The real winner in the just released Bihar caste surveyis not Nitish Kumar, but Lalu Prasad, who has been demanding this data since 2015. While Nitish’s Kurmi caste is a mere 3 per cent, Lalu’s Yadav community constitutes 14.27 per cent, which, along with 17.7 per cent Muslims looks like a winning combination.
A shell-shocked BJP, which had planned its 2024 poll strategy hoping to ride a wave of Hindutva sentiment in the wake of the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya late January, along with illuminating temples all over India, has been caught off guard.
The Mandal parties — SP, JD(U) and RLD — which were virtually wiped out in the last decade hope to be back in business. While Modi attacked the Congress for trying to divide Hindu society along caste lines, there is a possibility that the BJP may counter Mandal-2 with a demand for the implementation of the Rohini Commission report, which was submitted in August. Justice Gorla Rohini took six years to sub categorise OBCs so that the economically backward classes (EBCs) among OBCs get a fair representation. Focusing on EBCs has for long been part of the BJP’s poll strategy.
Repeat performance
This is the second time Prabir Purkayastha, founder of the NewsClick portal, has been arrested. The first time was during the Emergency, when he was a student at JNU and he claimed it was a case of mistaken identity. The Delhi Police was under tremendous pressure from then DIG
P S Bhinder to apprehend D P Tripathi, the SFI student leader who had successfully organised a one-day strike on the campus. Since Tripathi was underground, the police randomly picked up Purkayastha, who was an easy target sitting on the JNU lawns with his girl friend. At the police station, photographs showed that they had indeed picked up the wrong person.
But the police were too embarrassed to acknowledge their mistake, since they had already proudly announced the arrest to Sanjay Gandhi. Purkayastha remained in jail under the dreaded MISA for a year, though the real Tripathi was arrested shortly afterwards. Purkayastha’s recent arrest is not a case of mistaken identity, but of mistakenly applying a wrong law. He was arrested under an Act meant to prevent terrorism, though one would have supposed he should have been detained for breaking the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, if, as alleged, he has not disclosed large sums received from a millionaire close to the Chinese government.
In any event, there were no grounds for raiding the homes and terrorising the families and confiscating the mobiles and laptops of some 46 journalists, many of whom were not even on the staff of the portal and received minimal payments. For instance, a senior freelance journalist was targeted though she was paid a mere Rs 12,000 for writing three articles on intolerance towards free speech in India. The police’s line of questioning was to somehow get her to confess that she had covered the Delhi riots during Trump’s 2020 visit to India, the farmers’ agitation or written defaming articles on the G20 meet, all of which would have apparently been viewed as ‘anti-national” activity.
Foot in mouth
Recently Rahul Gandhi twice spoke rather unthinkingly in public. Others in the Congress had to face the flak for his bloopers. Gandhi announced that the party was winning decisively in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and probably in Telangana, but acknowledged that the going was tough in the Rajasthan poll. Understandably, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was deeply embarrassed since his catchy poll campaign centered on his certainty of returning to power.
He could only remark sportingly that he hoped to prove his party leader wrong. Similarly, it was Congress lawyer Abhishek Singhvi who had to hastily delete his tweet on Rahul’s slogan ‘Jitni abaadi utna haq’, warning that talk of proportionate quotas sowed the seeds of majoritarianism. Singhvi hastily deleted the tweet after he realised Rahul Gandhi had advocated the slogan in Karnataka to woo the OBC vote. Prime Minister Modi has also picked on the slogan to embarrass the Congress in the South on delimitation.
Straws in the wind
After the SP’s impressive win in the Ghosi assembly by-election last month, SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav called on BSP leader Mayawati to thank her for not putting up a candidate and permitting her supporters to vote for whomever they chose. The SP is far keener on an alliance with the BSP for the parliamentary poll in 2024 than with the Congress since the national party is virtually moribund in the state. Gopal once again raised the issue of an SP-BSP alliance for 2024. Mayawati told him to return on January 15, her birthday. Mayawati last week met senior leaders of her party to discuss poll preparedness and maintained that presently the party was equidistant from both groups. She is watching the political situation to decipher which way the electoral wind is blowing.
