There were already speculations that Rs 2,000 note would be hit by demonetisation, because the government’s press had stopped printing these notes a long time ago, and its circulation was also limited to large transactions. But as soon as the results of the Karnataka elections came and the saffron fort collapsed there, the government took this big decision in a hurry. These notes are to be deposited in banks by 30 September 2023 and just two months after that, assembly elections are to be held in five states i.e. Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram. Look carefully, except one Madhya Pradesh, there are opposition governments in all the other four states. So, it is certain that once the Rs 2,000 note is banned, the fund management of the opposition parties may collapse, as for the BJP, it has the biggest stock of ‘Electoral Bonds’. When demonetisation was announced for the first time in November 2016, assembly elections were to be held in the five states of UP, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur in the very next year i.e. 2017. Now only after a year i.e. in 2024, general elections are also to be held in the country.

Due to a mistake of the Congress in the recent civic elections in Uttar Pradesh, Congress could not make its mayor in the municipal corporations. In fact, on April 16, Congress state president Brijlal Khabri gave Form 7A to Shyam Sundar Upadhyay Bittu along with giving the party symbol for the election and Bittu got involved in the preparations for the election. Meanwhile, Rajkumar Rawat left the BSP and joined the Congress. Khabri then asked Bittu to return the symbol as he now wanted Rawat to be the candidate. But Bittu went to the court, the court upheld his election symbol, so the Congress had to field Rawat as an independent. At the same time, Congress got Rawat complete support from SP and RLD as well. Rawat’s main contest was against Sunil Bansal’s relative and BJP candidate Vinod Agarwal. When the results of the election were declared, the BJP won the election with a record 1,45,720 votes, the BSP came second with 35,191 votes, and Shyam Sundar, an independent, got 35,173 votes, while Rawat came fourth with 30,247 votes.

Delhi is going to be far away for the BJP maharathis of Delhi. Important sources related to the Sangh reveal that in Delhi BJP will replace all its seven winning MPs and new faces will be fielded. If sources are to be believed, the tickets of Gautam Gambhir from East Delhi and Hansraj Hans from North West Delhi will be cut. The case of Chandni Chowk MP Harshvardhan is also said to be in limbo. On the other hand, Manoj Tiwari, MP from North-East Delhi, can be sent to Bihar to contest the Lok Sabha elections. Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva can be fielded in place of Meenakshi Lekhi from New Delhi. West Delhi MP Pravesh Verma can be fielded from a Jat dominated seat in Haryana or western UP and Ramesh Vidhuri from South Delhi can also be replaced.

The tenure of the current CBI director Subodh Kumar Jaiswal is ending in this month i.e. May. If sources are to be believed, the central government has also made up its mind that Jaiswal will not be given further extension, so the search for his successor continues vigorously. At present, three names are believed to be leading the race, the first of which is the current Delhi Police Commissioner Sanjay Arora, who is an IPS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre and feels that he is like an outsider in the Delhi Police. He is, allegedly, being treated as such, so he has expressed his desire to leave. Another name doing the rounds is that of Madhya Pradesh DGP Sudhir Saxena and observers are calling his claim the strongest till now. The third name of NIA chief Dinkar Gupta is in news, but it is believed that ‘RAW’ chief Samant Goyal wants to take him to his agency. In recent times, many IPS officers from Maharashtra have also got promotions, one of them is Atulchandra Kulkarni who is currently on deputation to ‘RAW’. His name is also mentioned in the race as the next chief of CBI. Another theory is going on that ‘this time the chance to become the Chief of CBI will be given to the same officer whose slate is clean and who has never worked in CBI before’. Therefore Sanjay Arora’s claim seems to be the strongest, but one source claims that the government has in a way finalized the name of Sudhir Saxena provided he gets the go-ahead from the selection committee.

The Supreme Court expressed displeasure towards the government after the central government gave the third extension to ED director Sanjay Mishra. The court has also raised many questions about this decision of the central government. Since then the search for a new director of the Enforcement Directorate has started. Only IAS, IPS and IRS officers take up the responsibility of ED chief. If sources are to be believed, at present two people are leading in the race for ED Chief. One of them is 1989 batch IPS officer Sanjay Beniwal, DGP of Tihar Jail and the other name in the race is 1987 batch IRS officer Praveen Kumar, presently posted as Principal DG of Income Tax in Ahmedabad. The third service extension of the present ED chief Sanjay Mishra is ending in November this year. He was first appointed as ED Director in November 2018 for 2 years, then he was given one year extension from 2020. After this, in November 2021, the Central Government brought an ordinance by changing the ‘Central Vigilance Commissioner Act’ so that another extension of tenure could be given to Sanjay Mishra. Notably, Sanjay Mishra is a 1984 batch revenue service officer. He is also in charge of the ongoing ED investigation on 95 percent of the opposition leaders. This list of opposition leaders is very long which includes big names like Sonia, Rahul, Priyanka, Robert Vadra, DK Shivkumar, Hemant Soren, Farooq, Umar and Mehbooba Mufti, Anil Deshmukh.

