Mr Congeniality
The Union defence minister, Rajnath Singh, chaired a meeting of National Democratic Alliance leaders in Parliament last Thursday over the upcoming vice-presidential election. At the meeting, the NDA leaders authorised the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the Bharatiya Janata Party chief, JP Nadda, to decide the ruling alliance’s candidate. Last month, Singh had been tasked with getting the signatures of BJP parliamentarians on a plain paper which was widely seen as a move to put pressure on the then VP, Jagdeep Dhankhar, to quit. Many said that the BJP’s top leadership had used the signatures to tell Dhankhar that a no-confidence motion would be moved to oust him if he did not tender his resignation. Singh, the 74-year-old leader, is that rare senior BJP leader who continues to enjoy the trust of the Modi-Shah dispensation. Many in the party believe that his largely unassertive nature makes him acceptable. He is the official Number Two in the government but is rarely seen to be asserting his position. It is no secret that the Union home minister, Amit Shah, operates as the second most powerful leader after Modi but Singh has no issues with this. In fact, Singh was moved out of the home ministry to make way for Shah in Modi’s second term.
Crisis brewing
The resignation of Mmhonlumo Kikon, the ruling BJP’s only national spokesperson from the Northeast, came as a surprise to most. The 47-year-old former two-time member of the legislative assembly and minister had held important posts in the party and the state government headed by the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party. He had lost the last assembly elections but his position in the party was unaffected. He was also the prabhari for Mizoram. Articulate, suave and quietly effective, he was one of the most recognisable faces of the BJP in the Northeast and policy work. Apart from being a politician, he had also carved a niche for himself as an author-poet. In his resignation letter to the BJP president, JP Nadda, he did not cite any reason for quitting except that his decision “was guided by the need to explore new avenues of public engagement and policy work”. However, reports from Kohima suggest his “friendly differences” with Y Patton, Nagaland’s deputy chief minister (from the BJP), and the targeting of Christians across India may have guided his decision to quit. Political observers said that the party cannot ignore Kikon’s quitting for it could impact the BJP’s growth in Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram, all Christian-majority states.
Lay the groundwork
With talk of a ministry reshuffle and expansion in the air, BJP leaders in Odisha are making a beeline for Delhi. Earlier this week, the CM, Mohan Charan Majhi, paid a visit to the national capital and made courtesy calls, among others, to Amit Shah. Around the same time, the deputy CM, KV Singh Deo, also landed in Delhi and met not only Narendra Modi but also Shah and JP Nadda. He even went with a packet of prasad from the Puri Jagannath temple for the latter. The health minister, Mukesh Mahaling, and several other BJP leaders also visited Delhi, setting the political grapevine abuzz. Many of them met Dharmendra Pradhan too. Sources said that while ministers like Mahaling are keen to seek the blessings of central BJP leaders in the hope of landing better portfolios, some young BJP MLAs are lobbying hard for ministerial berths. “Be it KV Singh Deo or any other BJP leader from Odisha, they all want to ensure they remain in the good books of central party leaders, especially the prime minister and his trusted lieutenants,” said a political analyst.
History
rewritten
A museum in a room that was
believed to have been a colonial
gallows is being dismantled in the Delhi legislative assembly after the BJP government in the capital claimed that this was actually a tiffin room. The structure was thus far considered to be a gallows with a trapdoor but apparently was actually a lift to transport food. The museum had been inaugurated by the former CM, Arvind Kejriwal, in 2022. The assembly building in North Delhi was India’s Central Legislative Council from 1912 to 1927. It was an administrative building after that until it housed the Delhi Metropolitan Council from 1966 to 1993, when the assembly was created. Last week, however, the Speaker, Vijender Gupta, cited multiple historical sources to say that the jail and gallows actually existed in what is now Maulana Azad Medical College, alleging the “tampering of a heritage building” by the Aam Aadmi Party government.
