Strong hold
Operation Sindoor appears to have jolted more than the neighbouring country. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leadership has redoubled efforts to rein in the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duopoly. The RSS leadership had sought to exploit Modi’s weakened image after the Bharatiya Janata Party failed to secure a majority on its own in the last general elections. The BJP’s ideological parent had insisted that the next BJP chief should be a strong, organisational leader and not a rubber stamp of Modi and Shah. The pressure from the parent body saw the saffron party postpone the election of a new BJP president under different pretexts. The three-year term of the current BJP boss, JP Nadda, expired in January 2023 and since then he has been continuing on extensions. First, the Lok Sabha polls last year were used as an excuse to push back the organisational elections, then the bunch of state elections and now Operation Sindoor. Modi has been going full-throttle to use the military offensive to regain his domineering image. His exhortation to countrymen to shun the use of foreign goods has compelled the RSS to rally behind him. The sangh affiliate, Swadeshi Jagran Manch, has said that it would soon launch a nationwide mass movement for a self-reliant India. “The SJM welcomes the call for Swadeshi by the illustrious Prime Minister of Bharat,” the RSS body said, stressing that it would soon hit the streets to encourage people to boycott foreign goods and adopt indigenous products. Operation Sindoor thus killed two birds with one stone.
Tact over tantrum
Time is the best healer. Few understand this better than the Union minister of agriculture and farmers’ welfare and rural development, Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The seasoned politician and the longest-serving chief minister of Madhya Pradesh who had earlier been peeved with the BJP leadership after his unceremonious exit from Madhya Pradesh politics when he was asked to step down as CM in 2023 heaped praise on the prime minister, Narendra Modi, during his two-day visit to Odisha. He inaugurated Viksit Krishi Sankalp Abhiyan in Puri and later attended a programme at the Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology in Bhubaneswar. There he praised the PM for Operation Sindoor and recalled how India decimated Pakistan. Taking a cue from Lal Bahadur Shastri’s slogan, ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’, he said that his government is focusing on the development of these two aspects and congratulated both for their contribution in nation building. He also outlined Modi’s vision for Viksit Bharat, Samriddh Bharat. During his 25-minute speech at OUAT, he mentioned Modi’s name several times and also his vision for a Viksit Bharat. The audience concurred that the seasoned politician knows which side his bread is buttered.
Spot the moles
Months of speculations ended this week with the appointment of Gaurav Gogoi as the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president. New office-bearers, including influential but often bickering leaders, were also appointed to key posts with an eye on the assembly elections next year. The All India Congress Committee has tried to balance various camps and interests with the appointments but party insiders say that the leadership also needs to weed out moles holding influential posts within the Assam unit if it has to mount a united and concerted challenge against the ruling BJP, more so against a formidable adversary like Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has often claimed in public that he gets ‘real time’ information from his former colleagues and well-wishers in the Congress. “An operation to weed out the moles is equally important, the sooner the better. All decisions have to be diligently scrutinised. Moles have been a bane of the Congress, whether in AICC or the PCC,” one leader of the Assam Congress said.
Tough battle
Kerala is witnessing yet another assembly by-election on June 19. In the last four years, voters have had to deal with the sound and fury of an election as many times. The latest has been necessitated by the resignation of the independent legislator, PV Anvar, who was elected as a Communist Party of India (Marxist)-supported legislator. He resigned in January after he decided to call it quits with the CPI(M).
The Congress managed to announce its candidate, Aryadan Shoukath, within 48 hours of the by-poll announcement. But the CPI(M) was a bit confused about whether it should field an independent candidate or a party leader. VD Satheesan, the leader of the Opposition, taunted the CPI(M) so badly that it decided to field M Swaraj who is known for his sharp tongue which has put the party in trouble numerous times. A section within the Congress is now upset with Satheesan for making the electoral battle a tough one.