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For quite some time politics in North-East India has been dull as ditchwater. Neither the much-talked-about and much-awaited Cabinet reshuffle by Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi last month, nor the brewing rebellion against Nagaland Chief Minister T. R. Zeliang by some legislators of the ruling Naga People’s Front (NPF) could draw much attention in the national media. But suddenly there was a quickening in the situation. Courtesy, the ‘Vision Document’ released by the BJP on the eve of the Delhi polls.

The state of political parties, quality of governance and capabilities of the state’s chief minister are the major factors which generally determine the stability of a regime and also future course of politics. How these factors are and will influence Haryana’s post-poll politics?

What made the satrap from Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party supremo, Mulayam Singh Yadav to intervene in the matter of Bihar and direct the Bihar JD(U) leadership to bring in Nitish Kumar again as the chief minister? This question has been haunting the politicians and the political establishment of Bihar. Was it the compulsion of the politics of merger and unification or class conflict of the backward castes versus the dalits that made Mulayam reach out to the JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav? Not only Mulayam even Nitish’s big brother Lalu Prasad had objected to Manjhi’s speeches and his style of functioning. Earlier there was only one stakeholder, and he was Nitish Kumar. But suddenly a number of individuals have descended on the political scenario as the major stakeholders.

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan is now the lord of all he surveys. After the recent spectacular victory in the local elections, Chauhan has emerged as the real hero of the ruling party. With the results declared on February 4, the BJP now controls all the 14 municipal corporations in the state. The BJP retained Indore, Bhopal and Jabalpur and also won Mayor's position in Chhindwara, where Mayor's elections were held for the first time, in the latest round of civic polls.

World is watching with eagerness the transition of Nepal to a full-fledged republic with a Constitution that aims to empower all segments of the society. The small Himalayan country has already shown the world how to abandon the path of bullets and opt for ballot and to assimilate insurgents into the mainstream. The second Jan Andolan (people’s movement) resulted in the overthrow of the monarchy in April 2006. The peace process that begun led to the coming into force the Interim Constitution early next year in mid-January to manage the transition from an unitary constitutional monarchy state to a federal republic.

The Delhi head-quartered media has built up the Delhi assembly elections as the election that the rest of the people of the Indian Union should take heed of. As the campaign for Delhi’s assembly elections ends, one is increasingly hearing a strange statement from Kiran Bedi, BJP’s newly imported ‘clean’ face for Chief Ministership. She has been repeating at every opportunity the ‘advantages’ of the Delhi government and the Central government being from the same party.

When the Delhi Assembly polls were announced last month the expectations were that the BJP would form the government and the chances are that it still might. This was based on the fact that the BJP had won almost all the elections – Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir – since it came to power and the winning streak continued. Riding on the Modi juggernaut, the BJP was confident of its victory. The party woke up only after the first poll rally addressed by Modi on January 10, which turned out to be not to their expectations. So the party bosses decided to bring in Kiran Bedi as a challenger to the Aam Aadmi party chief Kejriwal, as it did not want the poll to become a Kejriwal versus Modi. If Kiran Bedi won, the credit any way would go to Modi and if she lost the discredit would go to Kiran Bedi. To the dismay of the BJP Bedi has not clicked. Now that the different poll surveys predict a victory for the AAP, the saffron party is getting jittery. The mistake was of course the BJP had made it such a prestige issue that losing the polls would be a bitter pill coming as it does just months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode a national wave of popularity in the Lok Sabha elections and also when Modi’s national and international profile is high.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The decision of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) director, Vinson M. Paul, who is heading the probe into the bar bribery case involving Kerala Finance Minister K. M. Mani, to proceed on 12 days’ leave, has further strengthened suspicions about a concerted move to scuttle the investigation.

Reserve Bank’s monetary policy statement issued on Tuesday is more a document in anticipation of big developments than itself making one.

The contrast between the Indian and US media’s coverage of President Barack Obama’s India visit couldn’t have been starker. The Indian media carried euphoric headlines on the “high-voltage summit” between “the world’s two greatest democracies”, “a parade of deep friendship”, and so on.