A high profile legal fixer who lives in the posh Defence Colony of Delhi, is living away from his family and living in with another woman, who has two children. This person and his live-in partner have deep and close relationships with several high profile politicians and legal eagles. The ED has been keeping its hawk eye on this couple for three months. When the ED went through all the evidence, phone details, and other information, it found that the woman has close relations with a minority leader of the BJP. The investigative agencies have found a lot of shocking and surprising information from the call details between both of them. Sources say the ED is busy trying to uncover the details of the intimate relation between this woman and the BJP leader. If the powers-that-be want, this might create havoc in the BJP’s inner political scene.

BJP leader Siddharthnath Singh might find himself in a spot in the Sanjay Bhandari matter. Sources say that documents available with the ED show a close and old friendship between Bhandari and Singh. It is also being said that in the past, Siddharthnath would attend all family parties and special occasions organized by Bhandari, and would also work towards forwarding his political career. According to sources, Singh had Bhandari meet three top BJP leaders, and in return, Bhandari had spoken about helping the party. In the phone recordings with the ED, there is a lot of information that might create a lot of political turmoil in the days to come.

Having ruled West Bengal for 34 years, when Communist Party-Marxist could only get 22 seats under the leadership of Sitaram Yechury in these Assembly elections, it was only natural that a lot would happen in the red party. Yechury took it upon himself to pacify an upset Prakash Karat. A special aide of Karat spoke to Yechury, and it was then decided that both would meet at A K Gopalan Bhavan in New Delhi on a one-to-one basis and sort out their differences. Yechury reached there at the assigned time, but when Karat was nowhere to be seen until 6 pm, the former called him up. Karat apologized and said that there were party workers at home, who wouldn’t leave even when they should have. And so why doesn’t he speak with Politburo’s member Balakrishna Pillai.

Listening to what Prakash Karat had said, Yechury called up Balakrishna Pillai. Sources say he was advised from Pillai’s side that it would be better if he relinquished his post on his own, lest his resignation is asked for in the next Politburo’s meeting. It is said Yechury had sensed that the Karat coterie wanted to make Brinda Karat the secretary instead of him. So Yechury also made it clear that he would definitely not leave his seat for Brinda. If the party wants, it can choose some other leader. Yechury also said that this was not the first time that the party has taken a beating in elections. Even during Harkishan Singh Surjeet’s times, the party has had to face defeat several times. Sources say Yechury has taken a significant moral decision that once his tenure in the Rajay Sabha ends, he will not extend it, and will work only for the party.

Sensing the changing winds in UP, Kapil Sibal is embarrassed; he curses the day he chose UP over Uttarakhand on the advice of a Congress strategist. That is because Harish Rawat was adamant that only a local man be brought there. So Pradeep Tamta got lucky, and because Tamta is a Dalit, Rawat wants to cash in on it in the next elections. The Congress sent Sibal to UP hoping the SP will take care, but sources now reveal that SP supremo Mulayam himself has changed his views. Netaji is of the opinion that when Sibal was in power, he did not help Mulayam whole-heartedly in legal matters. On the other hand, people like Mukhtar Ansari have openly supported Sibal. Sibal is also hoping nine votes from Ajit Singh will be in his favour. He is speaking to Ajit several times a day, requesting and cajoling him. But it is believed Ajit has kept forward a strange request that only if SP MLAs support Sibal will his own MLAs go with him.

Is Kapil Sibal paying for his big mouth, when he shot from it against Narendra Modi when he was in power? The BJP has put him in a tight spot in this Rajya Sabha election. The latest is that Priti Mahapatra met with the PM in Delhi last week, and Modi assured her of all possible help. Priti’s husband Harihar Mahaparta is from Odisha and a big builder in Mumbai. On the other hand, Priti is from Gujarat, and is the founder and managing trustee of a charitable organization called Krishna Leela Foundation. Apart from that she is also the national president of a non-government organization “Narendra Modi Vichar Manch”. At a time, Harihar Mahapatra’s father was Rajiv Gandhi’s OCD, and so his political clout if not newly-acquired. Priti’s staying at Lucknow’s Taj Hotel at the moment. The BJP alone has 17 extra seats, and sources say out of the 28 people from the Congress, nine have broken away. Priti, too, is constantly in the game, and she has her cards on the table. Sibal doesn’t have a problem with that; he is a strong player, but the entire BJP has come together to defeat him.

