Ahmed Patel has come out with a new formula in these Assembly elections that he should not treat the party rebels as enemy. Patel believes that in the 1993 elections, it were the Congress rebels who had given power to the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition. So this time if a strong Congress rebel is standing opposite NCP, the Congress is supporting him fully from inside this time. And this is an open game and the Congress has also made it clear to NCP that if on some seat a strong NCP rebel – who can win the poll – is standing against the Congress candidate, then NCP should also support it. Or either way, Patel stands to win.

Gopinath Munde’s daughter is contesting from the Pearly Assembly seat in her father’s parliamentary constituency. In the last Lok Sabha election, Munde had taken a lead of about 50,000 votes in this assembly segment. So it is believed that Munde’s daughter will be able to win easily. Even otherwise, she has been handling the responsibility of her father’s parliamentary constituency. And despite being trained in computers, she has also been handling the responsibility of her father’s sugar mills.

It is the season of strikes in the country. First the pilots of Jet went on a stroke, and then IIT professors and Air India pilots. Whatever remained of orderly conduct was taken care of by five senior officers of RAW. Three months ago, all of them had proceeded on a long leave but till date they have not resumed duty. All these officers are angry with the Government over the issue of their promotion. To register their protest, they had also met the Prime Minister and he had assured them that everything would be resolved. But nothing came of the assurance. So, to show their resentment, none of them returned to work and there is no guarantee on whether or not they will ever return to work.

The adage of `once bitten twice shy’ holds true. Having got a drubbing in the Lok Sabha elections, BJP not only changed its strategy in the Assembly elections, but the party is also paying attention to the minutest of details in weaving a new election policy. In the Lok Sabha election the saffron party was so deeply immersed in the self aggrandizement of Advani that it did not even shy from launching a personal attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. But in the ongoing Assembly elections the most prominent person on the saffron party’s agenda has been the common man. So, the party’s conduct and behaviour is clearly showing how much it is really concerned about the ordinary man. So the saffron party is worried about rising prices which are spiraling out of control, rising unemployment, and the pain and agony of the farmers. And this time the saffron party is in particular very concerned that as in the Lok Sabha election a Varun Gandhi should not be allowed to hijack the basic agenda of the party as a waving flag of radical Hindutva can without reason prove to be a cause of concern for the party.

Mayawati used to once keep her brothers, her family members at a fair distance from politics but now the times have changed and she has also changed for her brother. All her work in Noida is these days being supervised by her brother Siddharth. Ever since the Supreme Court verdict, Mayawati has distanced herself from her dear Satish Mishra.

Sangh wants the party posts to be rid of Advani and at the same time also expects him to support it in running the BJP. Or, the request of the Sangh is very simple – `Go with a headgear on to a marriage, but not that of the groom’. Sangh also does not want Advani to retire and sit at home and also does not want him to remain as active as before in the party politics. Poor Advani, what is he really to do?

Two big people are definitely on the target of the Congress – they are Modi and Amit Shah. Congress believes that this is the best time to attack these two big leaders because at this juncture BJP is by heart not with Modi. So the SIT can go against Modi. The Congress is still waiting for an order that may seek to punish Modi. Has the time come for BJP to start looking for the successor of Modi?

A senior officer of Indian intelligence agency RAW was recently caught having fun with two young girls in Beijing. Our intelligence officer was so thick with these two Chinese girls that they used to frequently move in and out of his apartment in Beijing. Now Delhi is now worried as it wants to know if these two girls have only robbed the RAW officer of his heart or if they have also decamped with our secrets and classified information.

Here todayAdvani has become the proverbial `Ba’ of the soap operas of Ekta Kapoor, so why does he need to leave the perishable body? It is a matter of hundred or two hundred years only. Now look at `Ba’, does she ever die? Even if she dies, she is born in a new avatar. So what wrong is being said by Rajnath Singh, who appears deeply immersed in Advani worship, when he says that for the next 50 to 100 years Advani will remain the leader of BJP. Today he will live in present, tomorrow as a ghost.

Three words are in vogue in BJP these days – `chhapas’, `dikhas’ and `oral diarrhoea’. Oral diarrhoea is a new myth the credit for whose creation goes to two Muslim leaders of BJP. They are Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Sayyed Shahnawaz Husain.