Huge loss for Congress in Rajya Sabha

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

The hopes of many congress leaders to get a Rajya Sabha seat from Punjab have been dashed to the ground with the AAP sweeping the Assembly polls. Even the BJP and Akali Dal together cannot claim a single Rajya Sabha from the state. The AAP will have a bonanza of winning at least four out of five Rajya Sabha seats.

Be it Shamsher Singh Dullo or Pratap Singh Bajwa,both will retire on April 2 from the Rajya Sabha and are unlikely to return in future. Since the Rajya Sabha polls for three seats will be held first, each candidate will require 40 votes. The AAP will win at least two seats in the first round of Rajya Sabha polls. The third seat could go to the Opposition parties if Congress, Akali Dal and BJP and others could come together. Otherwise, the third seat will also go to the AAP.

Then the biennial poll for two seats will be held where 117 MLAs will elect them. Naresh Gujral (Akali Dal ) and Shwait Malik (BJP) will also retire from the Rajya Sabha. It is ironic that a new party like AAP will send another batch of 4-5 Rajya Sabha MPs in Parliament. The mandate of Punjab is such that AAP will sweep the Rajya Sabha polls and Congress strength in the Rajya Sabha will dwindle from 34 to 31. It is also losing a seat in Himachal Pradesh (Anand Sharma) and one in Assam.

It is a huge setback to Congress and Akali Dal.

Maharashtra’s Jaiswal new RAW Chief!

Maharashtra’s senior IPS officer of the 1985 batch Subodh Kumar Jaiswal seems to be a lucky man. Jaiswal was having a running battle with former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and looking for a way out. But he was not the first choice for the post of the CBI Director of the Prime Minister either when a short-list was prepared. The first choice was CBI's Special Director Rakesh Asthana, a Gujarat cadre officer and Modi's hot favourite. As luck would have it, Chief Justice of India, N V Ramana was against Asthana and consensus emerged in favour of Jaiswal during the selection committee meeting. Now the Prime Minister’s Office is very happy with Jaiswal and he has emerged as a favourite and trusted IPS officer in the government. It transpires that Jaiswal may soon be rewarded with another top job. If sources in the PMO are to be believed, Jaiswal may be sent to India’s premier espionage agency, Research & Analysis Wing (RAW). The current RAW Chief Samant Goel’s tenure is ending in June this year. But Jaiswal may be sent there in early April to RAW and Samant Goel may be appointed to another coveted post for the next couple of years. Jaiswal may also be happy in RAW as its chief for next two year. His tenure in CBI ends early next year and get a reward of one extra year. It may also be mentioned here that Jaiswal has been in RAW earlier and earned laurels.

Praveen Sinha may be next CBI Chief

Reward to Jaiswal is not without a reason. The government is keen to make Praveen Sinha as the next CBI Director. Sinha is currently number-two as Special Director. He is a 1988 batch IPS officer of Gujarat cadre and due to retire in April this year. If he is not made CBI Director before April, he cannot become a regular Director. When Subodh Kumar Jaiswal was chosen as the CBI Director last year, Sinha was not eligible for consideration for the post as officers belonging to batches between 1984 to 1987 were considered. If the post of the CBI Director falls vacant now, he can emerge as a strong contender for the top job. In any case, he can be given the charge of a Director without delay if Jaiswal quits before tenure and goes to RAW. Another reason in Sinha's favour is that he was elected to the Interpol's Executive Committee from Asia after a bitterly fought election last year defeating China. The entire might of the PMO and Ministry of External Affairs was put to ensure Sinha’s victory. This crucial post is for three-year and if Sinha is allowed to retire, India cannot retain this post at the Interpol. Therefore, in order to retain this post, Sinha is to be retained as no retired officer can be in the Executive Committee of Interpol as per rules. It is in this context that Praveen Sinha may have to be given the coveted post and Jaiswal being shifted to RAW. But there are many slips between the cup and lip.

Baffling reshuffle in PMO

The PMO is witnessing some interesting reshuffle and bureaucrats are keeping their fingers crossed. First, it was Senior Adviser Amarajeet Sinha in the PMO who quit his job all of a sudden seven months before his tenure in August 2021.Prior to him P K Sinha, Principal Adviser in the PMO, quit last year. Sinha was Cabinet Secretary prior to joining the PMO. It was rumoured that he may be brought in as LG of Delhi. But it's been over a year and he is cooling his heels. Now Bhaskar Kulbe who was appointed as Adviser to the Prime Minister, has put in his papers. Kulbe was earlier, secretary in the PMO and allowed to retire. After a couple of months, he was appointed as Adviser to the PM in 2020. But all of a sudden, he too put in his papers and quit. Interestingly, no replacements have been brought in the PMO after three senior officers quit in less than a year. The Principal Secretary to the PM, P K Mishra is reported to be in favour of cutting manpower in the government and beginning has been made in the PMO itself. It is authoritatively learnt that National Security Adviser Ajit Doval recently expressed his desire to resign considering his age. Doval is 77 years old and wants to be relieved. But the Prime Minister is reported to have declined to accept his resignation. Earlier, Nripendra Mishra, Principal Secretary to the PM, also quit a few months after he was re-appointed to the coveted post after Modi's big win in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Clouds over Gehlot, Baghel, No way

Having lost power in Punjab rather badly, the leaders in two Congress-ruled states – Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are waiting with bated breath for the high command to focus on restructuring the party and even change of guards. A decision will have to be taken on the new party president in these two states. While Sachin Pilot loyalists hope there will be a leadership change in Rajasthan, in Chhattisgarh, a group led by TS Singh Deo, the current health minister, is hoping for something similar. The incumbent Chhattisgarh chief minister, Bhupesh Baghel, is extremely close to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and has played key roles in recent assembly elections in Assam and Uttar Pradesh. Therefore, there is no possibility of a leadership change. In the case of Rajasthan CM, Ashok Gehlot, the high command has committed that the next Assembly polls will be fought under his leadership. It means that his loyalists will be accommodated in the government. It is however, not certain what Pilot wants after the results of Assembly polls are out.

