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Incongruities have appeared on the mahagathbandhan horizon over seat sharing among partners and new entrants to the alliance. These are likely to hurt the opposition unity and could even help BJP. The ‘rebellion’ of BSP chief Mayawati with SP chief Akhilesh extending oral support could have serious implications.

Perhaps never have the common people waited for the advent of the New Year as this year as they expected it to be a year of change. It is the change that they expect from the general elections due in 2019. Actually, people took time to realise the real nature of the change that occurred as a result of BJP winning the majority in the Lok Sabha on its own. It was not the ordinary change of power in a bourgeois democracy. It was not replacement of one bourgeois set up with another.

After menstrual age women Kanaka Durga and Bindu Ammini’s wee-hour intrusion into the Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple, there’s need for a reckoning. One leading newspaper termed the accomplishment, “red-letter day” and “emancipation of women”. The two women broke a “long-standing taboo”, the paper declared. Hardly. The taboo was broken time and again in the years before 1991. Then, too, they were dismissed with “purification” rites. And even after Kanaka Durga and Bindu, women of 10-50 age continue to be barred by cop and devotee.

BHOPAL: A decision to suspend singing of Vande Matram at the state Secretariat and stop pension of MISA detainees have plunged Madhya Pradesh into a serious controversy. Both the decisions have given an opportunity to the BJP to train the guns on the newly formed Congress government.

LUCKNOW: Fed up with sustained pressure from the allies in UP, the BJP may look for other alliance partners for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

It was another 'hartal’ in hartal-country Kerala on Thursday, the fourth since September 28, 2018, and the first of 2019. Petrified public transport buses are stranded in transport hubs across the state and even if shops and other commercial establishments are presenting a strong face, lack of effective police backing is palpable fear. The only public transport buses on the road are those plying the Sabarimala route. That said, normal life is hit and it begs answer to the question what use putting at risk shops if customers cannot step out to shop!

Rafale is not the issue in Kerala. Swami Ayyappa is. Unrest is on the move everywhere in the state after two child-bearing age women entered the Sabarimala temple Wednesday morning. Clashes between agitating Sangh Parivaar cadre and CPM workers claimed one life Wednesday evening. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan Thursday claimed stone-hit Chandran Unnithan died of “cardiac arrest.” He also said Ayyappa devotees “helped” Kanaka Durga and Bindu enter the shrine, a claim not supported with evidence. He probably did not find the time in the moment to watch CCTV footage the rest of Kerala saw.

The Swachh Bharat Mission ostensibly aims to achieve safe sanitation for all by 2019 but even with the arrival of the year, the mission has not acquired a pan-India shape. Worst still, it has become a mechanism to usurp public money. From the babus to big ticket NGO operators, many have been looting government funds allocated for the project. In fact, the babus have been virtually auctioning the plan to make money by putting projects on sale areas wise and the NGOs usurping crores of rupees on the name of social service.

One of the important lessons that political parties should learn from the assembly election results of the last leg of 2018 is that the voters are more concerned about issues which affect their daily lives. The three states namely Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan that went to polls are mostly agrarian states and voters voted for the opposition Congress to replace incumbent BJP.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s 40 minute reply to Rahul Gandhi’s attacks on the Rafale deal on Wednesday in Lok Sabha had all the qualities of a legal luminary and an orator but it had no answers to the pointed questions raised by the Congress President against the manner the Prime Minister Narendra Modi unilaterally announced the deal. The FM made all the insinuations against the Congress leader and his family without touching the pertinent issues regarding the decision making process. The only point which had some relevance was the point that the Supreme Court dismissed the petitions demanding court mentioned probe but this judgment of the Supreme Court given on December 14 last year, was also based on the government note with documents given in sealed cover which had not been verified.