Big Buzz in Capital over impending Cabinet reshuffle

It could be this weekend?

No news with Rashtrapati Bhawan so far  

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

With the month-long exercise of performance of 22 Cabinet Ministers and nine Ministers of State (Independent Charge) over yesterday, speculations intensified in the Cabinet of a major over-haul and expansion of the 54-member Council of Ministers.

The PM had already held consultations with the top leadership of the party, RSS and many chief ministers of the states including Shivraj Singh Chouhan. It is also stated that the PM also explored the possibility of bridging differences with the Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is now ready that Janata Dal (U) joins the party. JDU leaders Lallan Singh, Ramnath Thakur and Santosh Kushwaha are reportedly in the running. The Apna Dal of UP is also set to re-join the council with Anupriya Patel in it. Both the factions of the LJP will be kept out.

A couple of Ministers with Independent Charge may be promoted to the Cabinet too.

Jyotiraditya Scindia (Madhya Pradesh) Sarbananda Sonowal (Assam), Dilip Ghose (West Bengal), Sushil Modi (Bihar), Bhupendra Yadav (Rajasthan), Varun Gandhi (UP), Zafar Islam (UP) Ajay Bhatt or Anil Baluni (Uttarakhand) and a few from poll-bound states may be brought in.

The focus will be inducting some young faces keeping long-term interests of the party. There may be at least six new young faces. The names of Rahul Kaswan (Rajasthan), Ashwani Vaishnav (Odisha), Poonam Mahajan or Pritam Munde (Maharashtra) and Parvesh Varma or Meenakshi Lekhi (Delhi) are doing the rounds.

At least three ministers may be dropped while the portfolios of nine ministers holding many additional charges may be taken away. Will a Chief Minister be brought to Delhi, no one has a clue. Nine ministers with additional charge may shed extra ministries - Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Nitin Gadkari, Harsh Vardhan, Narendra Singh Tomar, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Smriti Irani and Hardeep Singh Puri.

BJP in a dilemma over lone RS seat

Sushil Modi, Reena Paswan in reckoning

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

New Delhi, Nov. 25

All eyes are set on Bihar’s lone Rajya Sabha seat by-election which will be held on December 14. The last date of filing nomination is December 3. The seat fell vacant due to the death of Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).

The bye-poll has assumed huge political significance as the LJP headed by Paswan’s son Chirag Paswan is claiming the seat. Though the LJP has only one MLA in the 243-member Bihar Assembly and it is not part of the NDA in Bihar either. But it remains the key member of the alliance in Delhi having six MPs in the Lok Sabha. Chirag Paswan is insisting upon the BJP leadership that his party helped the BJP emerge as the single largest party of the NDA in Bhar bagging 74 seats. Chirag Paswan also claims that LJP was instrumental in establishing BJP senior partner in the alliance. Therefore, the RS seat be given to his mother Reena Paswan. Secondly, his party may have won only one seat but it polled nearly 6% votes and a force to reckon with in Bihar. The BJP cannot brush the LJP aside and this fact was acknowledged by the BJP Chief J P Nadda too.

Insiders in the BJP say the party is grappling with its own problems. If it gives the seat to LJP, it may annoy Janatal Dal (U). Secondly, if the BJP decides to retain the seat, it will find it difficult to ignore the claim of Sushil Modi who was denied the Deputy Chief Minister’s post. It was then presumed that his services may be used in Delhi. If the BJP leadership wants to keep him at arm’s length, the seat may be given to the LJP. Therefore, the bye-poll has assumed huge political significance.

The BJP may also try to wean away some of the Congress-RJD MLAs as has been done in other states.

PM won't share dais with Yashwant Sinha

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Organizers in a jam, shadow over centenary function

PM won't share dais with Yashwant Sinha

Harish Gupta

New Delhi, Oct 9

The tussle between the BJP leadership and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha has spilled over the centenary celebrations of the Bihar University in Patna. The mega function of the country's most prestigious university is due to take place on October 14 and the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has accorded his consent to be the chief guest on the occasion.

However, the cloud surfaced when it was learnt that the university authorities had also invited two prominent personalities former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and former Shipping Minister and sitting Lok Sabha M P Shatrughan Sinha to be the guest of honour at the function. Reports suggest that the university authorities had invited both of them to share the podium with the PM and other dignitaries. The authorities have invited over 5000 plus alumni to celebrate the 100 years of its inception.

It is now learnt that the Prime Minister Office has made it clear that strict protocol be followed during the visit of the PM Naredra Modi to the Bihar University on the occasion of it centenary celebrations. The instructions have reportedly been issued to the authorities the PM will share the podium with the mandated dignitaries only. The instructions went after it emerged that Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha will also share the dais with the Prime Minister and other dignitaries. Health Minister J P Nadda, Food Minister Ram Vilas Sharma, Minister of state for Health Ashiwini Choubey are also among the alumni of the university and have been invited. C P Thakur, a former Union Health Minister and sitting Rajya Sabha MP is also an alumni.

The program had been finalised long before the controversy erupted in the BJP after Yashwant Sinha blasted the economic policies of the government and attacked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Now under the protocol, limited chairs are allowed on the podium with only PM, Governor Satpal Malik, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi, union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, J P Nadda, Choubey. It is still not clear whether the two Sinhas will get a place of prominence and where C P Thakur will be be accommodated. The confusion arose as the organisers had while inviting the two Sinhas had requested them to be on the dais as there was no rift between them and the leadership when the invitations were sent months ago.

