Wordsmiths & Newsplumbers

BY R.K.MISRA Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was straddling Gujarat(April 16-17) on a two day high voltage, mass connect programme his political rival Shankersinh Vaghela upped the ante to demonstrate his claim to be named as the chief ministerial candidate of the Congress to take on the BJP in the state assembly elections due this year end. In a meeting chaired by the Gujarat Congress in-charge Gurudas Kamat, which went late into the night on Monday, 36 of the 57 Congress legislators in a House of 182 advanced the plea that leader of the Congress Legislature Party, Vaghela be declared the chief ministerial face of the party and  responsibility for the elections be handed over to him. The meeting was convened in the absence of the state party chief Bharatsinh Solanki. Kamat has since been replaced by former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot as in-charge of Gujarat at  the head of a three person team. ‘Bapu’ as Vaghela is fondly called seems to have taken a page

BY R.K.MISRA Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat  may well witness a full dress rehearsal for the 2019 general elections with a Congress helmed combined opposition firming up an alliance to take  on the BJP in the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha  elections due later this year. The building blocks of an opposition alliance were first put together in the Bihar elections  in 2015 which saw Nitish Kumar return to power at the head of a coalition comprising his bitter political rival Laluprasad Yadav’s RJD and the Congress. Mulayam Singh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party had opted out of the ‘mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance)virtually playing into the hands of the BJP by putting up candidates in almost all the seats but the ploy did not work. A family fracas later with son Akhilesh Yadav dominating, the ruling SP firmed up an alliance with the Congress for the just concluded Uttar Pradesh polls but Mayawati’s BSP remained the loose cannon   and the triangular contest saw the BJP s

BY R.K.MISRA The howitzers of the hustings have boomed and bottomed out. The outcome has exultant victors celebrating and the vanquished in sullen silence.  As the dust settles and new governments go to work in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur it is time to look back and ponder. Was it at all necessary for the exalted political leadership of an emerging India to sully public discourse to such putrid levels as happened in these elections? A cost-benefit analysis will show there were actually no winners even if the BJP beat competition by a mile in UP and Uttarakhand and the Congress snatched Punjab from the Akali-BJP combine only to be pipped to the post in Manipur and Goa despite being the single largest party. It is not only that when you cheat the mandate through questionable methods you lower the bar a wee bit more for the next contest but also that when pollside discourse goes gutter low, political pollution only sinks to subterranean levels. Gujara