With the defeat of the Congress in Karnataka, the process of introspection has started within the party, and so has been the shunting of the previous state chief minister Siddaramaiah to the deep freezer. Akbar Road insiders insist that Sid is being chastised because during the pre-poll distribution of party tickets, he had shut his ears to the suggestions of Delhi party bosses, the most glaring example being Aishwarya Mahadev, party president Rahul Gandhi’s favourite, denied the ticket from the RK Nagar constituency. Rahul’s insistence had been based on the fact that Aishwarya’s father, M Mahadev, had been a highly popular Congress leader and had consistently won from the constituency. After his demise, his daughter, Aishwarya, had joined politics. She is a Pennsylvania University alumnus with a degree in computer science engineering, and had been the most prominent face during all of Rahul’s press meets during his US sojourn. It is also being said that she is the only person capable of replacing former southern cine star Divya Spandana as head of the Congress’ social media war-room boss. There are rather loud whispers doing the rounds about Divya Spandana aka Ramya, whose ‘close’ relationship with liquor baron and fugitive billionaire Vijay Mallya is what is called a well-known secret. There have been scandalising media reports that Divya had spent a cosy 2010 holiday in Hong Kong with the ‘wine-n-woman’ glitzy ‘bank fraud’. Divya on her part has never denied her ‘friendship’.

Siddaramaiah had ignored Rahul’s decision to let Aishwarya to contest from KR Nagar, and instead given the ticket to one Ravi Shankar, who had lost the seat in the previous state polls too, whereas Janata Dal (S)’s candidate SR Mahesh has scored a hat-trick, winning three elections in a series from the same constituency.

Now sources say that Aishwarya is being considered by Rahul for a top slot in his social media generals.