Congress is on cloud nine after the Karnataka victory. Sources reveal that now Priyanka is going to shift from UP to Madhya Pradesh. This can also be gauged from the fact that in the past, Priyanka has locked her office at Rae Bareli Road in Lucknow. Her entire team has now shifted from Lucknow to Delhi. It is believed that very soon the team will be shifted to Bhopal. Sources also reveal that ‘along with being the National General Secretary of the Congress, very soon Priyanka is going to get the responsibility of the National Women’s Congress as well.’ Apart from this, Priyanka will also have a lot of interference in the organizational matters of the Congress. Priyanka is going to play an important role in the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections, and if sources are to be believed, Priyanka can also be made the head of the campaign committee. If sources related to Priyanka are to be believed then she will start the campaign from Gwarighat in Jabalpur district where she will do a road show of more than 3 kilometers after Narmada Pujan. Notably, Gwarighat is situated on the banks of Narmada River, and it is believed that Guru Nanak Dev Ji also visited here.

It is said that there is no bigger lesson than failures. In the last 9 years, Congress has also learned the biggest lesson from its failures that its mass base is cracking on the ground, its organization is suffering from termites, its people are turning to other parties. So, in order to strengthen its booth management, the Congress has made preparations to hand over its responsibility to its senior leader DP Rai. Rai is a grassroots leader from West Bengal who has been a Congress MLA from Jalpaiguri and Alipore Gate, a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1984 to 1990, besides holding many responsibilities in the Congress organization. DP Rai can be entrusted with the task of training Congress workers, who will train the cadre of Congress Seva Dal, Mahila Congress, NSUI and Youth Congress and teach them booth management. Till now the responsibility of running the training center in Congress was on Sachin Rao, who has been running the training center of Congress in Wardha, Maharashtra. But DP Rai believes that ‘what is the need for every Congress worker to go to Wardha for training, when they can organize such training camps in different states.’ Rai was once marginalized in Congress politics, because he always opposed the alliance of Congress with the Left, while Rahul Gandhi’s view in this matter has been slightly different as Rahul has been a big fan of Left politics.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar wants to declare his MP daughter Supriya Sule as his political heir due to his health reasons. Perhaps that is why Pawar had recently resigned from his post as NCP chief, wanting to “turn himself into a guide by handing over the chair of NCP chief to his daughter.” He called his nephew Ajit Pawar and wanted to explain that Ajit should keep his focus in Maharashtra politics and Supriya should write the script of expansion of NCP at the national level, but Ajit did not agree on this. On the contrary, he threatened that “if Supriya is declared the NCP president, he will join the BJP along with most of the party’s MLAs.” This is the reason why Pawar had to withdraw his resignation to adopt a middle-of-the-road posture. On the other hand, the BJP is also having to reconsider its strategies due to the recent decision of the Supreme Court on the Shinde government of Maharashtra. Otherwise, if the Supreme Court had declared the Shinde government unconstitutional, the BJP would have got a unique opportunity to get rid of Shinde. The BJP knows it cannot win Maharashtra with Shinde on its shoulders, so party strategists from within had established contact with disgruntled NCP leader Ajit Pawar, who would have been made the deputy chief minister in the new BJP government led by Devendra Fadnavis. This coalition was ready to be formed, but the recent decision of the court ruined the intentions of both the parties.

The picture that was emerging in Karnataka since the time of election campaign, the election results also came out similar to this. In Kalyan Karnataka, Kittur and South Karnataka, the Congress hit the ground as expected. The BJP was successful in making the lotus bloom in Coastal Karnataka and Bengaluru. JDS stronghold itself has been breached at many places. It also seemed that instead of counting its development works, the BJP got trapped in the web woven by the Congress, so instead of raising legitimate issues, it picked up the ‘mace of Bajrang Bali’. In fact, while deciding the manifesto of the Congress, it was agreed that the Congress would ban organizations that divide the society on the basis of religion. But G. Parameshwara, the Chairman of the Manifesto Committee, deliberately inserted the names of Bajrang Dal and PFI in it, so that the BJP would be embroiled in the issue of ‘Bajrang Bali’ and that is exactly what happened.

The rounds of allegations and counter-allegations are on between BJP vs Congress in Karnataka elections. Central leader Smriti Irani is now campaigning for the Karnataka elections. When she went to Amethi, she shouted that ‘when Priyanka Gandhi had gone to Amethi for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, she was seen offering Namaz in a street there.’ After this statement of Smriti, there was a ruckus and social media started talking about this. The investigation of the matter started. Then it was concluded that this picture was of a dargah, where Priyanka is praying with her hands raised. After this, Congress’s ‘E-Sena’ also became active. They also searched and found such photographs of BJP leaders where their hands were also raised in prayer. Pictures of many BJP leaders praying and reciting Kalma in some dargah have come to the fore and in these pictures veteran leaders of BJP like PM Modi, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, JP Nadda are included. In another picture, Modi and Smriti Irani are seen offering chadar on a tomb.