Silence please

Most members of the Bharatiya Janata Party would make excellent listeners. It is because listening is all that they do these days. Apart from the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the party president, Amit Shah, hardly anyone gets a chance to speak. Recently, when the Dalit activist-turned-BJP parliamentarian, Udit Raj, wanted to raise the issue of the Supreme Court's judgment on the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, all he and others got was three hours of unadulterated sermons by Modi and Shah. Raj got no chance to even broach the issue.

Dinner was served at the BJP national headquarters as soon as the Modi-Shah duo finished their speeches and power-point presentations. Things have come to such a pass within the saffron party that other BJP leaders now prefer to keep quiet, fearing that they would otherwise displease the PM and the party chief. One wonders what kind of message the BJP leadership wants to send across to the aam aadmi of the country. Is this a precursor of how things will be like in New India - a nation with no place for the argumentative Indian?

Away from the arc lights

The president of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, received rave reviews for his speech at the 84th plenary session of the All India Congress Committee. The impact was such that even those sections of the media that are generally critical of him, suddenly found a lot of positive things to say about the Gandhi scion. But away from the media glare, another member of the Nehru-Gandhi family worked tirelessly to make the Grand Old Party's jamboree in Delhi a success. The Congress members present at the plenary session got to see the micro-manager in Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

It was Priyanka who decided when Rahul should speak at the session. She hired the services of a top-of-the-line event management firm to find out the time that would ideally give the Congress president the maximum coverage on television. If sources are to be believed, then Priyanka also overruled her mother's suggestion when it came to as innocuous a thing as seating arrangements. The former Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, wanted senior leaders of the party to be accommodated on the dais. However, Priyanka thought that it would be best if there are no faces in the background to distract the audience. This may also be the reason why Priyanka decided against putting up a huge banner - with images of MK Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, among others - on the stage. It seems that she wanted the entire spotlight on her brother. Even the notorious mosquitoes of the capital could not dampen her spirits. When party members at the event started swatting at a particularly obstinate group of mosquitoes, Priyanka personally supervised a late-night anti-mosquito fumigation operation. She would not even allow insects to have any share of the audience's attention.

The best adhesive

The jugalbandi between Sonia and Rahul Gandhi was another highlight of the AICC plenary session. Sonia's active participation at the event suggests that she has shelved her earlier plan of taking a political sanyaas. Perhaps her motherly instinct for Rahul has held her back, or it could be her own assessment that she is the best person to bring disparate parties - such as the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Trinamul Congress, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and so on - together to form an anti-BJP coalition.

Political pundits are of the opinion that Sonia can don the role played by Jayaprakash Narayan in the mid-1970s and Harkishan Singh Surjeet in 1996.

Valid questions

Questions are being raised over the SP's decision to field Jaya Bachchan for the Rajya Sabha polls. Had they dropped Bachchan, the Samajwadis could have transferred their extra votes to the BSP nominee. After all, the actress was seeking her fourth term as an MP, and her contribution to the House in the earlier terms has not been too impressive. Surely, the SP could have done this much; given that Mayavati extended her support to its candidates in the bypolls to the Gorakhpur and the Phulpur Lok Sabha seats.

Insiders in the SP said Jaya was given a ticket at the insistence of Akhilesh Yadav's wife, Dimple. In Dimple's view, Jaya's presence is important to send out a signal that the socialist party cares about women and the performing arts.

New celebrities

The Kisan Long March seems to have impressed the residents of Mumbai so much that some of the leaders of the All India Kisan Sabha have now become celebrities of sorts. One of them, Vijoo Krishnan, found himself being approached by the actor-director, Sanjay Khan, on a flight. Khan said that he must have seen Krishnan somewhere. The former had some good words to say about the farmers' movement, upon learning that the latter was with the AIKS. The Bollywood personality has promised to meet Krishnan again.

Footnote

• The Baadshah of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, was holidaying with his wife, Gauri, and his younger son, AbRam, in Switzerland recently. Gauri shared an adorable photograph of the father and the son on Instagram, and captioned it "Snowmen". King Khan soon took to Twitter to say, "In bed, in lift & in the Alps. U do get more than u can ski... with my lil one on a lil holiday."