In its efforts to find newer friends in Maharashtra and jettison its now-warm, now-cold state ally Shiv Sena, the BJP seems to be slowly elbowing out the former. This was evident from the fact that Sena boss Uddhav Thackrey went all out to meet the PM during his long stay in New Delhi recently, but he was served the proverbial cold shoulder, most likely on the machinations of party boss Amit Shah. On the other hand, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar’s recent tete-a-tete with the PM should be a clear signal enough: something is cooking between BJP and NCP.
The BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) polls are on the cards and BJP wants to win it in its own steam. To counter the Sena, therefore, it will need a powerful state party, hence the NCP. There are hums in the corridors of 24 Akbar Road that Sena will be shown the door and the vacuum will be filled by NCP. Plans seem to be that the PM will himself make an extensive tour of Mumbai, may be addressing constituency-wise rallies, of which six have already been planned in detail. And with Pawar and Modi having smoking the peace pipe, it seems Pawar’s covert support will buy him a warmer space under the BJP sun in the Modi government, may be in the Cabinet too.

With all due respects to the seat of the President of India, there’s no gainsaying that the present incumbent Pranab Mukherjee has been a wily politician whose guile none have been able to match, even his former boss, late Indira Gandhi. So is it a shot of Muherjee-vallian diplomacy that the Honourable President invited Uddhav Thackrey and family to the Rashtrapati Bhavan? That too, just around the time PM Modi had shunned Uddhav? Insiders say that Uddhav, wife Rashmi and son Aditya Thackrey were guests of the President and enjoyed the honour. Notably, in the recent past several other regional satraps have become special guests of the President. Experts say that this is part of Pranab-da’s PR exercise, especially to bolster his stance that his seeming soft corner for Modi is nothing but an aspect of his grand strategy.

Prime Minister Modi called a crucial meeting of all the party MPs to take stock of the situation arising due to demonetisation. He addressed the meeting himself. Seen at the venue were fallen (‘ousted’?) party veteran LK Advani, and Finmin Arun Jeitly, as well as senior leader Venkiah Naidu, playing out his new roles as an emcee. Finishing his speech, Modi asked: “Does anyone have any questions or suggestions?” Unaccustomed to such a question from the dictatorial Boss, the MPs stayed simply mum. Sensing that this was somewhat awkward situation, MP Ramesh Vidhuri launched a rousing slogan: “Har Har Modi!” and the meeting ended with this sense of complacence.

The otherwise friendly Lok Sabha Sumitra Mahajan gets pretty upset with members whose performances are not at par. In fact, she does give them a piece of her mind. Now, MPs dying to go on foreign tours as part of this or that committee is nothing new. But Mahajan insists that they cannot miss out on the already decided purpose of their visits. Recently, she summoned two such members to her chamber and gave them a dressing down. One of them is a young MP of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party from a Hindi heartland state, who had flown to Norway for a tour. But it is learnt that instead of attending the committee meetings, the gentleman was found most often roaming a known fashion street of Oslo.
The second case was that of a lady MP from another party, who had been to Israel and Australia. And she organised a big bash in her hotel room. Such was her frenzy that she got completely drunk and smashed things up her hotel room. The incident came to light when the hotel asked the Indian Embassy to cough up the repair charges for the damages. Mahajn wrapped her for this, saying that when an MP goes abroad, s/he represents the country, is the country’s ambassador. Hence, the image of the country also takes a beating. She made it very plain: MPs visiting foreign countries must be extra cautious about their activities, and in fact, she has also informed PM Modi about this.

The political corridors were buzzing with the news that PM will address the Rajya Sabha on currency ban this Friday. A few news channels and agencies broadcasted the news incessantly, day in and day out. It started doing the rounds on social media by Friday evening, but nothing of that sort happened. If a source associated with the PM is to be believed, he formed a committee with of his 80 reliable officers and sent them to different states in order to find out the effect of defunct high value currency notes. It is expected that those officers will hand over the reports after returning to Delhi, then those reports will be analysed by a core team on Saturday. The Prime Minister will prepare his speech after understanding the mood of the masses on currency ban and apparently face the opposition in the Parliament on Monday or Tuesday. Perhaps Modi wants to armour himself fully before he accepts the challenge posed by opposition parties.

