Reins tightened
The chief minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, is making life difficult for his two partners in the Mahayuti alliance, Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar. Fadnavis has clamped down on the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party using the excuse of the government’s ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards corruption. Cash worth crores was recently recovered from the house of a private assistant of a Shiv Sena legislator. The Opposition has alleged that the recovered cash was just a portion of the bribe paid by contractors to get their sub-standard work passed by the Estimates Committee of the state assembly. The cash recovery is being seen as one of the many instances of Fadnavis keeping an eye on the activities of his two allies. The issue has angered the two allies, particularly Shinde. He feels that Fadnavis is going after him and his party leaders since he had bargained hard during government formation to become the CM. He met the Union home minister, Amit Shah, recently to lodge his grievance, but clearly with no favourable outcome. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s record performance in last year’s state elections seems to have made both the Sena and the NCP helpless. They cannot use the threat of withdrawal of support to bargain anymore. For the BJP, which has a tally of 132 seats in the 288-member House, securing a majority is no big deal.
Critics silenced
Bhartruhari Mahtab, an astute politician and seven-time member of Parliament from Cuttack, has not only proved his worth, once again, as a parliamentarian but also silenced his critics by being selected for the Sansad Ratna Award 2025. He is the lone MP from Odisha to get the award along with 16 others, including PP Chaudhary, the chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on ‘one nation, one election’.
Mahtab, who switched loyalty from the Biju Janata Dal to the BJP before the 2024 elections, is yet to be accepted by some sections of the saffron party. By winning this award for the sixth time, Mahtab has sent out a message: whether admired or opposed, he remains committed to raising the issues of Odisha in Parliament.
Strict policy
A new broom sweeps clean, goes the saying. One of the new initiatives announced by the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, in his first three months in office has been the enforcement of the biometric attendance system. Although the system was put in place across Central institutions in 2014, it was hardly used after the pandemic. Kumar has cracked the whip to show that it will be a new Election Commission under his watch. Long queues are now seen in the parking lot of Nirvachan Sadan where a fingerprint scanner records the attendance of poll officials.
Consolation prizes
The Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab is not only waging a “war on drugs”, it is also promoting itself as a rehabilitation centre. After the AAP’s defeat in Delhi, several middle-rung influencers in the Delhi unit have been rehabilitated to positions in the Punjab government. Reena Gupta, the party spokesperson, has been made chairperson of the State Pollution Control Board. Deepak Chauhan, the former aide to an MP, has been made chairman of the Large Industrial Development Board. This has bolstered the Opposition’s charge that the AAP’s Punjab unit exists only to serve the whims of its Delhi leadership.
Unilateral
decisions
The style of functioning of the recently appointed president of the Kerala BJP, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, has not gone down well within the party. When the Left Democratic Front celebrated its fourth anniversary in office with much fanfare, the state BJP did not bother to hold a protest meeting, much to the despair of the party workers. In the core committee meeting, Chandrasekharan assigned party leaders tasks for the local body polls without holding any talks. These leaders are angry with him for not acting democratically.
Tight spot
The panchayat elections in Assam saw big gains for Badruddin Ajmal, the All India United Democratic Front chief, seen as a leader protecting the interests of Bengali-speaking Muslims. The influx of Bangladeshis is a sensitive issue in Assam. Interestingly, the chief of the Veer Lachit Sena, Srinkhal Chaliha, has dubbed Akhil Gogoi, the Raijor Dal chief, as the “new Ajmal” for allegedly wooing migrant voters. Chaliha said that Gogoi’s double standards — wooing migrants in lower Assam and playing the saviour of the indigenous people in upper Assam — were apparent. Gogoi, already facing charges from the Congress for denting its Muslim vote bank, will have a tough time shaking off the “new Ajmal” tag.