The new PK

JDU circles are agog with talk on the "new PK" (Prashant Kishor). Sashwat Gautam, a US-returned Bihari from West Champaran, is apparently the party's new guide. "During the JDU's press briefing on July 11, after the party's state executive met to decide its future course following the FIR against deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav, Sashwat was standing behind party spokespersons like Neeraj, Sanjay and Ajay," a JDU leader pointed out . "The spokespersons just said what Sashwat directed them to say and even refused to field questions, as advised."

Before the Assembly elections, Prashant Kishor too used to lecture party leaders on dos and don'ts. But conventional politicians are unimpressed. "No matter how many computer-savvy persons Nitish brings in from the US, sooner or later they all vanish. It takes a conventional politician like Lalu Prasad to know what it takes to win polls," mocked a senior JDU leader who was sure that like PK, Sushant too would disappear from the scene in due course.

Speaker awakening

RJD leaders are ruing the day they conceded the post of Assembly Speaker to the JDU. "Lalu ji made a mistake by conceding the post even though our party has more MLAs. He should have just conceded the CM's post," a senior RJD leader rued in a private conversation. The awakening follows bitterness between the JDU and the RJD over the CBI FIR against deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav. RJD leaders declared in private that they would have toppled the Nitish government by engineering defections from the JDU and managing a majority with Congress support. They cited how former Speaker Uday Narayan Choudhary had recognised a splinter RJD group without even checking signatures of the MLAs and ensuring that they constituted two-third of strength inside the Assembly.

Poster barb

When posters came up against some JDU spokespersons, alleging that they were speaking at BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi's behest, a JDU leader pointed at a grammatical mistake in Hindi in the posters and dubbed the RJD a party of "illiterates". When it was pointed out to him that the posters were the handiwork of the DSS, an outfit led by Lalu's son and health minister Tej Pratap Yadav, the JDU leader retorted: "It only proves what I had said. It's an organisation whose leader could not complete his swearing-in procedure at one go."

Diversionary tactics

JDU spokespersons are avoiding journalists following the gag on speaking on the political turmoil. But JDU MLC Sanjay Singh had a word of advice for journalists. "Why are you focusing only on the Mahagathbandhan. Show programmes on dowry, liquor ban, child marriage..." he went on. But the hype has been such it will take time for journalists to focus on anything else.