The various state and district units of the Congress have been organising protest marches and rallies against demonetisation after party vice-president Rahul Gandhi exhorted the rank and file to take up this issue on a war footing at the Jan Vedna Sammelan held in the capital earlier this month. However, the campaign appears to be petering out days after it was launched with great enthusiasm. The recent protest rally held in Bhopal is a case in point. To begin with, the march was poorly attended. Second, senior Congress leaders from Madhya Pradesh like Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia failed to show up for the protest even though this issue is of personal interest to Mr Gandhi. In fact, the absence of these state stalwarts did not go unnoticed. What was ostensibly a protest against the Narendra Modi government became an occasion for the Congress to display its much-vaunted factionalism. Conversation at the programme was centred around the missing trio with the usually-discreet former Congress minister Suresh Pachouri even taking a public dig at his colleagues. While Mr Singh was said to be busy with the Assembly polls in Goa, as he in charge of the state, nobody knew why the other two leaders failed to turn up. An embarrassed Mohan Prakash, Congress in charge of Madhya Pradesh, is said to have assured the state unit that this matter would be looked into.
When veteran Congress leader Narayan Dutt Tiwari was recently welcomed into the Bharatiya Janata Party by its president Amit Shah, it was widely speculated that the ageing leader had switched sides essentially to secure a ticket for his son Rohit Shekhar in the coming Uttarakhand Assembly polls. There was also a strong buzz that the BJP was willing to accommodate Mr Shekhar, despite the fact that he is a political novice, because the saffron unit felt it was worth the price for having acquired a respected brahmin face. As it happens, Mr Shekhar’s name does not figure in the BJP’s list of candidates. A disappointed Mr Shekhar is now planning to approach Prime Minister Narendra Modi, failing which he plans to approach Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav for a Samajwadi Party ticket. While the party’s decision to deny a ticket to outsider Mr Shekhar has been well received by the BJP workers, they are also wondering if it was necessary to import an ailing Mr Tiwari while the party’s in-house brahmin — Sanjay Joshi — continues to be ignored. Former BJP national general secretary Mr Joshi had a bitter falling out with Mr Modi over two years ago and remains in the doghouse even though he has attempted to make peace with the Prime Minister by openly supporting his decision on demonetisation.
BJP MP Varun Gandhi is not known to hold back his punches but he appears to have been effectively silenced ever since his name figured in a case of a honey trap by known defence dealer Abhishek Verma and was accused of leaking defence secrets. Normally, the voluble Mr Gandhi would have been up in arms at not being included in the BJP’s list of campaigners in next month’s Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. Not just that, Mr Gandhi was not named as a candidate in Uttar Pradesh even though he was keen on contesting the coming Assembly poll since he fancies his chances as the future chief minister. He had made his ambition clear at the meeting of BJP’s national executive last June when Allahabad was plastered with hoardings and posters declaring Mr Gandhi as the party’s future face. But BJP’s move to cut him to size has failed to elicit any reaction from Mr Gandhi, which is most unusual. Maybe, the young MP is biding his time before he strikes back.
Union minister of micro, small and medium enterprises Kalraj Mishra has reason to be unhappy with the present dispensation. Not only is he being denied a major role in next month’s Assembly polls in his home state Uttar Pradesh, he has limited functional autonomy in his ministry. For instance, Mr Mishra has little say over the working of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission even though it is under his ministry. This is primarily because KVIC chairman V.K. Saxena is known to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has given him a free hand in running the place. It is well known that it was the sycophantic Saxena who gave permission for the use of Mr Modi’s photographs in the commission’s 2017 calendar and diary. According to the political grapevine, Mr Saxena is so powerful that when Mr Mishra asked him to look into a representation by some KVIC employees who felt they had been arbitrarily transferred, the KVIC chairman brought this to the notice of the Prime Minister’s Office. Mr Mishra was apparently told to back off and asked not to interfere in the working of the KVIC.
