “revolutionary” as if Sitharaman was 'Jhansi ki Rani' and Prime Minister Narendra Modi the redoubtable 'Rajguru'.

"When finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman began her speech, she earmarked six areas of focus that included urban development, power, and tax reforms. It was the first time that special focus was given to urban development by this government. The second key area was power. Together, urban development and power are the key factors for India to become a developed nation,” Trivedi said.

To millions of supporters of the INDI-Alliance, Sudhanshu Trivedi is a windbag who never tires of breaking wind on the debate stage. To Trivedi, singing praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is second nature. Not just to Trivedi, but to all BJP spokespersons, the whole lot of them. It is a wonder the Prime Minister does not bloat and burst at the wholesome sycophancy fed to him by BJP spokespersons and BJP ministers, which also includes chief ministers like Yogi Adityanath.

For the BJP the talking points from the budget are TDS, relief to senior citizens and Budget 2025 coming to the aid of street vendors and gig workers. The BJP is banking on the middle-class to bail it out of 25 years of power famine in Delhi, where Modi is as helpless as a newborn in its crib. Narendra Modi is three-time Prime Minister but Modi has lost every Delhi assembly election since he stepped into Parliament in 2014.

But Sudhanshu Trivedi wouldn't talk of Modi on the mat. “The government has given more relaxations to the middle-class than what was expected. Now, around 85% of taxpayers in Delhi will not have to pay almost any tax. I think there cannot be a more revolutionary decision than this,” the BJP's encyclopedia with a yen for dates and tidbits trivia told media.

That was on Sunday. Monday was dominated by opposition MPs rising against the Mahakumbh stampede, Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget 2025 forgotten like a Jersey cow's horns. The sabbatical had given that extra energy to take the battle home to not only Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath but also to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. burst the balloon that that Yogi Adityanath held the keys to Milkipur.

Time to tell Uttar Pradesh that the monk-turned-politician was a no-good administrator. That the Yogi is only good at breaking down in tears as the Lok Sabha will well remember. The Mahakumbh stampede also left the Yogi in tears. This wasn't no ordinary Kumbh or 'Mahakumbh', this was the 'Purnakumbh', which comes once in every 144 years. And here was the Chief Minister who had made a mess of the ‘Mahakumbh!'

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had left the Mahakumbh to itself and gone fishing for votes in Delhi. The Chief Minister is now covering up the death toll and doing nothing to trace the missing after all the big talk of the best ever organized Mahakumbh in the history of the Sanatana Dharma, which has no beginning or end! And why is this Shankaracharya asking for the Chief Minister’s resignation? The stampede has divided the ‘sant-samaj’ gathered at the banks of ‘Ganga-Yamuna-Saraswati’.

The said ‘Shankaracharya’ wants Yogi Adityanath's resignation. The rest of the 'sant-samaj' is asking the Shankaracharya to stop being a Congress stooge. Then again, there are always four ‘Shankaracharyas’ and the remaining three are in solidarity with the Chief Minister. The sole Shankaracharya asking Yogi Adityanath to return to his Gorakhpur Matt was an NSUI leader in his varsity days.

Point is, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath cannot be stampeded to quit and run. If anything, the demands for Adityanath's resignation has only increased his Hindutva support base. Don't be surprised if the calls for the Yogi's head boomerangs on the Samajwadi Party. The Shankaracharya, leading the diatribe and campaign against the Yogi, shouldn't have butted into the argument. Left to his devices, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath would have hoist himself with his own petard! All in all, February 5 will lay the ground for an exciting February 8, with the three 'M' – Mahakumbh, Milkipur and Middle-Class – setting the tone for the politics unfolding. (IPA Service)