Line of succession
The Union home minister, Amit Shah, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, Mohan Bhagwat, inaugurated a statue of the Hindu nationalist ideologue, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on Friday. Two days earlier in the Lok Sabha, Shah had aggressively defended the appointment of individuals associated with the sangh to key institutional positions. “Rahul Gandhi said that people with RSS ideology are being placed in important posts. What is wrong with that?” Shah asked. “The Prime Minister follows RSS ideology. The home minister follows RSS ideology,” he retorted. Last month, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, also underscored his association with the RSS. “When ambassadors and high commissioners meet me, they ask whether I am associated with the RSS. We say yes — we have worked as swayamsevaks in the RSS,” Adityanath said at an event attended by Bhagwat. However, it is no secret that Adityanath had limited links with the RSS. He was better known for running a parallel outfit, the Hindu Yuva Vahini. In Delhi’s power corridors, the two developments are thus being viewed as part of an undeclared race between Shah and Adityanath to court the RSS leadership. The sangh is not only the Bharatiya Janata Party’s parent organisation but also the head of the wider sangh parivar. The outfit is expected to play a significant role in selecting the successor to the PM, Narendra Modi.
Football fever
The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, attended a football event in Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium on Saturday, in which teams led by the Argentine football legend, Lionel Messi, and the Telangana CM, A Revanth Reddy faced off in a 20-minute match. Messi and Reddy led the Aparna Messi All Stars and Singareni RR9, respectively.
For the main event, 240 people reportedly paid 10 lakh rupees each for a photograph with the football legend at the Falaknuma Palace. The engagement comes months before assembly elections in football crazy Kerala and Bengal. In Bengal, a 70-foot statue of Messi, which has little resemblance to him, was unveiled by the star along with the actor, Shah Rukh Khan, and the state minister, Sujit Bose.
Two birds, one stone
The BJP Lok Sabha member from Bhubaneswar, Aparajita Sarangi, has been in the news for the past month for the high-profile marriage of her daughter with an Andhra Pradesh cadre IAS officer from Rajasthan at a well-attended ceremony in Delhi. While the wedding was a grand event, the reception, attended by President Droupadi Murmu, the Union ministers, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, JP Nadda, Dharmendra Pradhan and other bigwigs of Indian politics, was an equally star-studded affair.
The MP is all set to organise a massive public reception for the couple in Bhubaneswar today. The wedding has kept Sarangi in political focus, strengthening her bond with important leaders and helping her make new ones. She has definitely killed two birds with one stone.
Tense situation
In Kerala, the three major political parties — Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and BJP — were on tenterhooks on Saturday as the counting of votes for the local body elections was held. It has been a do-or-die battle for all three parties. The local body election is considered a semi-final before the legislative assembly election due early next year.
While the controversy around the gold theft from the Lord Ayyappa Sabarimala temple and the anti-incumbency wave against Pinarayi Vijayan may dent the Left Democratic Front’s fortunes, the Congress is equally handicapped with the sexual abuse case against one of its youth legislators, Rahul Mamkootathil. The BJP, too, has its share of woes, ranging from factionalism, suicides to corruption.
Change of heart
In between criticising the Congress leaders, Rahul Gandhi and Gaurav Gogoi, in a show hosted by a Hindi TV channel in Delhi, the Assam CM and BJP leader, Himanta Biswa Sarma, also flagged the “demographic invasion” by Miya Muslims, whom he regularly targets. Sarma, a former Congress leader, justified his government’s crackdown against polygamy and child marriage. His detractors claim that the crackdown is targeted against Muslims. Sarma said that despite having a good relationship with the Miya Muslims (Bengali-speaking Muslims), they will not vote for him.
One of the highlights of the interview was his admission of becoming a staunch BJP member when asked whether he has become more BJP than the BJP itself. This is agreed by most since at a poll rally before the 2014 LS elections, Sarma was the one who had flayed Narendra Modi for the Gujarat pogrom.