There was a time when Jagan Mohan Reddy was a Congress Parliamentarian and he was assigned a seat right next to Rahul Gandhi’s in the Parliament. But since he left Congress and registered a win in the Kadappa by-elections, he has been allotted the last, that is, the 262 division number seat in the eleventh row. Clearly, he is placed far, far away from the ruling party’s seats. But then he understands this distance, and so does the Congress.

There might be restlessness within the party because there is a delay in announcing the names of contestants from UP, prominent party leader Rajnath Singh believes that the list should not be released before January 10. On the occasion of Atal ji’s birthday on December 25, Rajnath Singh is organising a big BJP rally in Lucknow and all party leaders of repute will be part of the rally. Rajnath believes that if the list is released before this, all contestants will get busy with their constituencies and there will be few to organise a big crowd for the rally. And the people who will not be able to get a ticket will try to upset all efforts of a successful rally. Gadkari and Sangh Parivar also agrees with Rajnath’s point, and those who don’t are ordinary party workers. Since when have they been able to harm anyone in any way?

When the outspoken leader from UP BJP Ramakant Yadav met Party President Nitin Gadkari with a list of nine of his people, Gadkari directed him to his human computer Arun Narendranath. Press a button on Narendranath’s computer and the entire report of the chosen constituency can be seen through five terms. The demographic chart of the constituency, the caste breakup, the list of those who want to fight elections from the area, the list and details of the contestants, the maths of votes and so on. So when Narendranath tried telling Yadav ji that it will not be able to give such as such seat to the Yadav man because the Brahmins and Bhumihars have an upper hand, Yadav was pretty upset with it and went back ranting and raving. Ramakant Yadav has clearly told the party high command that elections in his area are not run by computers, but by something that is called a “danda” (stick).

So is Mallya really in such grave trouble or is he a rich owner of a poor company? On papers, the company has shown a loss of Rs 7,800 crore but the real loss could be much more. The company even sees profit in buying big ships and that is the reason it buys an F1 team for Rs 641 crore in a flash. But have the financial institutions lost complete trust in the company’s management that they now want the company accounts to be taken care of by the banks?

Advani was shown black flags during his Punjab lap, which was unforeseen, because there is a coalition government between the BJP and the Akali Dal there. The main reason for the flags was that Advani had supported Operation Blue Star in his book. This was also the reason he was not offered a saropa at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. There has been a souring of relations of sorts between the BJP and the Akali Dal over Advani. But the Akalis has clearly stated that they can’t support Advani at the risk of irking the people of Punjab.

Yaddyurappa is back from jail and wants to be reinstated in the party. He feels that the time has come for him to be made the party president of Karnataka state. To get his desire met, he sent his dear Sadanand Gowda to Advani. But Yeddy’s arch rival Anant Kumar’s ambitions stood in the way here. Advani gave no clear answer on the same and said that the party will think about it after the winter session of the Parliament gets over. So Yeddy sent his request to party President Gadkari, who has come out in the open supporting Yeddyurappa. Gadkari feels that state party president’s appointment has nothing to do with the Parliament session.

The Congress has already started its endeavours to weaken the BJP’s roots in Karnataka. The Congress managers are in constant touch with Bellary leader J Shanta and BJP leader S Pakirappa from Raichur. Both these Parliamentarians belong to the Valmiki Naik community. It is believed that the first to lure them was Congress leader Deshpande (Prafful Patel’s samdhi). Then they got both these leaders to speak to Pranab da, who has in a way assured them that they can get a ticket from the Congress for the next elections because they will be backed by the party now.

After showing his anger to the UPA government about the raising petrol prices, Mamata Banerjee has finally thrown in the towel. It is believed that in the days to come the Central government may announce a financial package of Rs 19,000 crore to West Bengal. This financial bailout is more important to Mamata than her other intentions.

Whatever statements Gadkari gives have deep sources. Otherwise what is the reason for the Sangh to quietly tell Advani that he should now bid adieu to electoral politics and only guide the party. So there are clear instructions to Advani from the Sangh that he should not consider contesting the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. A few days later, there is a statement from the party president that only those people who win in the Lok Sabha elections will be eligible for the prime minister’s post. And with that there comes Gadkari’s desire to contest the elections himself, takes a big entourage of media people to Nagpur on the party’s expenses and displays his political ambitions to the people there. Are the Sangh and Gadkari aiming at the two prominent party people who don’t contest Lok Sabha elections – Arun Jaitley and Narenda Modi? But winning Lok Sabha elections is no big deal for these two leaders – in electoral politics, these people complement each other.

Sports Minister Ajay Maken continues his tirade against the BCCI and he really never got along with IPL chief and his own colleague in the government Rajiv Shukla. So when he states that the IPL should be investigated, he forgets that the investigation is already on for the past year. Some highly placed sources in the BCCI claim that the Sports Bill proposed by Maken is being encouraged by a retired Justice from Punjab-Haryana who is extremely interested in sports and sports associations. He may have retired but not from his over-reaching ambitions. Now he is looking for a new job and when the Sports Bill was sent back for a redraft, changes were made and a Tribunal was included in the same.