No Takers of Nitish Kumar

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is an extremely worried man. Ever since BJP emerged as number one party in 2020 Assembly polls forcing Janata Dal (U) to play a second fiddle, the “Sushashan Babu” has been desperately trying to find a way out. The day is not far when the BJP will split other parties in Bihar and form its own government in the event of winning the UP Assembly polls. It was in this background that Nitish Kumar's name suddenly made headlines as the possible Presidential candidate for the July 2022 polls. It emerged that freelance poll strategist Prashant Kishore was behind it. This news was spread after Telangana CM K Chandrashekhar Rao and Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray met for nearly four hours in Mumbai. When asked, Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut denied saying there was no discussion on the presidential poll during the four hour long meeting as Raut was present throughout. It is Kishore who wants Nitish Kumar to move to the national scene to fill the vacuum among the non-BJP forces. But there are no takers of Nitish Kumar in the Opposition camp as his political integrity has taken a big hit.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

So it looks like the time for Rahul Gandhi has arrived! There are two reasons why it cannot wait anymore. First, though the Congress has given a general impression of stolidity after its recent defeat in Kerala and Assam, the mood of its senior leaders is unpredictable. After Assam, a wave of exodus from the party is in the offing in various states. In Chhattisgarh, the exit of Ajit Jogi signals a grave development for the Congress.

A further twist to the plot came with veteran leader Digvijaya Singh speaking of the need for a “deep surgery” in the party. Its a metaphor that, in the context of Congress party, can only imply an alleged dysfunction in its reigning ‘family’. It got the party so rattled that Kamal Nath, a politician known to hold his cards close to his chest, readily appeared on a Karan Thapar TV interview to erase the notion that there could really be something amiss in the party. There is no possibility of a “surgery”, Nath reassured and Rahul Gandhi would take charge of the party in “due course”.

It is clear that the party does not have much time on hand. Elections to Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa fall due early next year, and with that will the curtain be rung up for the general elections in 2019. While all the five states going to poll next year are crucial, Uttar Pradesh is the bellwether for the two so-called national parties, BJP and Congress, as it represents the heart of north India. In the south, accounting for 131 of India’s 543 Lok Sabha seats, state parties seem firmly in the saddle everywhere except in Kerala, where too the Congress seems in terminal disarray. In east India, BJP is far from blooming; its recent electoral victory in Assam hinged on the support of regional groups. Elsewhere, politics is strictly regional, be it in Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and the smaller NE states. And, with a power vacuum emerging in both Congress and BJP across western India, the contest actually boils down to the battle for Uttar Pradesh. In 2014, Narendra Modi grabbed 73 Lok Sabha seats in the state because his doughty campaign, and over-arching appeal that rose above castes (though not communities). Though his success was limited in eastern and southern India, he won most of the Lok Sabha seats as he could conquer the north Indian roadblock of caste. In Uttar Pradesh Modi’s candidates won the votes of both Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav in large numbers. It was much like the triumph of Indira Gandhi in 1971 or Rajiv Gandhi in 1985—the two other elections in recent times where votes were cast in response to a sense of national exigency.

If Congress has to return to power in 2019, its moment of truth is now. It must test if a member of its ‘first family’ is capable of creating, across a mini-India like Uttar Pradesh, the same over-arching appeal as in 1971, 1985 or 2014. If the experiment succeeds then, from a shockingly low of 44 as in 2014, it can hope to recover to 200 or even more. But numbers short of that can at best raise coalition hopes. It’s of little use as BJP can easily beat it at the game, given the huge resources at its command. In 2004, the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee lost power as, after the Gujarat riots of 2002, other parties deserted BJP. Modi regained Vajpayee’s baton decade later by appealing directly to the people, not to political bosses with a war chest unheard of in electoral history.

The Congress has only two cards: Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra. Is Rahul competent to ride a wave of hope and dreams? Party elders are not sure, whatever they may say in public as loyal followers of the ‘high command’.  Rahul and Amarinder Singh were not on the best of terms till the other day, but now Singh is suddenly back in Rahul’s favour. The party vice president had ignored the sober advice of many Kerala leaders to remove corruption-tainted Oomen Chandy and octogenarian Tarun Gogoi in Assam from chief minister’s post. But he did not listen, and the lapse cost his party dearly and reignited the BJP with a win in  Assam. The blunder was costly for the Congress. But Rahul remains unruffled as he feels politics is a wheel and what goes up has to come down. Modi sold dreams in 2014 and he cannot repeat the same in 2019. He is bent upon cleansing his own party and wants to run it like a corporate house. He believes that there is no permanent “loyalty” in politics. He is willing to wait for a longer time that what political pundits think, five years or even ten years. But his ageing Party leaders are in a hurry.   

Therefore, the clamour for Priyanka is mounting.  It is no wonder that BJP has sniffed it right and working hard for a “Congress (read Family) Mukt Bharat”. The BJP is digging up Robert Vadra’s alleged links with an land and arms dealers. In the Uttar Pradesh election, if the coin flips in Priyanka’s favour, it should be the forerunner of the Grand Old Party being on the march with a new icon, that of Priyanka Gandhi, whom many old-timers compare to her illustrious grandmother, at least in her looks. It’s a different matter that Rahul is not giving up.

Be it Priyanka or Rahul, either of the Gandhi children,  they cannot be pinned down to any major caste or community group. The Gandhis will therefore carry a larger gamut of following than BJP as they are ready to play a second fiddle to like-minded regional parties.