Failed test
In the plush confines of a saffron-favourite hotel in New Town, the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, spent three days “assessing” Bengal, only to fail a basic test concerning the state that led from the front in the Renaissance, the freedom movement, and post-Independence nation-building. By crowning Rabindranath Tagore’s “Jana Gana Mana” as India’s national song, Kumar did not just commit a gaffe, he auditioned for a wild-card entry into the saffron ecosystem’s ever-growing Hall of Bengal Faux Pas. A notable entry in this hall of fame includes the prime minister, Narendra Modi, casually referring to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay as ‘Bankim da’ in Parliament, laying bare the desperation to establish the Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan parivar’s non-existent Bengal connect. But Kumar’s peccadillo is darker. While he was busy shifting goalposts to relegate millions of genuine Indian citizens from Bengal into disenfranchisement (allegedly to aid none other than the Bharatiya Janata Party), Kumar — allegedly Amit Shah’s blue-eyed boy — does not even seem to remember either the national song or the national anthem. For the man whom the BJP’s political opponents sometimes compare to Adolf Eichmann, the central operational manager of the Holocaust, history, too, perhaps is “under adjudication”.
Chief lieutenant
KC Venugopal, the Lok Sabha member from Alappuzha in Kerala, is widely seen as the second most powerful figure in the Congress. As general-secretary (organisation) and a close confidant of the party’s prime ministerial face, Rahul Gandhi, he sits beside the latter in the Lok Sabha and is often quick to defend him against attacks from the Treasury benches. During the debate on the no-confidence motion against the Speaker, the Gandhi scion became the prime target of the BJP, and Venugopal stepped in to counter the offensive. As BJP speakers mocked Rahul Gandhi’s intelligence and accused him of making “irresponsible” remarks abroad, Venugopal hit back by recalling statements made by Narendra Modi during his foreign visits. Quoting a speech by Modi in Seoul in May 2015, he said the PM had remarked: “Don’t know what sin I committed in my previous birth that I was born in Hindustan.” Venugopal also took a swipe at what he called Modi’s “raw wisdom”, referring to a television interview after the Balakot strikes in which the PM claimed that conducting the air strikes amid cloud cover would help Indian fighter jets evade Pakistani radar. The Treasury benches sat in silence.
Stir the pot
The Odisha chief minister, Mohan Charan Majhi, appears to be trying hard to please the Central BJP leadership. Following the alleged protocol lapses during the visit of the president, Droupadi Murmu, to Bengal, Majhi tweeted immediately, condemning the incident. He wrote how the incident deeply saddened the people of Odisha and the tribal community across India. Identifying himself as a member of the Santhal community like Murmu, Majhi said that the Trinamool Congress government’s hurtful action has caused a deeper sense of anguish and hurt within him and the entire Odia populace. Four days later, Majhi wrote a letter to his Bengal counterpart, condemning the incident and demanding an apology to the president and the people of the country. The letter was also promptly released to the media. Political circles are wondering why Majhi escalated the issue with a letter four days after the incident when he had already tweeted about it. Majhi is clearly trying to ensure the controversy stays alive to gain sympathy from tribal voters ahead of the assembly elections in Bengal.
Stay calm
The ongoing war in West Asia prompted the Central government to take a strict stance against TV channels. Along with suspending TRP ratings for four weeks, the government has appealed to TV channels not to air the same visuals again and again, believing that such repeated broadcasts can create a misleading sense of panic. When news reports flagged the LPG crisis affecting multiple parts of the country, the government, once again, urged the media to clearly display the date and time stamp on all visuals, warning that a small incident shown repeatedly can make it seem like there is panic in the country.
Death knell
The Opposition, too, had a word of warning for the media. The Rashtriya Janata Dal MP, Manoj Jha, tweeted: “Conventionally, obituaries are written by others after someone has passed away. The deceased rarely gets the opportunity to write one for themselves. Yet a section of what is called the mainstream Indian media seems to be doing precisely that, patiently composing its own obituary, line by line, broadcast after broadcast. It is a very sad spectacle, but perhaps also an honest one. Institutions, after all, sometimes reveal their decline long before anyone else has to announce it.”