Divided house
The political vacuum created by the sudden death of the former deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, Ajit Pawar, in a plane crash four months ago continues to roil the Pawar family and the Nationalist Congress Party. His demise has stalled efforts to reunite the two factions of the NCP founded by the veteran leader, Sharad Pawar, while also triggering an internal power struggle within the dominant faction. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Ajit Pawar’s wife, Sunetra Pawar, moved swiftly to take charge of the party and the government. Now, as the deputy CM in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti government headed by Devendra Fadnavis and the head of the NCP faction, Sunetra Pawar is struggling to contain the growing dissent among senior NCP leaders. Party insiders say that tensions have intensified over attempts by Ajit Pawar’s sons to assert control over the organisation. While Sunetra Pawar is keen to establish them as the political heirs, the move has repeatedly brought her into conflict with the party’s old guard. Unlike Ajit Pawar, who managed competing ambitions with a firm grip, Sunetra Pawar seems unable to keep factionalism in check. The situation, however, suits the BJP, the dominant force in the ruling alliance.
Surprise move
Even though the Union education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, remains under scrutiny over the NEET-UG question paper leak, he also made headlines for engineering the induction of the Biju Janata Dal Rajya Sabha member, Debashish Samantaray, into the BJP. The move caught everyone off guard, even CM Mohan Charan Majhi. Just a day before Samantaray’s joining, Majhi was asked to rush to Delhi immediately. The CM, already facing speculation about being replaced ahead of the BJP’s second anniversary in power, was naturally unsettled. Later, it was revealed that Pradhan was behind the move, which strengthened the party’s cause in the upper House. The manoeuvre boosted Pradhan’s standing in the Delhi durbar, allowing him to weather the NEET controversy for the time being. To spare Majhi embarrassment, he was directed to meet the prime minister.
Swat the moles
The newly sworn-in Assam assembly attracted national attention for passing the Uniform Civil Code Bill. The ruling BJP had promised to get the UCC passed in the first session of the newly-constituted assembly, making Assam the fourth state after Uttarakhand, Gujarat, and Goa to have a UCC. An equally important occurrence in the assembly was the explanation by the CM, Himanta Biswa Sarma, for why the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president, Gaurav Gogoi, and the Congress lost in the April 9 assembly polls. While acknowledging Gogoi as a “prominent leader”, Sarma asserted that Gogoi lost from the Jorhat seat for “opposing” the BJP-led government’s development projects, for his “arrogance”, for repeatedly attacking his [Sarma’s] family and for politicising the death of the singer, Zubeen Garg.
But what should worry the PCC as well as the All India Congress Committee most is Sarma’s claim inside the House that his friends in the Congress shared a note from the Congress research wing, outlining the talking points for its MLAs opposing the UCC. Sarma, who left the Congress in 2015, frequently claims that he gets real-time information about what is happening in the Congress. Congress observers said that the AICC needs to weed out the “BJP moles” or else even its best laid-out plans will go to waste, as it happened in the assembly polls when the party had deployed some of its leading names — Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, DK Shivakumar and Bhupesh Baghel — to stop the BJP-led coalition from getting a straight third term.
Extreme step
The Centre’s move to explore the use of Indian Air Force aircraft for transporting question papers for the June 21 NEET-UG retest has drawn flak from some military veterans. Calling it “pure optics”, they argued that the government appeared more focussed on managing perceptions than plugging the gaps that led to the leaks in the first place. In a post on X, Major General Raju Chauhan (retd) said, “Have all existing systems in country failed that this has to be resorted to? If culprits are not punished quickly and exemplary punishment not given, the systems get used to corruption. This is exactly what is happening with NEET. Top ten in hierarchy should be sacked without asking question.”
Another veteran scoffed at the very idea of roping in the defence forces, asking whether conducting fair exams had become such a daunting challenge in the country which claims to be a ‘Vishwaguru’. The defence forces, he said, are for national security and not for optics and gimmicks. The officer flagged that if the Centre takes this unprecedented step, then it would amount to an admission of a complete breakdown of civilian machinery in the country.
