No methi in Amethi
After high drama and a few burning fields, Amethi is battleworn. The locals are buzzing with conspiracy theories on who lit the fire. The BJP has, of course, unleashed firepower of another sort. What with the PM (earlier) and Amit Shah (during the weekend) descending on the UP Gandhi bastion with a big contingent of Delhi journalists. The contest, however, is really not between Rahul Gandhi and Smriti Irani, but between the Congress chief’s “prestige” and Irani’s “arrogance”.
Well, that’s how the locals describe it, citing how Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has ‘religiously’ stayed away from the campaign for the haughty Union minister. The Modi Govt’s toilet scheme ‘izzat ghars’ are a talking point in Amethi as nowhere else in UP. But in the last two days, post Priyanka Gandhi’s admission that the Congress is mostly playing the role of a ‘vote-cutter’ in UP, the SP-BSP cadres on the ground have joined hands with the GOP to ensure that prestige is intact.
The Gandhi bahus
Sonia Gandhi chose to come out of her hibernation to address her first and only public meeting in Rae Bareli, even though it’s seen to be a no-contest. Her opponent is an old Congresswallah whose desertion of the ailing, elderly Sonia has not been taken kindly. Or so is the buzz. The other bahu, Maneka Gandhi, is having no cakewalk in Sultanpur. From the communal card to Sanjay Gandhi, she played everything, and is still looking a bit iffy. Her son Varun, however, may pull through in Pilibhit.
Script, direction, acting...
Not leaving anything to chance or to anyone else, the Prime Minister is monitoring every incy-wincy detail of the campaign himself. Every night he comes back to Delhi, the BJP base camp, from wherever he ventures out campaigning, making about 30 phonecalls a day. Of which one early morning call is apparently always to Arun Jaitley, known for his spin-doctoring skills, and the bulk of the rest to Amit Shah. The PM is also taking state-specific local inputs from journalists with expertise in regional politics. All this because the remaining phases are particularly crucial, where the BJP and the Congress are in a straight fight, except in West Bengal.
Snub from Dhaka?
Foreign Secretary V K Gokhale had to cancel his Monday trip to Dhaka at the last minute after Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina cited her inability to be present to grant an audience. Her foreign minister and Gokhale’s counterpart too were unavailable. In London for an eye checkup, Hasina and the Bangladesh office were rather preoccupied. Why the FS was trying to visit the eastern neighbour amidst elections is not clear though. But that the Bangladesh intelligentsia has not taken the Indian poll rhetoric kindly is abundantly clear.