Rajasthan Polls
Birla, Vaishnaw, Shekhawat lead CM’s race in BJP
The BJP’s central leadership appears to have decided to launch a new set of leaders in Rajasthan as it prepares for state assembly election later this year. The party has moved out the state unit president and the leader of the opposition (LOP) from their posts. Gulab Chand Kataria, who was the LOP, has been sent as Governor of Assam, and state unit president Satish Poonia has been given the post of deputy leader of the opposition in the state assembly. The state’s two top posts have been given to two new leaders. Chittorgarh MP C P Joshi has been made the state party president and Churu MLA Rajendra Rathore has been given the post of LOP. With the new appointments, the party has left former chief minister and arguably its most popular leader in the state Vasundhara Raje, without a post. She was reportedly keen on getting the post of LOP. That would have brought her back into the race for chief ministership.
The BJP has a clear edge over a divided Congress in the state. The stakes are high for the party. But the central leadership has refused Vasundhara the post she desired. She was, however, allowed to put her protégé in the post. Similarly, newly appointed state president C P Joshi is considered close to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla. Birla, according to sources, is another strong contender for chief ministership. With his man becoming state chief, his position has further strengthened. Sources said minister for railways Ashwini Vaishnaw and Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat are also in the running for the state’s top job post elections. The game is on. But while Shekhawat appears to be slipping, Vaishnav has strengthened his position through his work as a minister and by connecting with the people of the state. His recent address to a large gathering of his Brahmin community in the state made headlines within and outside the state. It was for the first time the soft-spoken bureaucrat-turned-politician was seen breathing fire in his political avatar. As the poll date approaches, the contest for the top post is expected to get hotter.
Conned by Colleague
Sansad TV staff lose crores in Ponzi scheme
About half of the 300-strong staff of the Indian Parliament’s official broadcaster, Sansad TV, has been duped by a former colleague who had worked with them as a broadcast engineer for almost a decade. Among those who lost money are many journalists, including some very senior ones. The engineer told his friends in Sansad TV that he invests in the commodity market and the returns are huge. He invited his colleagues to invest and benefit from his knowledge of the market and excellent timing of buying and selling. The initial investors in his scheme received outrageously high returns. He would accept investments in units of Rs 1,50,000, with an assured monthly return of Rs 12,680 on each unit. As profits started pouring in, scores of Sansad TV staff invested in hundreds of units. Then, like in all Ponzi schemes, when the kitty got big, the conman disappeared with it, leaving the investors high and dry. The angry investors tracked him down at his hometown in Saharanpur where much drama followed at the local police station. The conman declared himself bankrupt but entered into a written agreement with the Sansad TV investors, promising to pay them back in small instalments starting next month. The media men who have not received any increment in the last four years and are in the middle of a Lok Sabha TV-Rajya Sabha TV merger mess are clinging to a piece of scrap hoping to salvage at least some of their hard-earned savings.