After getting weakened in Haryana and losing out Maharashtra to the smart power-play by the Sharad Pawar-stitched Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance, now BJP has lost the Jharkhand assembly elections as well, in a triple-whammy. The BJP is facing this kind of consecutive checkmates because the elections in these three states were fought on local issues, and not quite the pet national issues promoted by the RSS-BJP political ecosystem such as Ram Mandir, CAA/NRC, triple talaq, Pakistan, among others. Quite naturally, the BJP high command has blamed the former Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Raghubar Das, for the defeat in Jharkhand, in an attempt to shift the blame from the Modi-Shah duo, who addressed several rallies in constituencies where BJP candidates faced a drubbing. All the while, BJP had displayed overconfidence thinking that they would manage to form the government with the help of other smaller parties, and especially former CM Raghubar Das had been claiming upto the last leg of vote counting that the BJP would secure victory in the important state commanding massive mining and forest resources. Asthe tables turned on the BJP, it was JMM leader Hemant Soren who came out victorious, with a meeting of all parties in the alliance, JMM-Congress-RJD MLAs chose Soren as the undisputed leader. Soren took the oath as the 11th Chief Minister of Jharkhand on 29 December 2019, and the national Opposition put forward a show of strength on the occasion, with Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, Tarun Gogoi, Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Bhagel, TMC’s Mamata Banerjee, DMK’s MK Stalin, T.R Baalu, Kanimozhi, RJD’s Tejasvi Yadav, SP’s Akhilesh Yadav, AAP’s Sanjay Singh and CPI leader D Raja, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and NCP’s Sharad Yadav attending the cwearing-in Ceremony. In addition, seven other MLAs have also announced their support to the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance government. The defeat in Jharkhand by the BJP, barely a month before the extremely important Delhi assembly elections to be held in the beginning of 2020, in which the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party is tipped to win on its stellar governance record, should make the saffron [arty take serious stock of its poll strategies still fully immersed in communal polarization. For a change, BJP should draw a lesson from the past assembly elections and fight the Delhi polls on local issues if they want to avoid are run of the 2015 electoral drubbing.
MURMURS OF DISCONTENT GET LOUDER AGAINST YOGI’S MISRULE IN UP
The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh not only failed in any development work, but also in maintaining the law and order situation of the state. Although Yogi himself tried to maintain a strict image, but it did not stall the deterioration of law and order in UP. For development work, there is no permanent chief secretary in the state appointed till date and the differences between chief minister Yogi Adityanath and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya is openly discussed in the political circles of Lucknow. The Maurya-led group has been accusing the chief minister’s office of interfering in the PWD department, which is under the deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya. BJP MLA Nand Kishore Gurjar’s act in the UP Assembly has also brought to fore the massive difference in opinion between the chief minister and the MLAs. Although CM Yogi, upon the instruction of the BJP high command, has warned the MLAs to maintain the discipline in the house, he has been unable to create a good relation with his MLAs. The Yogi government’s high-handed approach to peaceful demonstrations against CAA/NRC in most districts of UP and the police brutality against the protesters have been the latest in the series of missteps taken by the Yogi government that have created an atmosphere of high tension in the state, and the worst situation is that the police used firing against these demonstration in which A young boy was killed in Bijnor when police fired at demonstrators, causing further shock and distress among locals. In fact, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has claimed that there were so many deaths via police brutality in the protests and that the police is not even providing the postmortem reports to ascertain the exact number of casualties and other damages. Meanwhile, Congress has accused the cops of mishandling Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in Lucknow while she was going to meet the family of former IPS officer SR Darapuri, who was arrested in a protest rally against NRC in the state capital.
CABINET WOES FOR RAJASTHAN CM GEHLOT CONTINUE
The government in Rajasthan under the chief ministership of Ashok Gehlot is working well in the area of development work as well as in the law and or order situation of the state. However, Gehlot is now a worried man because after one year of government, he has neither expanded the ministry, nor included the BSP or other independent MLAs who are supporting him, into the cabinet. While the chief minister and deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot have made their own list of MLAs who would, be included in the Cabinet expansion but the strength of the Cabinet would not be more than 30, including the Chief Minister. At present, due to panchayat elections, Ashok Gehlot has got relief for some time, but he is worried about the coming Rajya Sabha elections for the three seats in the state. He’s waiting for the permission of Congress high command for the expansion of the state Cabinet, even as BSP MLAs are pressuring him for inclusion in the government almost every day.
BJP, CONGRESS CANNOT MATCH KEJRIWAL-LED AAP IN DELHI
In the coming days, there may be the expected declaration of Delhi assembly election by the Election Commission and all the three main parties – AAP, Congress and BJP – have started their poll campaign. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is now working full time to give relief in water, electricity and sewer line bills to the middle class and poor. He is projecting his government for the good work done in health, education and combatting pollution. While the BJP has started his poll campaign with a rally of PM Modi on 22 December in Ramlila ground on the issue that the central government has taken a decision to grant ownership rights to more than 40 lakh residents of 1731 unauthorised colonies in Delhi, but still they have not declared their candidate for the chief ministership who would lead the campaign. BJP has created many committees to adjust the senior BJP leaders of Delhi. In the same way, Congress party started their poll campaign with Bharat Bachao Rally at Delhi’s Ramlila ground on 14 December, with the issues of economy, unemployment and NRC/CAA being the major flash points. The Congress had appointed 72-year-old Subhash Chopra as the Delhi state Congress president, and Kirti Azad who has joined the Congress after leaving the BJP, has made the head of the Campaign Committee. However, infighting in the Delhi state unit is still going on. The BJP is out of government in Delhi since 1998 and Congress is out of power after 15 years of rule in Delhi. Meanwhile, AAP wants that all those people who helped them in 2013 and 2015 assembly elections should remain with AAP in the 2020 polls too. Arvind Kejriwal has been working hard on the issues of electricity, water, education and health. Following the trends from Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly poll results, the BJP knows that winning Delhi would be an uphill task now. In the same way, Congress should be seen united to win the election, but is not up to the task. In the last Lok Sabha elections, the late Sheila Dikshit had tried rejuvenating the fledgling Congress, but due to infighting, the Congress lost all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. Meanwhile, some senior Congress leaders have preferred a seat-sharing understanding between the Congress and AAP, but most of the state leaders are said to be against the idea.
JAVADEVAR, OR JAVAD KAR: WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Even as the BJP is planning programmes to “reach out to the Muslim community” supposedly to “clear the confusion” spread by the Opposition over the new citizenship law, party leader Shahnawaz Hussain recalled an old incident in which senior BJP leader and Union Minister Prakash Javadekar was mistaken for a Kashmiri Muslim leader. In the story that Hussain narrated at the BJP headquarters in Delhi, Javadekar and Hussain were part of a committee visiting Jammu. While referring to their visit, newspapers in Jammu had mistakenly referred to Javadekar as Javad Kar and described him as the new Muslim face of the BJP. After that Hussain started referring to Javadekar as “Javed Bhai”, Hussain quipped. After hearing the story, some in the BJP suggested that Javadekar could be a face to reach out to the minorities in these troubling times. (IPA)
Priyanka Makes Frontal Attack On Yogi 