Who will Swamy chose for target practice?
Was Finance Minister Arun Jaitley consulted before the government decided on nominating the six new members to the Rajya Sabha?
The question becomes relevant with the corridors whispering that the top dispensation is not very happy with the FM’s performance.
If the presence of the one man army Subramanian Swamy in the Rajya Sabha is most galling to one person it is his bete noire Arun Jaitley.
The Harvard educated Swamy who maintains a smiling visage even during an Arnab Goswami show is known to go for target practice off and on and hardly misses his aim. He is reputed to have finished the careers of people like RK Hegde, keeps his sights fixed on Jayalalitha and is a sworn enemy of the Nehru dynasty. His first two days in Parliament were directed at Sonia Gandhi.
Of late he has not made a secret of his dislike for Jaitley and thinks he can do a much better job if he is allowed to swap jobs with him.He even supported former cricketer.Kirti Azad when he levelled corruption charges against Jaitley during his tenure as President of DDCA for which Azad was issued show cause notice by the party.
Watch this space for further fireworks.
Treading a dangerous path
One hopes the statement of Union Food Minister and Akali leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal demanding the declassification of the Operation Blue star files is just a gimmick to come one up against the Congress in the ongoing Punjab elections.
She made this demand to second the demand of BJP troubleshooter Dr.Swamy.
One section of the Akalis has already been in trouble for demanding a memorial in the memory of the assassins of late Prime minister Indira Gandhi on October 31.1984.
The BJP has an alliance with the Akalis in Punjab and if this demand becomes more vociferous the party would lose the edge it has managed to carve for itself in a polarised section of the Hindus and a lot of floating voters through sustained campaigns of Bharat Mata ki jai and national and anti national debates
If there is one leader of the Congress who the RSS has always held in high regard it is Indira Gandhi. A grudging line of praise for her contribution to the country was heard even from Prime Minister Modi on her death anniversary last year.
And of course the Congress never fails to rub in the Durga that the BJP’s tallest leader Atal Behari Vajpayee saw in her after she carved out Bangladesh in the 1971 war.
The repercussions of such a demand when Pakistan is at its most hostile after the backing of China at the UN could be disastrous . The JD –U has already warned that this could lead to.revival of terrorism in.Punjab which has been relatively free from it in the last few years.
Is the TMC learning new tricks from Smriti Irani?
The Union Minister for Human Resource Development Smriti Irani seems to have found an admirer in the Trinamool Congress.
The morphed picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat that it floated before reporters in election bound West Bengal had got it into no end of trouble.
So far the TMC under Mamata Banerjee’s tenure was doing.a lot of things that were ‘out of the box ‘for a party with that name.Arresting professors for liking cartoons on social network sites, portraying victims of molestation and sexual violence as characters-less , threatening rivals or beating them up or dismembering their body parts have become a sort of TMC trademark in West Bengal.
TMC, caught out, has apologised for the poster. At the end of it the party has not been able to cash in, quite the reverse actually, from its three.minute of fame.
Kanhaiya Gets Unexpected Support
The Shiv Sena, known for its vitriolic attacks on the Congress seems to have turned its ire against Narendra Modi.
In a surprising development Uddhav Thackeray Shiv Sena Chief defended Kanhaiya and said “It is wrong to brand Kanhaiya as anti-national and slap sedition case against him…who gave birth to Kanhaiya,Hardik Patel and Rohit Vemula?The government should ponder over it –when Hardik Patel became popular,he was charged with sedition and now Kumar is fighting against the government.”
The latest issue of its mouthpiece Saamana attacks the Modi government more harshly than even the Congress had done, which has surprised political pundits .
So much so that the party which forced the cancellation of the Ghulam Ali concert in Maharashtra, has condemned the alleged strangling attempt of Kanhaiya on a flight saying “It will not help to strangle him ,as his voice will not be subdued. Nobody has come forth to strangle Owaisi…Does Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar have the guts to throttle Pakistan for the Pathankot incident,” reads the edit in Saamana.
Among other grouses that the Shiv Sena lists are promises of bringing black money from abroad and creating 20 million jobs being unfulfilled.
And then it goes on to make a revelation which not many were aware of that Kanhaiya had offered to sell Modi on OLX, justifying it on the ground that he had failed to fulfil his election promises.
We will have to wait and watch whether this new tone of the Shiv Sena is an expression of its pain at the drought in Maharashtra or that this represents a new change of political alignment as patience among the BJP alliance partners is drying up. But clearly this ally is showing signs of turning.
One more for the Rajya Sabha
Will there be one more vacancy in the Rajya Sabha?
A desperate Bharatiya Janata Party, lacking majority in the Upper House to get its way will certainly try to expel the liquor baron Vijay Mallya to get a member of its own liking there.
The Ethics Committee of the Rajya Sabha has initiated proceedings to cancel his membership but has to go through some procedural wrangles ,unfortunately. Already there is so much heart burn ,more in the party than outside , about the six nominations to the Upper House, with loyalists and media czars Subhash Goyal and Rajat Sharma waiting not so patiently.