Through the third eye

Through the third eye
Mirror image

Will Jaganmohan Reddy go the Kuldeep Bishnoi way? That is the question doing the rounds as YSR Jr crosses the Congress Rubicon. Remember Kuldeep? Son of Haryana Congress veteran Bhajan Lal, Kuldeep, like YSR Jr, had displayed a burning desire, cocky combativeness and tearing hurry when he declared war on the Congress high command for making B S Hooda, not Lal, the CM.

Like YSR Jr, Kuldeep too quit the Congress and Lok Sabha seat and even set the right atmospherics before launching his own party. But Hooda clinically won over Kuldeep’s supporters — just like CM Kiran Reddy is poaching the Jagan camp — leaving him in a no-man’s land. Rebellion is in Jagan’s blood as his father, too, before becoming the PCC chief and CM, had been a perennial Congress rebel in AP. But the seasoned YSR always took ‘strategic care’ to remain a Gandhi family loyalist all through his rebellions. So, Jagan has taken the plunge without YSR’s safety-belt. A Karna without a ‘Gandhi kavacha’ or an Abhimanyu in Kiran-Vyuha ? Watch out.

Suitable conversion

As the JD(U)-BJP alliance has swept Bihar, riding on Nitish Kumar’s leadership and agenda, some saffronites excitedly point out how even Muslims voted for their candidates and, hence, how a ‘liberal BJP’ could find a winning touch. This should be a moment of silent glee for L K Advani, given how these very BJP sections formed a lynch-crowd after his ‘Jinnah speech’. Then these BJP sections accused Advani of ‘compromising the Hindutva ideology’ and ‘indulging in Muslim appeasement’ as an ‘opportunistic trick’ to expand the BJP’s reach.

Pillorying Advani, these BJP sections had chided L K campers like Sudheendra Kulkarni when they articulated and defended the ‘strategic thinking’ behind the Jinnah speech. As the Bihar victory made many BJP fortune-seekers do a U-turn and praise ‘the Muslim-winning agenda’, the same Kulkarni was on TV with that ‘we told you so’ smile. No prize for guessing what Advani must be thinking about his in-house critics’ ‘suitable conversion’.

Ground Zero comrades

When Prakash Karat took over as CPI(M) general secretary in those heady days of the UPA-Left pact, he declared a resolve, sending a spasm of revolutionary fervour among his Delhi-based admirers. “Independent expansion of the Left in north India,” he declared, would be his top priority and listed UP, Bihar and Jharkhand his political lab for the Great Leap Forward. He took direct charge of party-building in UP, replaced Sitaram Yechury with his trusted ally S Ramachandran Pillai as party in-charge of Bihar and then chose his comrade-in-arms Brinda Karat to guide the Jharkhand party unit. In the last Assembly polls in UP, the CPI(M) tally came down from one to zero. Jharkhand matched it with another zero for the CPI(M) in the last polls. And now Bihar has made it a hat-trick as the CPI(M) lost its sole seat. Ground zero, it seems, has been redefined!

Waiting for Bhagwati

As the logjam in Parliament continues, many are hoping it will not hit internationally acclaimed economist Prof Jagdish Bhagwati’s address to MPs on December 2 at the annual Hiren Mukherjee memorial lecture. Many MPs are keen to hear Bhagwati, who, like Dr Amartya Sen, is also personally close to our economist Prime Minister. Even as speculations about Parliament adjourning sine die gains momentum, some MPs feel the government will push the session, theoretically, through Opposition barricades at least till the day of the Bhagwati address.