It was at a time when the friendship between the BJP and Shiv Sena was at a high, there was a cohesive atmosphere and Shiv Sena was also one of the oldest constituents of NDA. It is a matter of the same period that the central government had come up with a unique scheme in the field of electricity marketing, which was named – ‘Aditya’ i.e., Atal Distribution System Improvement Yojna. The scheme was intended to help power companies in marketing electricity, but ever since the tussle has come up between the relationship between BJP and Shiv Sena, the scheme has been kept on the back burner. It is said that the BJP feels that Aditya Thackeray will get indirect benefits from the promotion of this scheme, it is being heard that preparations are being made to re-launch the scheme by renaming it.

Recently, Kangana Ranaut enthusiastically compared Mumbai to the PoK and proclaimed that ‘she is afraid to go to Mumbai now’. As soon as this statement came, the entire units of Mumbai and state BJP was shocked. Immediately, undertakings of damage control were started, since Shiv Sena was facing allegations from every side, this statement was like shot in the arm and Sena went around propagating this statement of Kangana. In such a situation, Devendra Fadnavis immediately swung into action and overcame Kangna’s statement on behalf of BJP, saying BJP does not agree with Kangana’s statement. BJP’s General Secretary BL Santosh immediately resurrected an old statement by Aamir Khan, in which he had declared the country as ‘unsafe’ to live in. Thereafter, without losing time, the entire digital army of BJP and Sangh cracked down on Uddhav.

Chirag Paswan, the top leader of the Lok Janshakti Party, is giving a new definition to the growing disparity between BJP and Nitish. Chirag, despite being an NDA partner, will field his candidates against Nitish’s JDU candidates, but not against BJP candidates. If this happens, then the chances of JDU candidates winning the election may be hurt. Sources reveal that Chirag’s campaign is supported by the BJP from inside. Even though Nitish’s JDU is contesting on more seats than BJP in the state, it is certain that the BJP can stake its claim for the post of Chief Minister if BJP wins more assembly seats than JDU. Nitish has also brought Jitan Ram Manjhi with him as a strong hand against Paswan, but Manjhi does not have as much penetration among the Dalit voters of the state as compared to Paswan and only half a dozen seats are said to be impacted. The senior Paswan has also openly supported the stand of his son Chirag and Nitish, inspite of knowing everything, remains unaware.

By-elections are to be held in 24 assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh. Earlier these by-elections were to be held in August-September, but due to the rising cases of Corona pandemic, the dates of these by-elections are being pushed forward. But if anyone’s credibility is tested in these by-elections, it is Jyotiraditya Scindia, the newcomer from the Congress to the BJP. CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan of Madhya Pradesh is also delighted, as he will continue with his government by the victory of only 9 of the Congress MLAs who joined BJP with Scindia. In such a situation, bringing back 22 of his MLAs is the biggest challenge before Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior. For example, Scindia’s most trusted confidant is likely to contest from Tulsiram Silavat’s Indore constituency, for which Scindia has paid visit to Sumitra Tai (Mahajan), who still holds sway in Indore. Scindia knows that his influence is limited to Gwalior and Bhind only, so he has been waiting for the BJP and Sangh cadre to win the support of his other supporting MLAs, at a time when Shivraj is constantly afraid that Scindia’s new presence in the saffron party does not present any challenge to him.

There was a lot of noise recently that Jyotiraditya Scindia would soon be in Modi cabinet and he would be the new education minister of the country, but at the moment these speculations seem to be running out of steam. Recently, Scindia has been appointed as a member of the Parliamentary Committee of the Ministry of Education, now the question arises that if the BJP top leadership was to make him a minister at the Centre then what was the need to bring him to the Parliamentary Committee because the Union Minister is never a member of a parliamentary committee. There are also indications that Modi is not going to expand his cabinet in the near future, and could wait till the Bihar election results. One more important thing is that BJP has given Scindia, the Rajya Sabha seat along with 14 of his supporting MLAs as ministers in the Shivraj government. Now Scindia has to ensure the victory of his 22 supporting MLAs in the upcoming by-election. Apart from this, the BJP has entrusted Scindia with an important responsibility that he should try to bring more political leaders in the saffron fold by breaking more and more young leaders of Rahul Brigade. That is, to dream of a ministerial position at the center, Scindia still has to undergo many more ordeals.