The BJP is extremely satisfied with the election results from five states. The saffron flag is hoisting in the northeast for the first time. It is also probably for the first time that Muslim voters in Assam have openly voted for the BJP (nearly 17 per cent of them). With 11 per cent votes, the party got just one per cent less vote than the Congress in West Bengal. In a state such as Kerala, the vote share for the BJP is 14 per cent, which is a significant number. What did the BJP learn from its win in Assam, however? As a prominent party leader, Rajnath Singh said from the party platform, “We gave a clean face to Assam, and the people gave us the power to form the government.” Taking two more steps ahead, Singh also tried to tell the Modi-Shah duo that the party will have to repeat the Assam experiment in UP as well. Even Modi was playing high stakes in Assam; the insider news is that learning from the big loss in Bihar, Modi took the duty of weaving the election strategy away from Shah and gave it to Ram Madhav. Months before the elections, Madhav’s close aide Rajat Sethi rented a three-room flat in Assam and started working in earnest there. To gather as much information as he could about the voters, Sethi set up a cyber army of 400 young people in his war room in Guwahati. It is on Sethi’s insistence that Modi did not make any direct and personal attacks on the then Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi from the Congress. After Assam’s results, Ram Madhav’s clout in the party and Modi durbar has increased. You might even see him as the new strategist for UP elections.

Central Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had been absent from the past two-three Cabinet meetings. There was also speculation that he might be let go in the coming Cabinet reshuffle. But this time when he was present for the Cabinet meeting, the prime minister praised him to skies, and said Paswan was one of the most experienced ministers present. He added how Paswan was Ajatshatru, and had no enemies, because no one could stay angry with him. Coming out of the Cabinet meeting, a minister from Bihar gave tips to a journalist he was close to, and said, “Do you understand the meaning of Ajatshatru? That he has no enemies in any party. He can go anywhere. So it is not really praise. In his imitable fashion, the prime minister was making a snide remark.” What had happened was that Paswan had asked one of the secretaries in his department to forward a file. To this, the secretary had advised Paswan that he should first speak to Nripendra Mishra about it. Paswan did not take nicely to this and got upset. He said, “I have been a minister for five terms. I am not interested in meeting anyone. Whoever wants to meet me can come to my home or office.” It is said the news about this incident was passed on to the prime minister, and who took care of it in his own style.

There is a Delhi bureau chief of a prominent London newspaper who got lucky and met Rahul Gandhi a few days ago. The first impression he got of Rahul was that he was a calm person with a good demeanor, who spoke to a political correspondent in a candid manner about everything except politics. For instance, how a little-known club like Leicester manage to defeat a club like Manchester 11. Rahul knew every little detail about these football clubs. He even mentioned that during his education in London, he was a big fan of these clubs. Rahul also gave his frank opinion and views about football in India, the clubs, and the politics involved. When it came to discussing politics, this foreign correspondent wanted to know what roadmap Rahul had in mind for the party whose graph had fallen dismally in the past few years and it has been limited to just a few states. How did he hope to revive the party, and how optimistic he was about the Congress’ protests in the Parliament and on the streets? Rahul got restless at these questions, and said, “This is enough for today. We will talk more later.”

The income tax department conducted a raid on a businessman who deals in arms, and preparations are on to arrest him. When the industrialist’s phone details were looked at, it was found he has extremely close relations with a close relative of the Gandhi family. It was also found that he was close to the Parliamentarian son of a chief minister from the BJP. The industrialist not parties with him, but they also play gold together. Because it is a sensitive matter and could mar the image of the government at the Centre, Modi told Shah to handle the matter. With the help of his close aide Bhupender Yadav, Shah got in touch with the chief minister in question over the phone, and clearly warned him, “Warn your son immediately. He might get trapped in an illegal matter.” The said chief minister is said to give a dressing down to his son.