It seems the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has decided to put its entire might behind the faltering might of Modi in the Gujarat state polls. And that is largely due to the three Young Turks of Gujarat politics, Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani, who are rocking the boats of Modi’s so-called Gujarat Model. Though the BJP mandarins are selling lemons of a ‘clean sweep’ by them in the coming polls, the fact remains that the Congress in the past few weeks has started a solid march back into the state. And the survey agencies that will a few weeks ago had been predicting a 12 per cent set behind for Congress vis-à-vis the BJP, are now giving the BJP a slim 6 per cent advantage. It may be recalled that of the three youthful anti-BJP leaders, Hardik Patel represents the highly aggrieved Patidar (Patel) community, while Alpesh Thakore (who has now joined the Congress) leads the OBC community and Jignesh Mevani is the leader of the Dalit community. History stands evidence to the fact that in Gujarat so far, elections have been lost or won only on two issues: caste and religion. We are well aware of Amit Shah’s past credentials in ‘social engineering’ of caste alchemy. However, the mother body RSS feels strongly that it will be the Hindutva card that will sell this time in Gujarat. It is reliably learnt that the RSS has asked 12 different allied organisations to unify the Hindu votes according to their castes and communities. These organizations have started working in different areas of Gujarat to reduce the effect of Patel-Thakore-Mevani on their respective communities and sections. History shows that whenever Modi’s poll prospects are under a cloud, the RSS has come out in full force to brighten his skies. Well, then, history repeats itself in Gujarat!

After trying its dirty-tricks department on Patidar leader, the intransigent enfant terrible Hardik Patel with an unproven sex video, the shaky BJP in Gujarat is now training its crosshairs on OBC leader Alpesh Thakore, because the latter is now going great guns into campaigning for the Congress. It may be recalled that the OBCs have always been the defining – if not the deciding – factor in Gujarat polls. They together comprise 40 per cent of the electorate. Of that, the Thakores themselves represent 20 per cent of the voting populace. They are spread across north and central Gujarat villages. There was a time when they were the proud soldiers of the Gujarat’s various princely states. But with the lapse of the erstwhile princely states, the latter had to go settle into farming. The problem was that since generations, the community had no farm land to their names and thus had to settle down as marginal share croppers or landless labourers. A majority of the young people of the community had no jobs. Thus it is that when Alpesh came into the picture, he realised that this was a dismal scenario and launched his Thakore Sena, whose volunteers are now running institutes and coaching classes for vocational training so that the Thakore youth can improved their lives. In 2016, Thakore formed a common platform to unite the OBCs, scheduled castes and scheduled tribe communities of the state. To witness, these together form roughly 70 per cent of the Gujarat electorate. There was a time when this forum was challenging Hardik Pate’s Patidar movement. However in the fast changing electoral scenario in the state, with Patel, Mevani and Thakore seem to have joined their hands to defeat the BJP, this has become a massive hangover for BJP after the massive highs of recent times.

It was a matter of just a fortnight back. The Delhi-based PHD Chamber of Commerce was holding its annual conference and had desired to invite top guns from the government. That did not work out, it seems, and of all the ministers, they managed to convince Nitin Gadkari to grace the occasion. But till the last moment, the organisers had kept their fingers crossed: Gadkari has quite a reputation of appearing in posters ahead of events and but never turn up. Anyway, since Gadkari had been invited for the inauguration, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi was invited for the valediction. RaGa straddled the stage and blasted the NDA for running a one-man government. Sitting in the privileged front row, the chairman of the tourism committee of the Chamber, Mukesh Gupta quipped: “But that was the same during the UPA rule,” hinting at Sonia calling all the shots. But Rahul smiled and said: “No, it was the PMO that took collective decisions.” At this, there was an approving roar from the audience and there was applause, which swelled Rahul’s proud chest.

