Mighty upset with his party, BJP’s Shatrughan ‘Shotgun’ Sinha has gone ballistic against party strongman and Bihar head Sushil Modi. Shotgun wants the high command to drop Modi from all the posts and rid him of his responsibilities. His supporters, the ‘Shatrughan Sinha Fan Club’ has already launched a vigorous signature campaign against Sushil Modi. They will soon send the document to party boss Amit Shah so that the latter gets to understand the sentiments of the people of Bihar. Shotgun’s ire with Modi is for the latter’s repeated negative comments against Shatru. But Shotgun is short of ammunition, as none of the state’s top leaders are supporting him.

Recently, Modi was in Kedarnath and after addressing a rally, he was acknowledging the waves of applause from the obedient audience by waving his hands. Seeing him do that, Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and top BJP leader Shyam Jaju, standing attentively behind him, thought it wise that they too should wave their hands. They did. But were promptly told by the Special Protection Group security men not to do so. Obviously this could only have happened by ‘indication’ from Modi, who brooks no equals in the party, but he nevertheless made no issue out of it.

Desires are flying across the country, and why not. If Amitabh Bachchan can dream of becoming the President, why should Ratan Tata lag behind? The situation is a surrealistic drama. On the one hand, the BJP’s twosome has made up their minds, and has got the RSS to cast its ‘Yes’ to the saffron presidential candidate. They have narrowed down the choice to two persons, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Majahan, or external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj. If the ailing Sushma’s health further deteriorates, it will be Mahajan. And yet, people like Bachchan and Tata are running like headless chickens to get the party’s blessings for the coveted Raisina Hills residency. Sources reveal that over the past few days, Ratan has met Narendra as many as four times. Top insiders say that Tata is seeking the ‘return gift’ for throwing out Modi detractor Cyrus Mistry from the Tata Empire because he had joined hands with Didi Mamata Banerjee.

Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath has an enviable reputation as a tough leader, and yet, he recently got shouted down, albeit via media, by his very own deputy. Deputy CM and state BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya in a recent meeting, even in the presence of Yogi, bawled out a ‘strict warning’ that severe action would be taken against any party leader or cadre who is found to be running any organisation parallel to the BJP. Now, it is no secret that Yogi’s Hindu Yuva Vahini has been in the headlines recently and he has made it clear that he ain’t about to rubbish it, not yet. Instead, he says, the Vahini will keep working on socially burning issues. However, Maurya’s blast has for once left a few wrinkles on Yogi’s forehead, for sure.

An audiotape related to BSP supremo Mayawati and her now sacked deputy Naseemudin Siddiqui went completely viral last week. In the tape, Siddiqui was heard repeatedly pleading with Mayawati: “Behenji, these people are not meeting me. They have stopped responding to my phone calls. The moment they meet me I shall settle all the accounts and come and clear everything with you.” Siddiqui, of course made no reference to money changing hands but spoke of settling accounts with “these people” who were “refusing to meet him”. He even claimed that some of the names had not been given tickets by him in the last state polls. And yet, the day he was sacked and held a press conference, those very people were all around him!

The developments over the past few weeks have left the Aam Aadmi Party leadership a flagellated lot. Usually reliable sources say that the core committee of the party has clearly decided it will attack the BJP, as it must, but never take the name of Modi to do that. Apparently, the party is taking a lesson out of its recent past, which shows that whenever it has slammed the fist on Modi, its vote bank has eroded and the BJP has gained. The party honchos have decided that instead of blaming Modi, they will blast the ‘central government’. And it seems that this is why AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal too has kept his birds from tweeting. For he knows well that once he opens his mouth it cannot be anything but slamming Modi personally.

Sources reveal that the ‘screenplay’ of Kapil Mishra’s political misadventure had been scripted some weeks ago. It is well known that Kumar Vishwas has been peeved with the AAP leadership for some time. He apparently feels, or says by way of his excuse, that AAP had veered off from its original principles. Gradually, the disenchanted among the party’s MLAs started queuing behind Vishwas. To the extent that half a dozen of them reportedly signed a memorandum in his favour. The ire of top leaders like Somnath Bharati, Kapil Mishra, Rajesh Rishi, Adarsh Shastri and Alka Lamba had actually spilled out in the open. Getting wind of this, Kejriwal said he wanted to meet all these grumbling lot. But then, he was told that Shastri has gone holidaying to Ranikhet; Bharti has taken to the former ‘summer capital’ Shimla; and Alka Lamba was still in town, but she posed as if God was in his heaven and everything was right with AAP’s world. Thus did some timely damage control by Kejriwal stem the possible mutiny in the party.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has quite a battalion of very articulate spokespersons and you have been encountering every now and then on prime time news channels. But it is becoming increasingly evident that in their saffron haste, they often say things that are not substantiable factually. And the top two in the party, Modi and Shah are well aware of these faux pas. So scuttlebutt is that soon these over enthusiastic spokespersons may be given the sack and will be replaced by some other saffron bugles. However, Shah has another problem in hand: these party loud mouths are seen daily on the channels, but they rarely care to be seen at 11 Ashok Road. So now a new system has been put in place. Now these mouth-organs will have to attend the party office daily, surf through newspapers, TV reports and social media chatter and give a report to the high command.

The whispers are fast spreading on whether UP CM Yogi Adityanath will merely make announcements, or his pronouncements actually take shape on the ground. The young CM had pompously declared he would investigate the Gomti Riverfront scam. A month has gone by; much turbid water has flown down the river. But neither has the riverfront got any cleaner, nor has the investigation started. Then, yogi had also set the cat amongst the pigeons by ordering that all his ministers as well as top officials will have to declare their assets within 15 days of his taking office. The hands on the watch tower in Lucknow are turning away, but till date, about 150 top officials and half the ministers in Yogi’s government have kept their assets close to their bold chests!

While the newly anointed UP CM Yogi Adityanath seems eager to change the face and façade of the state, his own people are reportedly tripping him. Lucknow whispers are that almost every other day he gets a phone call, requesting a dinner with him. The callers on the other side of the mobile are either some top RSS leaders, Central ministers or head honchos of some of the RSS-affiliated organisations. And these dinners are nothing but agenda setting by the callers. Besides, these ‘agendised dinners’ go on till 10 or 11 at night and Yogi fails to attend some critical meetings that had been set up already with his top officials. A frustrated Yogi is now getting increasingly suspicious on whether these dinner meets are being orchestrated as a clear strategy to derail him from reaching his goals, or are just coincidental.