Ever since the lotus has risen in Tripura and Biplab Deb has taken hold of the Chief Ministerial chair, the new CM is facing many new challenges. Sources reveal that when the newly elevated CM reached the Chief Minister’s Office on Day 1, he noticed that the pictures of the President and the Prime Minister were replaced with that of Stalin and Marx. According to sources, even the National Flag was on the list of the missing essentials. More or less, the same was the case with other government offices in the state. The history books were all telling the tales of communists and painted with Red pride. Now the CM is said to be busy changing everything, painting over all the Red with the shade of Saffron.

The clash between the government and the apex court seems unending. The latest in the conflict is Uttarakhand Chief Justice M Joseph whose name was sent back by the PM for reconsideration on his elevation as a Supreme Court judge. It was reasoned that the government is not bound to accept the name suggested by Collegium and that superiority is not the only bases of consideration. In fact, the government had subsided the superiority of justice Chelameswar to elevate justice Dipak Misra as the CJI.
In the midst of this, a question that arises to the point is whether justice Ranjan Gogoi will be throned in place of CJI Misra or the latter’s office will get a two years’ extension? If sources are to be believed, Central government is pondering over raising the threshold of CJI Office from 65 years to 67 years of age.
Manmohan also wanted to bring the 114th Constitutional Amendment Bill in 2010 so that the age of retirement of the Chief Justice of the country could be raised to 67 years, but for some reasons, this agenda remained unattended. The BJP government has the full authority to bring in such amendment, but the only flaw in the plan is that this will be a constitutional amendment, for which the saffron party has to be prepared to pass through the heat.

Swami Aseemanand is now acquitted of the Mecca Masjid blast case. If sources are to be believed, the BJP high command now seeks his services in the West Bengal elections. Mind you, Aseemanand’s real name is Naba Kumar Sarkar, who hails from West Bengal. For a long time, he has been associated with Sangh and its social welfare outfit ‘Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram’. He has built more than 25 tribal hostels in Purulia alone. He has a good hold among the tribal community. So, it would not be wrong to say that the BJP now seeks a strong push of Aseemanand in luring tribal votes in the state.

A few days back, CPM’s party congress was convened in Hyderabad. In this meeting, a tug-of-war shaped up between two veterans Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat and their supporters.
In the party congress, the debate of the hour was over which line should the party adopt after all – Yechury Line or Karat line?
At one point of the tussle, the matter so heated up that a delegate from Punjab threatened to sit on protest, then and there.
Meanwhile, a new voice of the party Uday Narvekar stood up and said, “My claim is that if the party follows the Karat line even for mere next three years, then its name will have to be changed from CPM to CPI.” And then Narvekar curtailed the new definition of CPI – “Communist Party Irrelevant”, that is, then the party will not have any relevance in Indian politics. Said enough, after this the party decided on following the ‘Yechury Line’.

Ever since rape convict ‘Jhansaram’ aka Asaram has been sentenced to life imprisonment, the troubles of Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan have increased. Actually, Shivraj had christened the names of a road crossing and a bus stand near Raja Bhoj Airport of Bhopal to that of Asaram’s to strengthen the vote bank politics. Now the pressure of the Congress party, including the masses, has begun to grow that the names of the fraud ‘Baba’ Asaram be removed from these two places. But Shivraj is afraid that if he does this, then he may have to face the displeasure of the devotees of Baba.

Last week, Rahul Gandhi began with his ‘Save the Constitution’ campaign from Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi. A large number of senior leaders of the party were also present on this occasion. But during his address, the first name that Rahul mentioned was that of Ashok Gehlot who has been trusted by the party with the responsibility of organising party congress in recent times and has been made the general secretary of the congress affairs. After this, Rahul took the name of Ghulam Nabi Azad, then Mallikarjun Kharge and then of Sushil Kumar Shinde. By then, Rahul’s eye spotted Digvijay Singh sitting in the front row, who is being highly discussed after completing his Narmada tour. Rahul, giving out a nervous laughter, looked at him and then finally had the courtesy of mentioning his name, too.

The BJP is already gearing up for the 2019 elections. Amit Shah has given clear instructions to almost 150 BJP MPs that they should start prepping for the anticipated elections from now itself. BJP’s 282 MPs were earlier victorious, which means that the future of 130-132 MPs is still hanging over the cliff on whether they’ll be considered for tickets or not.

Despite the PM’s warning to Yogi and Maurya, the two are still at loggerheads. Prior to the UP visit of BJP president Amit Shah on Aprl 11, UP BJP spokesperson Deepti Bharadwaj tweeted against own party. In a matter of time, the Yogi-camp too took onto Twitter and declared a ‘tweet-war’. Tweets started flooding in, taunting that ‘rapist’ MLAs are being sheltered under a powerful minister. The indication was clear that who that ‘powerful’ minister was. Deepti Bharadwaj sure is a Sangh leader but her friendship with Keshav Prasad Maurya is no new information. Going by the sources, Maurya still feels that Yogi and his failing administration were behind the Phulpur loss, while on the other hand, Yogi thinks that Maurya is preparing the battlefield against him. It is believed that the ‘wise monkey’ in this ‘cat-fight’ is the other deputy CM Dinesh Sharma, who is said to mark his presence in the court of every big leader but it is unclear as to whose real confidante he is. Simultaneously, when Amit Sasha reached Lucknow, he held a 7-hour marathon meet with CM Yogi. If sources are to believed, Shah has clearly warned Yogi to clear the air in UP before the Karnataka polls or else be prepared for the consequences. Anyhow, Dattatreya Hosabale and Krishna Gopal have returned to Nagpur after their two-day stay in Lucknow, and submitted a detailed report to Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat, alerting that the anti-Dalit image that is emerging of BJP in UP, it is not good for the political health of RSS.

The Centre has set its eye on the newly warming relation of ‘Bua-Bhatija’. The Nizam of Delhi is well aware of how one mention of CBI scares the bejesus out of Mulayam Singh, aka ‘Netaji’. A similar phobia haunts Mayawati, too. So it is anticipated that as soon as the waves of General Elections 2018 will reach their highest tide, the ‘tax-evasion’ wild card will come into play. Those who believe that CBI has filed its final report on Mulayam Singh’s tax-evasion case, are hugely mistaken. A mere statement was issued by the then CBI chief Ranjit Kumar that the final report has been prepared but in reality, this report was never handed-over. Anyhow, various such cases yet rest pending in the offices of CBI and ED.

Although Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan is seemingly at the forefront of worshiping saints, but the true mantra of the ‘sadhu-connect’ lies with our PM Modi. Sources say that once in a blue moon it so happens that the PM is not in acquaintance with a ‘sadhu’. Highly placed sources tell that the PM chit-chats with at least 2-3 ‘sadhus’ on a daily basis. Many a times the conversation is done through video-conferencing. And if a sadhu-saint is expected to gather crowd of 20,000, then the PM accordingly venues his events nearby.