Is the iron grip of Ahmed Patel on Gujarat affairs slackening? Seems like it, for why else would Rahul Gandhi appoint Kapil Sibal for the tete-a-tete with the Patidar leader Hardik Patel in the current talks on the state’s upcoming polls? After all, Sibal’s track record in such track-2 diplomacy stands at zero. No one had forgotten how he floundered in 2011 during his parley with Baba Ramdev, Acharya Balkrishna and Devendra Sharma. The meeting was being held under the elegant roofs of Claridges Hotel. Things turned sour as Sibal got into legal complexities without trying for a political solution. The triumvirate left in a huff and then followed the police unleashing its might in Ramlila Maidan at midnight. It is learnt that most of the creases had been ironed out between Rahul Gandhi and Patidar Young Turk Hardik. The only hurdle that remained was the percentage of reservation for the Patel community. But ever since Sibal has gotten into his legal arm-twisting, it is learnt that Patel has started reviving his once worsened relationship with the Shiv Sena.

Given that films stars find a ‘purposeful’ way of staying on the limelight in their dusk years, the Tamil Nadu polls are coming up as a sizzler, with three superstars baring their ambitions.
First, the ‘ageless miracle’ Rajinikanth. He is clearly siding with the saffronites and his upcoming films are showing that sort of content. In fact, a recent report of the Intelligence Bureau says that he stands out in the public imagination as the CM candidate above his two serious detractors, Kamal Haasan and Vijay.
Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan have shared a love-hate-love relationship. The credit for bringing Rajinikanth to Tamil films undoubtedly goes to the latter, and yet, after a while there came up a serious animosity. However, it is learnt that the two old friends have once again made up. Kamal Haasan is the second most popular film star in Tamil Nadu. He is clearly opposed to saffron politics. He is committed to mass movement leaders like Arvind Kejriwal and his stance is anti-establishment. Kamal Haasan has been a vociferous activist on environmental issues and his anti-BJP stance has won him the support of the state’s youth, as well as another fabled film actor-director-producer Prakash Raj. The latter has been gunning for the BJP over myriad issues, including the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, rising intolerance in Indian politics and moral policing. But the third major figure who can turn the tides is actor Vijay, whose recent film Mersal has clearly taken on the Modi government on demonetisation and GST. This is why the government wanted the film to be taken off theatres, but despite that the film has already done business worth more than Rs 200 crore. Vijay has been in films since 1984 and at the same time, he has been very vocal on issues like Image result for Jallikattu, farmer suicides and the scam on medical entrance tests. He has been an avid supporter of Anna Hazare and had set sail for Delhi to join him in his anti-corruption movement. Vijay is extremely popular with the states youth and has thus thrown open the question of who will be the next CM of Tamil Nadu.

Languishing in political wilderness, former Janata Dal United founder Sharad Yadav is planning to break the BJP’s back with a major protest rally of Black Day on November 8, the last year when the monster of demonetisation was unleashed on the hapless Indian masses. Yadav wanted to bring Aam Admi Party and Congress with him on the same dais. But the Congress has clearly stated it wants no ruck with AAP. The Congress is peeved with AAP, because despite a clear agreement, AAP has fielded 11 candidates in the upcoming Gujarat polls. Congress has finalised its slogan for the protest: The country is suffering! Meanwhile, the isolated AAP has willi-nilly worked up its own protest day and termed it as “Betrayal Day”.

It is Rahul Gandhi in a new avatar, fiercely incendiary on the social media, a form has never seen before, paying back the Modi brigade in the same coin. And synoptically, unlike in the past, when his response team was a laggard. The name and face behind this metamorphosis are becoming increasingly known. It is none other than former Kannada film actress Divya Sandan, aka Ramya, who has turned the run-up to the Gujarat polls into nothing short of a ‘surgical strike’ on Modi’s verbal raids.
Just before setting off for his recent US tour, RaGa had sacked the former head of the Congress IT Cell, Deepender Hooda, and anointed Ramaiya as the top gun. Ramya was already a part of the Congress IT Cell, but her words were usually dumped in the bin. Hooda was handling the team in his own manner, which many in Team Rahul felt was marked by very late responses, leaving Modi a fast lane against Rahul in the race, allowing Modi’s social media brigade clear space and time to troll Rahul. But no longer. Divya, aka Ramya has enraged Modi with the slogan “Vikas gando thayo che” in Gujarat, that is, “development has gone berserk”. Rahul is now on the offensive, with lampooning GST as Gabbar Singh Tax, a marauder. Rahul has given a free hand to Divya to run the cell and lo and behold! Whereas earlier the cell had a mere 5 per cent women force, now the ladies account for as much as 85 per cent. And the size of the cell too has doubled. So now Rahul is returning fire to Modi in an unprecedentedly fierce manner.

