Police in dhoti-kurta
The Yogi has been painting UP saffron, quite literally. From the flags fluttering on the CM’s cavalcade to the boundary walls of police stations, everything bears the ‘sacred colour’ of the Gorakhpur mutt. Now it has been taken a step further. The dress code of the police personnel posted at the Kashi Vishwanath temple too has been changed.
Men guarding the devotees in the famously winding by-lanes of the Vishwanath temple right up to the sanctum sanctorum are no longer clothed in khakis. Instead, thin white dhoti and saffron kurta is the new dress code. Apparently, this one move is not Yogi-inspired. Cops with rolled up khakis wading through the slush of milk and gangajal were an eyesore for the priests and devotees. Well, the cops are not complaining.
Shah in a soup
Amit Shah is the last person anyone would ever think of being in a soup. But Shah, who has had a dream run since he became the BJP chief, is having what’s being called “Rahul Gandhi moments’’ in Karnataka. Apart from the two grave faux pas — calling B S Yeddyurappa the ‘most corrupt’ and Modi ‘anti-poor’ (in Kananda translation)—he has had one more embarrassing moment.
While trying to correct himself with a “I may have committed a mistake, but Karnataka voters won’t’, Shah was startled by a noise nearby. It was BJP’s CM candidate, Yeddyurappa, snoring loudly on stage, overwhelming Shah’s speech. The talk back in Delhi is that it may be Yeddy’s way of registering his protest against Shah’s move to get his previous translator Prahlad Joshi replaced by Ananth Kumar.
Pranab as PM?
The near-impossible also gets discussed in Lutyen’s Delhi with utmost seriousness. For instance, some in the ruling side are convinced that the Congress may pull a fast one on Mamata Didi by projecting Pranab Mukherjee as the common PM candidate. “She would not be able to veto the candidature of a fellow Bengali”, a top gun in the BJP was heard saying. The tattle started right after the Pranab Mukherjee Foundation inaugural was attended by the entire Congress top brass, barring Rahul Gandhi, and the BJP Marg-darshak Mandal. That’s much before Didi landed in Delhi to play her bit in the game.
Pecking order
Mamata Banerjee chose the ‘neutral zone’ of Parliament for her federal front talks. However, when Didi sent a message to ‘Madam’ Sonia Gandhi, the latter declined, making it clear that neither she nor Rahul Gandhi felt a ‘serious’ strategy meeting could take place in Parliament. And that Mamata was always “welcome @ 10 Janpath”. The TMC chief, who abhors the high command culture of her former party, fell in line. As per her own pecking order, Didi met most of the political heavyweights in Parliament, and BJP rebels Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha, and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal at her nephew Abhishek’s South Avenue residence.
CBSE fiasco
The Prime Minister is obviously upset with the CBSE leakgate hitting headlines. But who came to HRD minister Prakash Javadekar’s rescue to minimise damage? It seems Rajeev Chandrasekhar gave him the idea not to order a retest for all centres, but to limit it to leakage points.
Santwana Bhattacharya
The author is Political Editor, TNIE.
Email: santwana@newindianexpress.com