Election buzz of 2019
War Zone Amethi
Rahul Gandhi’s Election managers in Amethi are spooked. Their estimate was that at the Prime Minister’s rally in Amethi last month Smriti Irani would not be able to muster more than a 30,000-strong crowd. Even the BJP district in-charges in the area who have been psyched over the last several decades about the Gandhi surname did not have much confidence and wanted neighbouring constituencies to chip in with crowds.
The BJP local brass sniggered but opted out of any radical ideas as “Didi” had taken a call. And when the PM landed, there was a crowd of 1.5 lakh eagerly waiting for him. Since then the buzz is that the Congress is spooked. Not only are they trying to lure the BJP office bearers to their side, but they also commissioned a Survey on Rahul Gandhi’s fortunes. Last heard, the survey showed a mere 25,000 vote margin for RG against Smriti and this with Smriti having not yet even begun her campaign. Is that why a Hindu Minority seat is being scouted as a Safe Zone for RG in Wayanad, Kerala?
A “flying” Tete a Tete
Last week Raksha Mantri Nirmala Sitharaman not wanting to violate the Model Code of Conduct took a Vistara flight to Goa in the afternoon to attend the cremation of Chief Minister and Former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. Just minutes before the plane was to take off, her phone rang and she was told that the Prime Minister had asked her to accompany him in his plane to Goa. The Raksha Mantri had to quickly disembark after getting the plane doors reopened and proceed to the Palam Technical Area to reach the PM’s plane before he did. On the way, PM not only wanted a full report on the medical attention that Manohar Parrikar had been getting from the R&R Army Hospital in Delhi till the end, but the journey was also used for a threadbare discussion on the election scene in South India especially Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
Should Giriraj Singh have known?
Giriraj Singh has been crying hoarse that he has been taken unawares when his constituency was changed from Nawada to Begusarai in Bihar to take on JNU fame Kanhaiya Kumar. He has also been lamenting that no other MP has been meted out such treatment and most have retained their 2014 constituencies. But Giriraj Singh should have known. A Few months ago he was summoned by Prime Minister Modi. Mr Modi was being questioned in the media on why were motormouths like Giriraj Singh were being allowed to go scot free. An irritated PM asked Giriraj to give a full account of how many tweets he had done for his own ministry of Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) and how many tweets were on inciteful messages. Giriraj was stumped and had no answers. Was there an opportune moment that the astute Prime Minister was waiting for to clip Giriraj’s wings?
The Trio goes strong
The BJP top brass has fine-tuned its working. Before every Election Committee meeting in the Parliamentary Board, there is a full process that the BJP goes through. The initial work is done by Party President Amit Shah with his Core Team in the party where two crucial members have maximum say – Organisational Secretary Ram Lal Ji as he’s called and General Secretary Bhupendra Yadav who sit with various state chiefs and discuss a list. Yadav, Ram Lal, and Shah then discuss internally and fine-tune these lists. Then the Big Three - Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and Arun Jaitley - go through it with a fine-tooth comb from a 360-degree perusal at the loyalty, winnability, and the legality levels. It is after this backroom talk that the final matter goes to the Parliamentary Party where the other Biggies - Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj - are taken into confidence. In case of special interjections by Rajnath Singh and Swaraj, sometimes Shah holds side meetings with them or he deputes Jaitley to hold these parleys. But there are some issues where the Shah-Modi hotline continues to work overtime without anyone else in the Party knowing what their private discussion is.
(The views expressed by the author are personal and do not in any way represent those of Times Network.)
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