In Uttar Pradesh, the media’s free-for-all is over. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has put ‘speed governors’ on the media mandarins who were minting money under the Akhilesh Yadav dispensation. Hundreds of ‘fake’, or hardly existing newspapers had mushroomed during the Akhilesh Raj and were fleecing the government coffers of official advertisements. Now that honeymoon has flown into the dusk. Such government largesse has been stopped. Not just that. The Yogi sarkar has drawn up a list of all scribes who have their own homes in the state and yet, were enjoying almost free government accommodation for being ‘accredited’. Yogi, say insiders, was shocked to find that many such ‘journalists’ owned plush houses in posh localities but had rented these out. One such person had leased his home to a bank for a monthly rent of Rs 3.5 lakh. Then there was another, who had rented out his house for running a restaurant! Naturally, many senior journalists are peeved and are spitting fire on the Yogi government.

The Congress in its moments of political despair has found a new mentor in former President of India and general ombudsman over the party’s past 40 years, Pranab Mukherjee.
It is not any longer a scuttlebutt in the political labyrinths that he weighs in much more on the Gandhi scion Priyanka than Rahul. It is clear in his jest released memoir that he had been very upset when the UPA government had decided to arrest Jayendra Saraswathi, who claims to be one of the four descendants of Adi Shankaracharya. Dada has resurfaced in the Congress firmament that there has always been a section of the party – since its inception till the formation of the UPA 1 that has espoused ‘soft-Hindutva’, and he has recounted among them leaders like Madan Mohan Malaviya, Kamalapati Tripathi till Narasimha Rao. Political commenters, in fact, link Nehru-Indira-Sanjay Gandhi-Rajeev Gandhi-Narasimha Rao in the same chain. Contrarily, ever since the party command was taken over by Sonia Gandhi, there had been a marked shift towards favouring minorities and many Muslim and Christian leaders had found their way into the advisory council at 10 Janpath. This came to be known as the ‘Sonia Effect’, so much so that it had led to then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to make a rather peculiar declaration that the first rights over natural resources lay with the minorities!
Tracing back the 2014 general election rout of the Congress, the AK Anthony committee too had also suggested that the Congress has painted itself as an anti-Hindu party.
Thus it is that though the crown prince, Rahul Gandhi may not be seen to be meeting Pranabda every now and then many of the party’s top MPs do consult the old warhorse daily and, expectedly, conveys his messages to the aspirant Congress boss.
No wonder that Rahul has started remaking his own image and visiting Hindu temples, including more than a dozen in Modi’s Gujarat itself.
And thus it is that the party has started revitalising its once-discarded image of being anti-Hindu.

Cutting out anti-Modi sirens in the party in the ride to the 2018-end (possibly) or 2019 (scheduled) General Elections has started, especially noticeable in the Patna Sahib Lok Sabha seat, where ‘Shotgun’ Shatrughan Sinha, who has been vitriolic of late, is sure to be shot down. The party is mulling the chances of Rituraj Sinha, son of billionaire RK Sinha of the security service SIS fame. Papa Sinha is a sitting Rajya Sabha MP and known to be very smacky with the Nagpur lot of RSS. Sonny Rituraj has studied at England’s Leeds University and has been a key strategist of the 2014 polls in Bihar. Ritu Baba had taken charge of the cyber cell of BJP in Bihar then and had helped connect the Modi Rath with the GPS system.