Setting all speculations aside, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is all set to anoint BJP campaign panel chief Narendra Modi as the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the upcoming general elections 2014. The announcement may be made by party president Rajnath Singh between September 5 to 20th in Delhi.

Despite the party heavyweights like Lal Krishna Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi and Sushma Swaraj objecting to Modi’s candidature, Sangh wants to formally announce his name for the top job in order to clear any misgivings. Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat, accompanied by other leaders such as Suresh Soni and others, have already arrived in the national capital on Thursday for a three-day visit. Sangh has two clear agendas: putting a seal of approval on Modi’s name as the PM candidate and giving a boost to the old agenda of the organisation. It may be recalled that Sangh had said that leaders beyond 75 years of age should take retirement from active politics and become mentors to the new crop of youth leaders.

Sources say that Sangh doesn’t want two power centres in the party with Advani spearheading the group of dissidents’ leaders such as Jaswant Singh and Murali Manohar Joshi, whose views are often different from that of Modi.
Sources say that Sangh is not happy with leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj’s tweet through which she had expressed her wish to share her views with the youth of the nation by visiting colleges and universities after the monsoon session as the concept was already initiated by the Gujarat chief minister who had visited Shri Ram College of Commerce in
Delhi and Pune’s Fergusson College, for which he had received accolades.

The Sangh leadership also wants to make sure that no one poses challenge to Modi’s PM candidature. Modi’s close confidants say that astrologers have suggested him that stars would favour September 5 as the date of announcement for his candidature and the Gujarat CM has already conveyed his sentiments to Rajnath and the RSS chief. Senior BJP leader and leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley has openly spoken about the need to announce Modi’s name now. Rajnath too has accepted Jaitley’s views on several occasions.

Sangh wants to send a clear message to senior leaders Advani, Joshi and Jaswant Singh, who were eyeing Bhopal, Allahabad and a seat of Rajasthan respectively, that they will be brought into the Rajya Sabha and will not contest the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
The three big heavyweights are in a state of shock with the decision. During his Delhi stay, Bhagwat is all set to express the party’s sentiment to the leaders that the decision taken for them won’t be compromised and has to be implemented in compulsion.

A prominent politician from the BJP Maharashtra, Gopinath Munde, is in the news, again for all the wrong reasons. He once fell for a Lavani dancer, and sources reveal that once his closeness with former Bollywood actress Shilpa Shirodkar increased. Shilpa had left the film industry and was settled in California in the US. But now she is back in India and is making a comeback with a TV serial. Shilpa’s elder sister Namrata Shirodkar has also been a familiar face in modelling and Bollywood. Actually, Shilpa initially wanted to make a comeback through Bigg Boss, but somehow she couldn’t finalise it with Salman Khan. If sources are to be believed, Munde had promised a BJP ticket to Shilpa from north-east Parliamentary constituency in Mumbai. But the seat is with the Nationalist Congress Party for now, and Sanjay Deenanath Patil occupies the seat at present. When the NCP people got a sniff of the fact that Shilpa may contest the elections from there, posters of Shilpa’s two old movies “Kishan Kanhaiya” and “Bhrashtachaar” were there for everyone to see. It is worth mentioning here that Shilpa had done some intimate scenes in these movies. Now Munde says he can’t give Shilpa a ticket even if wants to. Shilpa is said to be pretty upset about this.

The worry lines on CBI’s forehead continue to increase regarding the missing Coalgate files. On August 27, the CBI will present itself before the court for the first time since the files went missing. Sources reveal that CBI Director Ranjeet Sinha may say before the court that he has not got the files he had asked for from the PMO and the coal ministry. The 793 files the CBI had got from the ministry and the PMO are the ones that are from before coal blocks were allocated. But the files after the allocation were done have gone missing and the CBI is getting the same standard answer, “The search for missing files is on; a committee has been formed for the same.” Sending the sensitivity of the situation, the court may ask the CBI to register another FIR because the court will want those files anyhow, because the charges can’t be made only based on the CAG report. It is believed that the court is also angry that these file-missing incidents may become a regular feature and tomorrow, even the files from the “defence deal” may go missing.

The son-in-law of Gandhi family Robert Vadra knew very well what all is going to happen in the Parliament and on the roads in the next few days. So three days before the Monsoon Session in the Parliament had started, he took a British Airways flight to London with his reliable associate R K Gupta. While news from his alleged land deals became headlines in Banana Republic, a name he gave to India, the prosperous son-in-law of the big family remained oblivious to all this and was concerned with it. He managed to run his business efficiently from London. He arrived in Paris on August 13, and he is in no hurry to return back to his country. The Opposition is also in no mood to let him off lightly this time; at least the BJP wants to make is a big issue in the next Lok Sabha elections. Sources reveal that Modi has documents from two more deals, and details of the same will be revealed in the next few days. The Gandhi family, too, is worried this time and is wondering how to take care of this worry.

Congress’s Gehlot government in Rajasthan is throwing away money among the public. It can be called the biggest cash scheme by any other state government until now. And the Congress can see its immediate benefits already. According to an older investigative report, the Congress was supposed to get just 45 seats in Rajasthan. A newer report says that there is a dramatic improvement in the seats the party is set to get. Now it is being said the Congress will get 72 seats against the speculated 108 seats by the BJP. If the Gehlot government continues to rain down money on the public through the cash scheme, the party’s performance may improve even more. A few days ago, Ashok Gehlot had a talk with Sonia Gandhi and Gehlot requested Sonia on his behalf, and said that the longer it takes to announce the elections in the state, the most the Congress will stand to gain.