In Rajasthan, the Gehlot government has appeared to be breathing a sigh of relief. If sources are to be believed, the main opposition party – BJP – is not in favor of bringing a no-confidence motion in the state assembly session starting on August 14. The BJP wants to wait for the right time for this, but the Chief Minister of the state, Ashok Gehlot, wants to see the exact number of his supporting MLAs. If sources in the Congress are to be believed, Gehlot may come up with a bill in that session, in support of which the Congress can issue a ‘whip’ for its supporting MLAs for voting, thereby allowing Gehlot to assess the correct count of his supporting MLAs. Apart from this, the top leadership of the Congress and even Gehlot camp itself are trying to search the hearts of those 18 Pilot camp MLAs wand three independents whether they are still ready to return home. Sources reveal that Sonia Gandhi herself spoke to Sachin Pilot recently to convince him and since then Pilot’s attitude has softened. When Congress appointed its new state president in Rajasthan, Pilot congratulated him and he also came forward to congratulate Assembly Speaker CP Joshi on his birthday, forgetting all the previous incidents.

There is a huge infighting between the central and state governments over the sharing of revenue from GST, at a time when there has been a severe decline in all revenue receipts of governments in the Corona era. On Tuesday, the Union Finance Secretary, in a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Ministry of Finance, openly declared that the Centre was unable to give compensation to the states as per the revenue sharing formula, since the GST recovery has come down by 40 per cent. It is worth mentioning that the Centre was to give compensation of more than Rs 4 lakh 10 thousand crore to the states. One-fourth of the vote in the GST Council is with the Centre and remaining three-fourth of the votes reside with the states and at least three-fourth of the votes should be in favour of the motion to pass a resolution. Even if the Centre joins the support of its BJP-ruled states, it cannot reach the required majority, because there are still non-BJP governments in many states, even Nitish Kumar, who is running the government in Bihar with the support of BJP, is not willing to let go of the compensation. In such a situation, the only option left to the central government is to approach the Supreme Court on this issue. The Central Government had probably realized the dark times ahead for the country’s economy even before the Corona crisis came, perhaps that is why in March itself, the Central Government had sought an opinion on this issue from Attorney General KK Venugopal, and now Venugopal’s opinion also came to the fore. According to him, that the central government can refuse to give compensation to the states, which means that now the states will also have the option to go to court. Normally, the Centre gets a collection of one thousand crore rupees every month under the head of GST, but in July it had reached only 65 thousand crores, that is, even when the companies paid their old dues, taking advantage of the rebate given in the Corona period. It is worth remembering that in 2017, the Modi government, in its first term, announced the ‘one country, one tax’ policy in the midnight special parliament session, with the fact that the states are still collecting their own taxes, and the centre will provide 14 per cent additional revenue and if the states get less revenue than the stipulated amount, then the Centre will also give compensation to the states. The compensation has to be given to the states every five years i.e. compensation from 2017 onwards to be paid in 2022. During the Corona period, the financial condition of the states is already bad, and many states have no money left to pay their employees. In such a situation, compensation can be a great support for them.

The central government’s stance on Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka on the issue of donations by China to the trusts controlled by the Gandhi family is stern and even BJP national president JP Nadda is also vigorously raising the issue. In view of the seriousness of the matter, the Ministry of Home Affairs has also formed an ‘Inter-Ministerial Committee’ to investigate the fund received from China. The command of the investigation committee has been handed over to the Special Director of ED Vivek R. Wadekar who is the chairman of the inquiry committee. This inquiry committee will investigate the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust and Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust for alleged violations of income tax irregularities and foreign fundraising provisions. Sources say that the central government is hurt by Rahul Gandhi’s on his tendency to continuously attack it on China and Corona. According to information from sources, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, headed by Sonia Gandhi, received a large fund from the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Embassy in India. According to sources, this donation amount is around $ 2 million between 2004-2006 and around $ 9 million between 2006-2013. Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has termed the donation as a bribe and said that this money was given by China in lieu of ‘free trade deal’ between India and China. At the same time, Congress is describing this move of the central government inspired by the action of revenge.

The economists of JNU university conducted a survey on the migrant labourers from June 1 to 14 when the lockdown was in full swing. In this survey, 84 per cent of migrant labourers were spoken to and in response to a question, 84 per cent of the workers said that their earnings were zero during this period and 16 per cent said that they earned some money by doing small work, however, they did not get free ration and free gas. Only a meagre 2.5 per cent received free gas and the rest received police’s batons.

PM Modi had set a target to provide 55 liters of clean water to every household on August 15, 2019, at a cost of Rs 3.5 lakh crore. By clean water, he meant water that was so pure that people could drink it straight from the tap. The government claims that this clean water has been delivered to one crore houses within a year. Under this scheme, a sensor had been installed in every city, village, township, wherever the water tank is installed, which will check the quality of water at all times and through 4G it will be connected to the national grid so that real-time data can be shown on the website, and thus any person can monitor the quality of water in their area. There is still a target of 12 crore houses to complete this plan, and due to the corona infection, the plan is currently stalled, and now the government has also started feeling that it will not be easy to complete this plan by the scheduled time.