Battle lines
The Congress is taking the fight to the Bharatiya Janata Party, particularly to the chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, in Assam. This week, the Assam Congress launched the whoishbs.com portal to receive information about the properties of the CM. A day later, the Gaurav Gogoi-led Congress flagged off its Time For Change yatra. During the yatra, Congress leaders are stopping in front of properties/establishments linked to Sarma’s wife to address the aam janta about the CM, his wife and the BJP. They have, for instance, stopped in front of properties allegedly owned/run by Sarma’s wife in Guwahati and in Kaziranga, including a TV channel, a high-end school and a sprawling resort. This escalation comes before the CM’s deadline of February 8 to expose Gogoi’s alleged Pakistan links. The Congress has stepped up its anti-Sarma campaign, which seems to be impacting the ruling party. The CM, leading his party’s campaign for a third straight time in Assam, has announced legal action against Congress leaders for their baseless, defamatory claims. The whoishbs.com website was hacked soon after its launch, the Congress claimed. The Congress game plan, observers said, is to project the CM as a man interested only in his and his family’s betterment instead of the state. The question now is can the Congress sustain the campaign and will it resonate with the electorate against the 24x7 development and welfare campaign of the government?
Potent weapon
Nishikant Dubey may only be a BJP Lok Sabha member but he wields influence that surpasses that of several Union ministers. His sharp and sustained attacks on the Congress, particularly on the Nehru-Gandhi family, appear to have earned him the favour of the BJP’s top leadership. Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly praised Dubey for his diligence in attending House proceedings at a closed-door meeting of National Democratic Alliance members of Parliament. Emboldened, the four-time MP from Jharkhand’s Godda intensified his offensive against the Nehru-Gandhi clan during the recent uproar in the Lok Sabha over Rahul Gandhi being disallowed from quoting from a book by the former army chief, MM Naravane. As Rahul Gandhi’s microphone was repeatedly switched off whenever he referred to the book, Dubey was permitted to continue amid the din, waving and citing books critical of the Nehru-Gandhi family. The apparent disparity angered Congress members, a group of whom protested in the Speaker’s chamber and later rushed towards Dubey’s seat, raising slogans against him. Several BJP MPs were seen forming a protective ring around Dubey, a gesture that many saw as both a show of solidarity and an attempt to curry favour with the party leadership.
Picture politics
During the budget session of the Kerala legislative assembly, names of the Congress leader, Sonia Gandhi, and the BJP MP, Anurag Thakur, reverberated on the floor of the assembly. For quite some time, Sonia Gandhi’s name has been linked with the Sabarimala Lord Ayyappa temple gold heist. The reason being a few photographs of Sonia Gandhi along with the prime accused in the Sabarimala gold heist, Unnikrishnan Potti, and two Congress MPs from Kerala, Adoor Prakash and Anto Antony, at her home in New Delhi. The Kerala Congress was caught unawares and the Attingal MP, Adoor Prakash, who was questioned by a Special Investigation Team recently, claimed that Potti had come to him seeking an appointment with Sonia Gandhi.
Not to be cowed down by pressure, the leader of the Opposition in the Kerala legislative assembly, VD Satheesan, dragged the name of the BJP MP, Anurag Thakur, alleging that the local self governments minister, MB Rajesh, had once shared a photo of him and Thakur, revealing their unholy nexus. Satheesan alleged that Rajesh shared personal ties with Thakur, whom he accused of calling for a genocide after the Delhi riots. Rajesh and Thakur were DYFI president and BJP Yuva Morcha presidents, respectively, during their student days, so their friendship dates back decades.
Fuss over fabric
The ire of the finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, against the annual reports on the sarees she wears while presenting the budget was fact-checked by the Shiv Sena (UBT) MP, Priyanka Chaturvedi. Sitharaman told reporters, “I don’t think such remarks are usually made with ill intent, but hidden prejudices do surface at times. I’ll share my own experience. Every year, it becomes a topic around me, people ask, ‘What are you going to wear on budget day?’” Chaturvedi responded on X, sharing a series of tweets on the FM’s sarees by a woman scribe. She wrote, “The budget was so insipid that now prejudice and gender is being brought in over a saree prediction… Maybe FM should pull up her office for releasing the details of her saree choice every year before she presents the budget — the state it has been woven in, the colour, the fabric.”