There is a race among senior journalists to join Raul Gandhi’s
“war room”. In the past few days, nearly 18 journalists, most of who were covering the BJP beat, have said goodbye to their jobs with well-established newspapers and have joined Rahul at one-and-a-half times the current salary. Rahul and his team gave preference to the journalists who were covering the BJP only because they believe that these journalists will have a better knowledge of the BJP and Sangha Parivar and will know a lot about their internal politics as well as their strategy for elections. Rahul has promised these journalists that after the Lok Sabha elections, these journalists will get back their jobs with whichever newspaper they were working for. These journalists seem to be enjoying their news jobs at the war room, because they don’t have to stress about the work. There are vending machines for Coke, coffee, and different kinds of sandwiches. Whenever these journalists are free, they get to play with Rahul’s Yorkshire terrier breed she-dog Piddi.

Former Army Chief General V K Singh may contest from the Rae Bareilly seat from BJP’s ticket during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and pose a big challenge for Sonia Gandhi. Sources reveal that the General has met the former BJP President Nitin Gadkari three times and the present BJP President Rajnath Singh twice regarding the matter. The strategist for the entire move is said to be Gadkari and it is being said that he wants to even out scores with Sonia with this one move. Gadkari feels that the present spate of legal cases against him have all been carried out on Sonia’s behest. It is believed that Gadkari has even sought Modi’s consent to have V K Singh contest from Rae Bareilly. Actually, Modi also wants to frame Sonia on her own turf and wants that she should be so tied up with Rae Bareilly that she does not get to campaign too much in other constituencies. The General himself was keen of contesting the election from Bhiwani in Haryana, but the BJP strategists made him understand that Rae Bareilly is a constituency with a Thakur majority, and of the five Assembly constituencies in the area, at least three have the Thakur opinion holding sway. For instance, the Rae Bareilly Sadar seat, where apart from Thakurs, the Brahmin votes also have weightage, may have a pro-BJP stance. The second is Saraini, which also includes the Dalmau Vidhan Sabha area and where Thakurs have a majority. The third seat is Harchandpur, which includes Saraini Vidhan Sabha areas also, which is again a seat with a lot of clout from Thakur, Lodh, Brahmin and Yadav. Another news that is doing the round is that Sonia may not even contest the elections this time owing to her health. The other news is that instead of Sonia, Priyanka may contest the elections from Rae Bareilly constituency as well as Sultanpur seat. If that happens, the BJP will have to change its strategy.

Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP’s prime ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi is not just good at wooing investors to his state, but also turning out to be the party’s trump card for generating funds.

Come to think of it, the marketing strategy entailing Modi fans to pay Rs 5 for listening to his speech during a Hyderabad function fades in comparison when one assesses Modi’s fund raising potential at a much larger scale. The BJP’s poster boy is believed to have promised a whopping Rs 700 crore for party’s kitty.
According to sources, Modi has promised BJP president Rajnath Singh that the party will get Rs 700 crore soon, so that it can effectively prepare for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Sources told this reporter that the issue of “BJP’s dwindling corpus” figured prominently in discussion between Modi and Singh recently. Rajnath told Modi that the Central Headquarters party fund was left with just Rs 2.60 crore and this was peanuts for launching an effective campaign for the 2014 polls.

Rajnath has spoken to Modi about the receding party corpus in the past as well. But coming just before the announcement of Team Modi for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Modi’s assurance to Rajnath means that the party is in for winds of change when it comes to managing finances.
The massive amount that Modi has promised will be required for election management and campaigning. No wonder an elaborate Team Modi to steer the campaign was announced just two days ago.
Without these finances, Team Modi will remain ineffective, perhaps be restricted to an entity on paper. Team Modi comprises 20 committees and 34 sub-committees – mandated with different tasks like campaigning, party manifesto, vision document, media management, election management, etc.

Yoga guru Ramdev’s Bharat Swabhiman Dal may also try its luck in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. While Ramdev claimed to launch his party candidates for all 543 seats, the recent upheavals in the political world have made him more realistic. A few days ago he spoke with Narendra Modi and spoke about an alliance between his Dal and the BJP. He has asked of Modi for 10 seats from UP and Uttarakhand for his party. Baba wants his Dal candidates to contest the elections under the lotus sign. Baba claims that he has over one crore supporters all over India, all of whom may have their votes ready for the BJP. Baba himself wants to contest the elections from Hardwar in Uttarakhand. A reliable source close to Modi revealed that Modi is ready to give Baba’s Dal give seats each in Uttarakhand and UP. These include seats in Hardwar, Bijnaur and Nagina.

There is an uproar in the country that if NIA has a copy of interrogation with David Hadley, where he has talked about Ishrat being a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative, what is that statement not being made public? Bigmouth Diggy Raja is also shouting it out from the rooftops. In the same series of events, newly-appointed Home Secretary Anil Goswami, at the behest of Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, had spoken to the NIA Director N R Vasan. If sources are to be believed, Vasan disagreed having ever said something like this. Whereas the truth is that after returning from the US, the NIA, in the presence of the prime minister, had handed over a report to the National Security Advisor, which allegedly has Hadley’s confession. This confession of Hadley’s is available in NIA’s report’s para 159-160. But the problem is that even if it wants, the NIA can’t use this report the way it wants to, because when the NIA’s team went to the US to question and interrogate Hadley, the agency had officially signed an oath letter saying that it will not use Hadley’s confession for any court case. So be it Shinde, Chidambaram or our prime minister or our National Security Advisor, everyone knows the reality about Ishrat but no one wants to talk about it.