The country is still in the phase of dilemma on currency ban. Even the staunch believers of Modi are now saying that the policy is really good but its execution has created a mess all over the country, so naturally, the measure is unable to deliver the desired results. Although the serpentine queues in front of the banks have become a little shorter over the last few days but the common man is plagued with problems. One can see the their wrath due to defunct high value currency notes in rural areas. A reliable source from the ministry of finance says that the problems, created due to currency ban are not going to end any time soon. Since the currency including both high and low value taken off the market is 2200 crores. The value of currency printed every day in the country jointly by printing presses all over the country is just rupees 10 crores. Even if these printing presses keep working day and night, they will still end up printing only 300 crore notes per month which is far less than the requirement. The high value currency notes of 500 and 1,000 are nothing but mere garbage of Rs 6 lakh crore. There are reports that the new Rs 500 notes that were being printed at a government press have turned out to be completely defective, so the Reserve Bank has recalled them and given fresh orders for printing at a different press. That situation is akin to farmers looking at the sky for some clouds at least in a drought year.

Albeit the black money in Swiss bank has not been routed back to India by Modi government however a company of Switzerland De La Rue Giori through KBA Giori supplied necessary components. The high value Rs 2,000 notes to replace Rs 1,000 notes to flush out black money were largely printed at the printing press of Indian Reserve Bank in Mysuru under utmost secrecy while the paper on which the printing was done came from Italy, Germany and London.
From the month of August to September around 480 million currency denomination of Rs 2000 and Rs 500 currency have been printed. To strengthen the financial status of India and to curb the influx of fake currency form Pakistan, including the hawala money used in terrorism, Modi has taken such big decision.
The sources reveal that the government will soon print currency notes of Rs50 and Rs100. But the current notes will remain functioning. This is why Switzerland’s company KBA Giori has been assigned this indispensable task to help in establishing currency printing machine in Dewas in Madhya Pradesh, Nasik in Maharashtra, and Midnapur and Solboni in West Bengal . As of now Mysore press alone prints 70 per cent of the requirement.

The government is well apprised that there is an estimated amount of 14 lakh crore black money in the country. Apparently, there is trifle fervor in the country since the demonetization of Rs500 and Rs1000 notes. Notably, the Income Tax Department will not initiate any enquiry if the amount deposited in the personal account is below Rs 2.5 lakhs. The assurance was a sigh of relief for most of the people. As per source, government has its own estimate that with this initiative approx Rs 9 lakh crore black money will smoothly return to the bank. Subsequently, with voluntary disclosure scheme the huge cash deposit can be announced. There is a provision of 200 per cent penality in case of having money more than the income. In this case, around 85 lakh from the amount of 1 crore of a person will flow to government. Besides the new provision of income tax department there is an imprisonment of 7 years. The opposition parties are afraid that with this rule Modi government might settle its political score by sending anyone to jail or protecting them from going to jail as per their whims and fancies.

The fifth floor of Transport Bhawan houses the office of the Minister for Road Transport Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari. The waiting room adjacent to his room has a frame on the wall that depicts excerpts from a Harivansh Rai Bachchan poem that says, ‘Ek ajeeb si daur hai ye zindagi, Jeet jao to kaee apne pichhe chhut jate hain, aur haar jao to apne hi pichhe chhod jate hain , baith jata hun mitti pe aksar kyunki muje apni aukat achhi lagti hai…(Life is a strange passage… if you are a winner, many of your loved ones are left behind… and if you lose, most of your loved ones leave you behind… perhaps it is best for me to be seated on the sand of life)
Gadkari, a once-RSS strongman believed in his style of politics of being bold and fearless. He cared little for the whims of the powers that be in this government. He wanted to appoint a reliable official as Member (Traffic) of the National Highway Authority. But the PMO bumped this off. The head of government got a call from the RSS Supremo, naming a different person: “He is a good official from Vidarbha and quite close to the RSS. He should be appointed there.” Within a few days, the ‘Khaki-man’ got the ‘saffron’ signal. And thus it is that the lines of Bachchan became a reality for Gadkari: ‘Achhey ne achhaa aur bure ne bura jana muje, kyunki jiski jitni zarurat thi,usne utna hi pehchana muje.”

The Chairman and Managing Director of Mathrubhumi, Kerala’s – and perhaps India’s largest selling ‑ vernacular daily, Virendra Kumar, took an initiative to end the tussle in the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Kumar, a former MPsaw to it that the two warring leaders of party – General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and former G-Sec Prakash Karat, with wifes Seema Chishti and Brinda Karat in tow, went for lunch on Diwali eve, at an affluent South Delhi restaurant, Kathputli. The lunch paved the way for the much needed reconciliation between Karat and Yechury. It was decided that if Yechuri leaves his post of General Secretary, he will recommend Brinda as his successor. Karat held on to his position that the party G-sec cannot be the member of the Rajya Sabha.
It was agreed that if Yechury wants to remain MP, he should leave the party post. It is said that Karat was quite emotional while suggesting his wife’s name. He even said that she is so dedicated to the party as to forego motherhood.