View Articles

The sudden eruption of intense campaign over the temple issue, six months before the next election to the Lok Sabha, appears to be a move by the Sangh chief to pitchfork the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to submit to his demand for the reversal of his priority of toilets to temple. In it also is an admission that without NaMo heading the campaign, the BJP or rather Sangh cannot return to power but it also would not move a step ahead unless he agreed to return to the old and controversial agenda of the ruling BJP.

BHOPAL: Perhaps with remarkable confidence and ruling out any state wide collective revolt, the ruling BJP released its first list of candidates, leaving Congress far behind. The party denied tickets to 38 sitting MLAs, including three ministers. This means the party will have fresh faces in almost one-third of the constituencies. The BJP has an advantage that it is not divided into factions led by important leaders as is the case with Congress. Analysis of the list indicates that the list by and large has the stamp of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The BJP-RSS’s sinister game-plan to create a martyr on the Sabarimala issue and milk it to gain rich political and electoral rewards ended in fiasco, forcing embarrassed leaders of the saffron brigade to run for cover.

The first rule of finding a solution is to be educated and not emotional about the problem. But it is hard when people are yelling in your face and getting physical. Well, not today or tomorrow, but say in two weeks’ time, when one ‘R’ called Rakesh Sinha will introduce a private member’s bill for another ‘R’ known as Ram in the third ‘R’ the country calls the Rajya Sabha. Then, if that doesn’t work and Ram doesn’t get his Mandir, there will the frenzy like promised by fourth ‘R’, the RSS.

When Congressman Kapil Sibal, claiming to represent the Sunni Waqf Board in the Ayodhya Ramjanmabhoomi title dispute, sought to put pressure on the three-man bench headed by the then chief justice Dipak Mishra last year to delay hearing of the case until after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he almost invited a rebuke from the court. The bench, which questioned the lawyer-politician with a flourishing practice as to what the elections had to do with the case, went ahead with the hearing and achieved steady progress, which made it appear that an early resolution of the dispute was on the cards. It also declared that no adjournments would henceforth be allowed.

The news that the U.S. recently held face-to-face talks with the Taliban suggests that the longest war in U.S. history may have reached a turning point, although the road to such a peace is long, rocky, and plagued with as many improvised explosive devices as the highway from Kandahar to Kabul.

The voters’ mood and the poll-surveys in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh reveal that people have been inclining more towards the Congress and Mayawati’s BSP is no factor. The picture in Chhattisgarh is not clear with rebel Congress leader and former Chief Minister, Ajit Jogi, joining hand with BSP. This will damage the Congress to some extent and that will be gain for the BJP. Chief Minister Raman Singh suffers from anti-incumbency and corruption charge against his son seems to be going against him.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi is making a strategic mistake in his campaigning and press conferences in the recent days by focusing only on Rafale scam and Anil Ambani. Rahul is absolutely right in targeting the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of Rafale deal but his continuing harping on Anil Ambani and mentioning the recent report of the the French partner company Dassault’s investment in a loss making Anil company, will weaken the strength of his case. The Congress President is all powerful and if it is so that he feels that identifying PM with Anil Ambani in corruption deals, will appeal to the electorate more on the eve of the state assembly elections and the Lok Sabha elections six months later, he is wrong.

The United Nations voted 189-2 to condemn the illegal United States blockade of Cuba on November 1. Only Israel backed the US in opposing the resolution calling for an end to the 60-year-old measure aimed at isolating and suffocating the Cuban Revolution. The two countries were the only ones to oppose it last year as well.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N Chandrababu Naidu comes with a staggering amount of experience in chalking out common minimum programmes for political alliances. There is a lot of professionalism there in the well-fitting safari suit. The mettle was seen in the second half of the 1990s and now he’s back to doing what he is best at, tailor an alliance.