Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s attempts to pitch himself as the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate of Maharas-htra did not go down well with the party leadership (read Prime Minister Modi and party president Amit Shah). The duo had already made it amply clear that their CM choice is Devendra Fadnavis.
As many as 40 newly-elected legislators had met at Mr Gadkari’s residence last week to press his claim to the chief minister’s kursi, a move which was seen as a blatant attempt to pressure the party. In a belated damage-control exercise, Mr Gadkari announced that he was not a contender for the CM’s post while his aides were busy giving informal explanations that the minister was not responsible for the meet of party MLAs.
The Gadkari camp maintained this was actually the handiwork of the other CM aspirants who had lost the race. They wanted to scuttle Mr Fadnavis’ chances by propping up Mr Gadkari, it was pointed out. However, the more believable explanation is that the former BJP president wanted to demonstrate his strength to send out a message to Mr Modi and Mr Shah.
It’s five months since he lost the Lok Sabha election and his ministry, but former external affairs minister Salman Khurshid continues to enjoy a lot of goodwill. Mr Khurshid was pleasantly surprised when he was recently informed that his play, Sons of Babur, which he wrote several years ago, had been translated into Lithuanian and is to be staged early next month. Written in English, the play about Bahadur Shah Zafar, has also been translated into Urdu and has been staged extensively in India and at the Nehru Centre in London. But a Lithuanian translation is certainly unusual.
The foreign minister of Lithuania, Linas Linkevicius, has extended a personal invitation to Mr Khurshid and his wife Louise to visit their capital Vilnius for the performance. Besides this, Mr Khurshid is being honoured by his old college — St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University — which is inducting him as an honorary fellow this month. In addition, the former minister also has a speaking invitation in England. All this and his legal practice is keeping Mr Khurshid so occupied that he has little time to ponder over the Congress’ loss of power and its marginalisation.
The Congress unit in Uttarakhand is up in arms following widespread speculation that either former minister and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad or AICC general secretary Mukul Wasnik may be elected to the Upper House from their state.
Elected to the Upper House from J&K, Mr Azad’s term ends this year end. There’s some uncertainty whether the Congress will be able to renominate him from J&K. The term of the state Assembly ends next January and there is a distinct possibility that the Congress will not be able to win enough seats to get Mr Azad re-elected to the Upper House from Jammu and Kashmir. The Congress is, therefore, thinking of fielding Mr Azad from Uttarakhand where an election for a lone seat is to be held in November.
This move has met with strong resistance from the party’s Uttarakhand unit which has complained that legitimate local leaders are constantly ignored while “outsiders” are given preference. Among those who have been elected from this hill state in the past are Satish Sharma and Satyavrat Chaturvedi.
Mr Azad is naturally lobbying hard as he could lose his ministerial perks which are extended to the Leader of Opposition. In case he fails to make it, deputy leader Anand Sharma may end up getting a promotion.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi does not appear to have drawn any lessons from the party’s humiliating defeat in the last Lok Sabha election. Congressmen who travelled with him during the recent poll campaign in Maharashtra and Haryana found that the Nehru-Gandhi scion remains as uninterested and inaccessible as before even though he has been under attack for his style of functioning. Besides interacting briefly with the chief minister about his election speech, the journeys were undertaken in virtual silence as Mr Gandhi was always busy on his smartphone.
On another occasion, Congress workers in Pune came back fuming after they dashed across to the airport in the midst of a hectic election campaign to meet the party vice-president only to find that his helicopter had taken off. No wonder the Congress rank and file is gripped by anxiety and frustration about the party’s future which at present appears bleak.
The writer is a Delhi-based journalist
