Astrological predictions by a famous astrologer, Pandit Sanjay Chaudhry, have put the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh in a quandary. Chaudhry had earlier, much earlier, predicted the certain win of Donald Trump in the US presidential polls last year. That prediction, which went against the liberal media wisdom and predictions of a Hillary Clinton landslide, has come true. Chaudhry had also predicted a bright future for the Akhilesh-Rahul combine in the annual predictions issue of the Parliamentarian magazine. Now he says that the Samajwadi Party-Congress coalition will come to power in UP. He says also that two women will play a critical role in this. Given that Sonia Gandhi is one of the two, is he suggesting that the other woman could be Mayawati?
Pandit Chaudhry has also suggested that while polling in the first three phases of the state elections will not warm the hearts of the SP-Cong combine, but polling in the fourth phase will give them a bumper crop of votes. Chaudhry predicts that after the UP polls, the cadres of both Mayawati’s BSP and BJP would go helter-skelter and both parties would be in disarray.
So far as the already concluded Punjab polls go, he says that while the BJP-Akali alliance will bite the dust, and Aam Aadmi Party would surge in terms of vote share, and yet, the Congress would form the government.
About the Goa assembly polls, which concluded on Feb 4, Panditji says that it will be impossible for either the BJP or the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party to form the government in the 40-seat assembly. Rather, he says either AAP or Congress will rise to power.
In the 70-seat Uttarakhand assembly, where polling concluded on Feb 15, rebels from within all the parties have played a crucial role, Panditji says, predicting a hung assembly in which the Congress will have a shade more say in forming (or not forming) the government.
And finally in for flung Manipur, Pandit Chaudhry says that in the 60-seat trial at the hustings, BJP’s vote share will see a hike, but still Congress will come to power. It will be interesting to watch out for how these predictions play out on March 11.

In a not so rare incident nowadays, the voice of a genuine economist has been put in the freezer by a major media house.
It is learnt that Nobel laureate economist Dr Amartya Sen is seriously unwell these days and has come to reside and recuperate at his daughter’s home in Kolkata. Hearing this, a senior Bengali scribe from that large media house flew out to Kolkata, and using her Bong connections, tied up with Dr Sen for an interview. Sources reveal that despite his severe health problems, Dr Sen granted more than one-and-half hours to the scribe and spoke his mind on a range of subjects, from demonetisation to the economic policies of the Modi Sarkar.
Dr Sen apparently said that in countries where socio-economic disparities peak, a frustrated populace tends to elect an ultra-rightist government, which is the case in India with the Modi government and Donald Trump’s triumph in the US.
Dr Sen may have also indicated to the lady reporter that this could be his last interview to any print media. Buoyed by such a hard-hitting free speech from such an eminent personality, the reporter flew back to the Capital and filed her report post-haste. But surprise, surprise!The next day the interview did not appear. She waited for a couple of days, and finally walked up to her editor and asked why, especially because Dr Sen and his daughter had by then made a couple of calls embarrassing to the scribe, wanting to know when the interview will appear. She was told point blank that it will not appear because it is like a Bofors shelling against the country’s top leadership. Hence, the management will not allow this to be printed. However, she was reassured that her flight and other expenses would surely be reimbursed. Dr Sen and the scribe thus remain prisoners of conscience!

He wins over and floors all. PK. Prashant Kishor. The name that made names for NaMo, then Nitish Kumar, then RaGa… the list goes on. If there ever was a political joy ride, the one riding it now is PK. Everyone knows the role PK played in Nitish’s sweeping Bihar victory. He ran away with all the laurels, and since then his political ‘lovers’ have been queuing up at his doorstep. Priyanka Gandhi introduced him to Rahul, who fell in love. RaGa introduced him to Captain, who heads Punjab Congress, who fell in love. And now that Rahul has introduced him to alliance mate Akhilesh Yadav, that husband of Dimple Yadav is also in love with PK, for his political marketing, that is. So much so that PK is now chopping up air hours flying with Akhilesh in his chopper from place to place for the latter’s election rallies, whispering political wisdom into the CM’s ears in flight. It is learnt that just after PK and Akhilesh had flown out of the Lucknow airport for a rally recently, Congress heavyweights Ghulam Nabi Azad and Salman Khurshid landed there. At hand was the owner of a top local daily newspaper, who teased the duo: “Aha! So now you too are taking lessons in politics from this foreign-return youngster…” At which Khurshid said testily: “Let’s see first who he really is with!”

There was a time when Prashant Kishor, the political-marketing Chanakya of 21st century India, was the apple of Nitish Kumar’s eyes, but now it seems Nitish is looking at that apple through tainted glasses. Grapevine has it that the honeymoon is now frayed. Thrilled with his tactical moves that pushed Nitish back to power, the Bihar CM granted PK the status of a state cabinet minister. It is known that it is only after this that PK’s Delhi Durbar got the sheen, including a bungalow and an expensive car. But a peeved Nitish recently told PK: “I gave you the rank of a cabinet minister, but then, you made Delhi your home. Have you spent even a full week in Patna after that?”
The real story behind this ire lies neither in Delhi nor in Patna, but in Lucknow. Apparently, while taking the assignment of mentoring Akhilesh in the UP polls, PK had promised that he would hammer out an alliance between SP and Nitish’s JDU. All Nitish wanted were 10 seats for his men to contest from. But then the eternal spoilsport and Nitish’s political mate Lalu Prasad poured ice into his scheme. Lalu got wind of this plan and called up Akhilesh. He said that the young man better ally with RJD, which has more MLAS and MPs than JDU. Akhilesh himself had planned to use Kurmi leader Nitish to campaign in the Kurmi-dominated constituencies in UP, but Lalu tripped both of them. And now Nitish is slamming PK for that failed game plan.