The organizers of the centenary celebrations are in a big jam as it has been desired that six additional chairs be removed from the main podium. It is said that the Sinhas will be part of the audience now.

end

Lessons from Bihar

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

With Bihar assembly poll halfway through, it is agreed that the Narendra Modi-led NDA has not played all its cards right, though it is nobody's case that the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Yadav coalition holds all the aces. As of today, 162 of the 243 constituencies are waiting to go to poll, beginning from tomorrow, and punters can always gamble on which will prevail on the voters' mind—the suspicion that a conspiracy is afoot in Delhi to torpedo the caste-based reservation of jobs and college admissions, which is the bedrock of Bihar's politics for the last three decades; or a return of Lalu Prasad Yadav's "jungle raj", a term coined by none other Nitish Kumar, his current alliance partner and the mahagutbandhan's (mega-coalition) chief ministerial candidate. 

The outcome of the election is still shrouded in autumn mist, but BJP is queasy. After some of its leaders indulged in competitive hate speech, they suddenly buckled. Home Minister Rajnath Singh became custodian of secular values, pulling up, without naming, the likes of his party's assorted motor-mouths, from Ministers V K Singh, Mahesh Sharma down to Sakshi Maharaj and even Sadhvi Prachi. It seems the party has begun thinking that instances of communal conflagration at Dadri or Faridabad, despite being far away from Bihar, are impacting on its development agenda, promises of opportunities for the youth, and everything that Modi stands for. There are frenetic efforts now to either downplay the communal flashpoints or give them a new spin. So, as Sahitya Akademi-award winning authors began returning their awards in large numbers, the Joint Action Group of Nationalist Minded Artists and Thinkers (JANMAT) which is closely associated with the BJP, got suddenly busy dousing the fire. Prime Minister Office's call to award-winning Urdu poet Munnawar Ali, after his impassioned statement in a TV channel, was the beginning. Peace efforts in the background went several steps further, all in a wink, when the Akademi, in a seeming show of solidarity, adopted a resolution drawing attention of the government at the Centre and the states to atrocities on the minorities, and intolerance of free speech leading to liquidation of rationalists and non-conformists thinkers. The resolution, in the same breath, spoke of taking back the returned awards, however odd the proposition may sound. RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat was at his avuncular best when, at his Vijaya Dashami speech, he implored people not to attach "too much importance" to one "small event".

In reality, though, voting trend in Bihar is being influenced not so much by increasing atrocities on minorities but an opposition more consolidated than in the May 2014 Lok Sabha poll. It was after all Bhagawat himself who had made the first move on the caste debate now sweeping across Bihar, by saying that there should be public discussion to see whether the fruits of reservations have reached those for whom reservations were meant to be. Even if it is a fair suggestion, it was badly timed or twisted by BJP's rivals, as Bihar's politics has been driven since the 1990's by nothing but caste equations and caste-based quotas in jobs and educational institutions. Bhagawat's statement brought new momentum to Lalu Yadav's campaign. Though Bhagawat showered praises on Dr Ambedkar sending a clear signal that the RSS supported the reservations and upliftment of the down-trodden.

Another unwise move by NDA was to skip the mention of its chief ministerial candidate. It thought the Bihar election would sail smoothly on Modi's charisma alone, as it did in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana. But the party should have taken lessons from Delhi and realised that elections are but a snapshot of emotions which can alter at the snap of a finger. It is a mystery still as to why the BJP high command brought in an outsider Kiran Bedi instead of reposing faith in time-tested Dr Harsh Wardhan. Under Harsh Wardhan, Delhi BJP secured 32 seats while AAP was contained to 28 seats in 2013 Assembly polls. Similarly, it is a mystery why NDA did not name Sushil Modi as the CM candidate that it would support. Apart from having been the state's deputy chief minister for long years, he is regarded as an able administrator and his projection could give credibility to the BJP promise that it would improve governance in Bihar. Keeping the issue of leadership open, NDA has invited unwholesome speculation on some unexpected front. Such speculation has detrimental effect. BJP has also been too harsh on Lalu and has too frequently harped on his vulnerable point, the fodder scam. It has certainly led to consolidation of Yadav votes on a large scale. All this, combined with traditional Muslim apathy to BJP, has got NDA paint itself into a corner. Though Modi's Man-Friday Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley asserted in Patna that the next three phases belong to the BJP.

But the BJP should remember that there is life after Bihar and, if at all it loses the poll, the defeat will still have valuable lessons to learn. It can help Modi encounter less headwind in the next three-and-a-half years. What he badly needs is a party that can keep its ideas on social and religious issues to itself, and its voices under control. A defeat in Bihar should have a shock effect powerful enough to silence its professional peddlers of hate. Modi is essentially a man of action and his to-do list bursting with items that range from sorting out the issues between government and the judiciary to finding state governments on his side on a variety of legislations including the Goods and Services Tax. His party must give him respite from unnecessary anxiety so that his 2014 victory looks purposeful and not just a fluke.

But the BJP should remember that there is life after Bihar and, if at all it loses the poll, the defeat will still have valuable lessons to learn.

I think it is necessary to say a word here about the growing obsession in the “Parivar” about going public with its ideas on Hidutva.  They should silently work as they were doing all these years. Historically, these saffron leaders neither sought nor commanded significant public attention but the 2014 victory of Modi has almost overnight put them in the prime time media. For these newly arrived politicians, so overpowering is the greed to be in limelight that they have a thing to say on anything, no matter how batty it is. A failure in Bihar may goad Modi, and Bhagawat, to get their big-mouths to stay quiet.