The surviving leadership of the 1990s Ram Janmabhoomi movement was conspicuous by its absence during the consecration of the Balak Ram idol in Ayodhya.
L K Advani’s secretary Deepak Chopra claimed the nonagenarian leader had decided to stay away because of the “biting cold”, but till days before the ceremony, he was making inquiries about the logistics of Advani’s programme with the local authorities. No explanation was forthcoming for the fit-and-able Murli Manohar Joshi’s absence.
Rajnath Singh, then a minister in the Kalyan Singh cabinet in 1992, remained in Delhi. The only prominent faces from the past at Ayodhya were Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Ritambhara. While the latter interacted enthusiastically with the public, Bharati mostly sat quietly in her seat. Days before the function, life-size cardboard cutouts of PM Modi were erected all along the route from the airport to the temple, along with those of Lord Rama. Late on January 18, however, Modi’s images were removed and only Lord Rama’s figures remained.
Nonetheless, it was, undoubtedly, a carefully choreographed Modi-centric show. The only complaint about the superb event management was that several VIPs, including actor Chandraprakash Dwivedi, the star of the TV series Chanakya, could not find their expensive shoes afterwards.
Caught in middle
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar knows that he is sitting on a powder keg. Ousting Lalan Singh as party president and the rebellious Chandrashekhar Yadav as Education Minister could not resolve the problem. Nitish is caught in the middle, with half his party pushing for Tejashwi Yadav to be made CM before the elections and the other half keen to rejoin forces with the BJP once again. The BJP deliberately added grist to the rumour mill, with Amit Shah’s wry observation that there are no permanent foes in politics.
An alarmed RJD suspected a political design behind the BJP’s move to honour Karpoori Thakur, Nitish’s mentor. The normally loquacious Nitish has been urged by his advisers to maintain discretion in public. Nitish kept his maun vrat for over a month, but at the function to mark Thakur’s centenary, he could not restrain himself and made a caustic comment about dynastic rule, setting the cat among the pigeons.
Sons also rise
CM Eknath Shinde’s son Shrikant Shinde acted as a go-between in getting Milind Deora, the late Murli Deora’s suave son who rubs shoulders with the city’s who’s who, to join the Shinde Sena. Shinde Junior, a doctor and two-time MP, convinced his father that if Deora got a Rajya Sabha ticket from the party, it would raise the Sena’s profile in Delhi, where Eknath Shinde, a former autorickshaw driver, is not taken seriously enough.
The BJP for long apprehended, on the basis of surveys, that Uddhav Thackeray still had an edge over Sena voters. Shinde has, however, slowly consolidated his position, whether it is his handling of the Maratha quota crisis, winning panchayat polls or quietly wooing key organisation men from Uddhav’s party.
Not ‘Left’ out
Mamata Banerjee’s recent outburst against the CPI(M) “controlling” INDIA bloc meetings was aimed at leftists who reportedly have far more say on important political decisions in the Congress than party office-bearers. Banerjee had two individuals, in particular, in mind — Sitaram Yechury, the CPI(M) general secretary who perhaps wields more clout in the Congress than his own party, and Gurdeep Sappal, Mallikarjun Kharge’s chief aide who often liaises with INDIA allies and whose leftist leanings date back to his student days.
Reality bites
If the Congress has made little headway so far in seat-sharing arrangements with INDIA allies, it is because it is still talking from an unrealistically high perch without doing its homework. While SP and RJD came armed for talks with a booth-by-booth vote analysis, the first meeting between SP and Congress leaders ended abruptly when SP president Akhilesh Yadav pointed out that Mahaveer Prasad, proposed by the Congress for a seat from UP’s Bansgaon constituency, had passed away a decade earlier. At a later meeting, the SP estimated the Congress strength in UP was five seats at most, while the Congress wanted 20.
On Saturday, Akhilesh confirmed an offer of 11 seats. AAP-Congress alliances in Punjab and Delhi are opposed by AAP’s state units. Rahul Gandhi’s sense of humour rubbed Arvind Kejriwal the wrong way. Gandhi remarked that Congress and AAP should decide on seat adjustments speedily as he was leaving for his Nyay Yatra and Kejriwal could soon be in jail. In Bihar, Tejaswi and Nitish estimated the Congress’s real strength at three seats, leaving little room for manoeuvre.
The surviving leadership of 1990s Ram Janmabhoomi movement was conspicuous by its absence during the consecration of Balak Ram idol in Ayodhya
15
2
28.01.2024
The surviving leadership of the 1990s Ram Janmabhoomi movement was conspicuous by its absence during the consecration of the Balak Ram idol in Ayodhya.
L K Advani’s secretary Deepak Chopra claimed the nonagenarian leader had decided to stay away because of the “biting cold”, but till days before the ceremony, he was making inquiries about the logistics of Advani’s programme with the local authorities. No explanation was forthcoming for the fit-and-able Murli Manohar Joshi’s absence.
Rajnath Singh, then a minister in the Kalyan Singh cabinet in 1992, remained in Delhi. The only prominent faces from the past at Ayodhya were Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Ritambhara. While the latter interacted enthusiastically with the public, Bharati mostly sat quietly in her seat. Days before the function, life-size cardboard cutouts of PM Modi were erected all along the route from the airport to the temple, along with those of Lord Rama. Late on January 18, however, Modi’s images were removed and only Lord Rama’s figures remained.
Nonetheless, it was, undoubtedly, a carefully choreographed Modi-centric show. The only complaint about the superb event management was that several VIPs,........
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