The $10 billion worth Adani Group seems to have come into some hurdles over its Mahoba power project in UP. This is because the state’s environment and forestry department has sued the group over violations. The state has alleged that the company has clear-felled 650 bighas of land without the prior permission.
It is learnt that last year, the UP government under Akhilesh Yadav had granted the Adani group permission to set up a power plant in the power-starved, arid Bundelkhand area. There used to be a veritable forest of mixed plantation of various trees in the region.
Having received the green signal from the state government, the Adani group grafted the land into its various 60 holdings.
Now the state forestry department is adamant that prior permission is a must for felling such kinds of trees under the Protection of Tree Act, 1979.
The fact cannot be missed that this is the same area where last year, the ruling Akhilesh government had spent crores for planting for more than a crore of saplings in its mission of a Green State, and also the same area where his rival Mayawati had spent money to worth Rs 500 crore to rehydrate the arid zone. That was in 2008-09.
Now local NGOs have also started asking what the cost benefit analysis of this project is for the locals.

Hardline rightists may be having a field day in the US as of now, but their Indian counterparts are not in a bright patch at the moment, at least in the hotly contested Uttar Pradesh elections. For instance, the poster boy of ultra-right Hinduist fire-eater Sangeet Som of the BJP is contesting from Sarghana constituency of Meerut district, but is facing a stiff resistance from another fire-eater: Bahujan Samaj Party has fielded abattoir owner Haji Yaqub’s son Imran Qureshi, who is known for his strong stands. To set a balance between the two, Samajwadi Party has given its ticket to a strong Gurjar candidate, Atul Pradhan, whose wife Seema is the district Panchayat President. Som had swept the poll in 2012, because he belongs to the Rajput community, who dominate 24 villages around here and they had cast their 50,000 votes en bloc for Som. Besides, the Jats had also voted for Som. But this time around the Jat voters are upset with BJP, as Som had almost totally neglected his constituency and has rarely, if ever, visited his own village during the last five years. It is clear now that the constituents are not going to be moved by ultra-right speeches. They want delivery and in that context, Atul Pradhan has an edge there.

A major survey and opinion poll was conducted in Uttar Pradesh by an agency just before the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance was welded, and results are sure to shock many leaders. The survey had a sample size of 91,122 and was conducted across the state. The poll result says that SP (Akhilesh faction) will wrest 156 seats out of the 403 seats in the state assembly. The Bharatiya Janata Party comes next with 124 seats. Maya’s ‘maya’ (magic) will come a cropper, and her Bahujan Samaj Party will manage only 67 seats. A combination of other smaller parties will bag 34 seats. Next comes Akhilesh’s father Mulayam’s faction of SP, with 12 seats, and the Congress with an abashing eight seats. The magic figure in UP is 203 seats for any party to come to power on its own. Now, we leave it to the reader to speculate on the scintillating outcome.
The same agency’s survey in Uttarakhand – with a sample size of 14,244 shows the lotus shining bright. Of ther 70 seats there, BJP is slated to bag a cool 46 and romp into power in Dehradun. Harish Rawat-led Congress will wriggle out only 18 seats. Other parties will get around six seats. The same agency’s survey in Goa (sample size: 8,922) shows BJP and Congress almost neck to neck, with 14 and 12 seats respectively in the 70-seater. The Aam Aadmi Party is likely to open its inning in the tourism state with nine seats and the others will remain confined within five seats. And in this hung situation, the AAP and Congress can warm the cockles of each others’ hearts and run a coalition government.

It seems the survey agency is fond of churning out thrillers, and says that the food bowl of the country, Punjab, will go to Aam Aadmi Party. The agency says that its survey of 23,240 persons shows AAP running down the BJP-SAD alliance 62:15 in the 117-seat state legislature and will easily form the government in Chandigarh. The Congress will do well if it gets 32 seats and will be take the seat of the Main Opposition Party.

Here’s a cautionary note for all those who believe that it was economist Anil Bokil who had advised and laid down the ground plan for PM Modi on demonetisation. Birds in the 7 RCR gardens coo that the real Man Friday on this errand was Harmony India Foundation’s Harsh Doval, a man you cannot find much about on the Internet search engines. Naturally, it was Doval who had prescribed exactly how and what to do… how many new currency notes to print, when to reach them to the banks, when and how it will reach people, and so on. Now, now… for the informed, it is no guess what is Harsh’s relation with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval!

Ultra Hindu heckler Yogi Adiyanath of the Bharatiya Janata Party is mightily peeved with his organisation’s mandarins. His latest angst is that the party did not consult him on the selection of candidates for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh state polls.
Adiyanath apparently has a huge clout in at least 40 state assembly constituencies. Naturally, he had expected that the high command’s Central Election Committee, of which he is not a member, would at least invite him in an advisory capacity in the candidate selection process. But nothing of that sort happened. He was not invited for the meeting. Worse, no one so much as called him over telephone to seek his comments.
It may be recalled that in the last meeting of the party’s working committee, he was denied the chance to speak, and he had left the meeting in a huff on the very first day itself. Now Yogi seems to be convinced that all this is a well-crafted conspiracy to finish off his political career in the party.
Yogi’s youth forces have a lot of muscle in both eastern and western UP. In the past, whenever he had been meted out such an ignominy, he had got his own candidates to get tickets from the Hindu Mahasabha, and the burden of problems had to be shouldered by the BJP. It will be interesting to see how he acts this time around and how the party reacts in the latest fracas.