BJP president Amit Shah is camped-up in Karnataka for past six days. According to sources, a luxury six-room house has been rented for Shah in Central Bengaluru, where he is luxuriously stay put. Here, the regular attendees are Murlidhar Rao, Prakash Javadekar, Ananth Kumar, BS Yeddyurappa and BL Santosh.
BL Santosh is considered as a close aide of Mohan Bhagwat and Modi. Sources reveal that Ananth Kumar is also reporting directly to Modi. BL Santosh is being considered as a major contender for the Chief Ministerial post. Perhaps, this is the reason why when Yeddyurappa is called for a meeting with Shah, Santosh is kept in the dark about it, and vice-versa.
Sources reveal that while on one hand, the BJP high command has told Janardhana Reddy to keep every possible distance from the party’s public forums, on the other hand, whenever Yaddyurappa holds a meeting, he never misses out on taking Janardhana along with him on stage. This is sprouting embarrassing situations for the BJP which sometimes Shah finds difficult to tackle.

Ever since the lotus has risen in Tripura and Biplab Deb has taken hold of the Chief Ministerial chair, the new CM is facing many new challenges. Sources reveal that when the newly elevated CM reached the Chief Minister’s Office on Day 1, he noticed that the pictures of the President and the Prime Minister were replaced with that of Stalin and Marx. According to sources, even the National Flag was on the list of the missing essentials. More or less, the same was the case with other government offices in the state. The history books were all telling the tales of communists and painted with Red pride. Now the CM is said to be busy changing everything, painting over all the Red with the shade of Saffron.

The clash between the government and the apex court seems unending. The latest in the conflict is Uttarakhand Chief Justice M Joseph whose name was sent back by the PM for reconsideration on his elevation as a Supreme Court judge. It was reasoned that the government is not bound to accept the name suggested by Collegium and that superiority is not the only bases of consideration. In fact, the government had subsided the superiority of justice Chelameswar to elevate justice Dipak Misra as the CJI.
In the midst of this, a question that arises to the point is whether justice Ranjan Gogoi will be throned in place of CJI Misra or the latter’s office will get a two years’ extension? If sources are to be believed, Central government is pondering over raising the threshold of CJI Office from 65 years to 67 years of age.
Manmohan also wanted to bring the 114th Constitutional Amendment Bill in 2010 so that the age of retirement of the Chief Justice of the country could be raised to 67 years, but for some reasons, this agenda remained unattended. The BJP government has the full authority to bring in such amendment, but the only flaw in the plan is that this will be a constitutional amendment, for which the saffron party has to be prepared to pass through the heat.

Swami Aseemanand is now acquitted of the Mecca Masjid blast case. If sources are to be believed, the BJP high command now seeks his services in the West Bengal elections. Mind you, Aseemanand’s real name is Naba Kumar Sarkar, who hails from West Bengal. For a long time, he has been associated with Sangh and its social welfare outfit ‘Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram’. He has built more than 25 tribal hostels in Purulia alone. He has a good hold among the tribal community. So, it would not be wrong to say that the BJP now seeks a strong push of Aseemanand in luring tribal votes in the state.

A few days back, CPM’s party congress was convened in Hyderabad. In this meeting, a tug-of-war shaped up between two veterans Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat and their supporters.
In the party congress, the debate of the hour was over which line should the party adopt after all – Yechury Line or Karat line?
At one point of the tussle, the matter so heated up that a delegate from Punjab threatened to sit on protest, then and there.
Meanwhile, a new voice of the party Uday Narvekar stood up and said, “My claim is that if the party follows the Karat line even for mere next three years, then its name will have to be changed from CPM to CPI.” And then Narvekar curtailed the new definition of CPI – “Communist Party Irrelevant”, that is, then the party will not have any relevance in Indian politics. Said enough, after this the party decided on following the ‘Yechury Line’.

Ever since rape convict ‘Jhansaram’ aka Asaram has been sentenced to life imprisonment, the troubles of Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan have increased. Actually, Shivraj had christened the names of a road crossing and a bus stand near Raja Bhoj Airport of Bhopal to that of Asaram’s to strengthen the vote bank politics. Now the pressure of the Congress party, including the masses, has begun to grow that the names of the fraud ‘Baba’ Asaram be removed from these two places. But Shivraj is afraid that if he does this, then he may have to face the displeasure of the devotees of Baba.

Last week, Rahul Gandhi began with his ‘Save the Constitution’ campaign from Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi. A large number of senior leaders of the party were also present on this occasion. But during his address, the first name that Rahul mentioned was that of Ashok Gehlot who has been trusted by the party with the responsibility of organising party congress in recent times and has been made the general secretary of the congress affairs. After this, Rahul took the name of Ghulam Nabi Azad, then Mallikarjun Kharge and then of Sushil Kumar Shinde. By then, Rahul’s eye spotted Digvijay Singh sitting in the front row, who is being highly discussed after completing his Narmada tour. Rahul, giving out a nervous laughter, looked at him and then finally had the courtesy of mentioning his name, too.

The BJP is already gearing up for the 2019 elections. Amit Shah has given clear instructions to almost 150 BJP MPs that they should start prepping for the anticipated elections from now itself. BJP’s 282 MPs were earlier victorious, which means that the future of 130-132 MPs is still hanging over the cliff on whether they’ll be considered for tickets or not.

Whether the lotus will bloom in Karnataka, there hangs a question mark upon it. On one hand, where Congress is putting up a good show, on the other, BJP is still low key. In view of the lag, a honcho saffron politician of South India, Ananth Kumar, has immediately come to play. Ananth and Co. are of the view that this time it may be a hung assembly in Karnataka and hence the saffron leader is head over heels to lure JD(S) leader Kumaraswamy.
Sources suggest that there have been rounds of discussions between the two leaders in this regard but they have met no conclusion yet because Kumaraswamy is confident that JD(S) will be the kingmaker this time in Karnataka, and would rather prefer being the king, instead of remaining the maker. In short, Kumaraswamy is all convinced to be the next CM of the state.
Anyhow, BJP has an edge over Congress in context of Kumaraswamy because his father Deve Gowda is anti Karnataka Congress’ CM Siddaramaiah. In fact, Deve Gowda has not shied away from expressing his pain in electoral meetings that Siddaramaiah is trying to tarnish his image. He reminded the people that he is the sole Prime Minister of India till date who emerged from the land of Karnataka and that is why every government office of the state carried his picture, up until Siddaramaiah became the CM and ordered their removal.

Anyhow, there is an old friend of Deve Gowda who is helping connect him directly to the Congress and it is Sharad Yadav, whose supporters have laid the foundation of a new political party recently. Anyway, for a long time, JD(S) chief HD Deve Gowda is in close contacts with Sharad Yadav and Communist Party (Marxist) chief Sitaram Yechury. He wants the two and their parties to come in support of JD(S) in the upcoming Karnataka elections.
But when Sharad Yadav was in Karnataka in the recent past, he declared his support to the Congress. On the other hand, Yechury has sealed his lips on the matter. He is neither talking of supporting the JD(S) nor the Congress. Anyhow, the CPM-linked threads reveal that the Leftist parties have sent a call to their workers in support of Congress.
It is believed that Sharad Yadav has convinced his old friend HD Deve Gowda that the doors of Congress will be open for friendship and post-poll alliance to the JD(S). Meaning thereby, JD(S) is working on two fronts together, where father Deve Gowda is clinging to Congress, son Kumaraswamy is working on blooming the lotus of saffron expectations.