Abhishek Manu Singhvi
THE NEXT RAJYA SABHA LIST
Once this round of Rajya Sabha nominations has been announced, the focus is on the next one. Especially within the Congress which doesn’t have as many perks as the BJP to offer, the Rajya Sabha seats get that added premium. Which is why there is some perplexity at the current list, which does not have a single high profile name, except Abhishek Manu Singhvi. There is a lot of angst, especially with the Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Himachal names as these have all been surprise nominations filling in caste and regional compulsions more than accommodating camp followers. Sources within the Congress say that the list has more of Sonia Gandhi’s stamp than Rahul Gandhi’s. There was speculation that Rahul wanted to pack the Rajya Sabha with articulate speakers so that the issues raised in the Lok Sabha by him could be taken up in the Upper House with the same vigour.
However, this is not the final list. The Congress still has four more seats in its kitty, nominations of which are to be announced. These include two from Karnataka, one from Rajasthan and another from Madhya Pradesh. Apart from Mallikarjun Kharge in the fray are Meenakshi Natrajan, Jitender Singh Alwar, Praveen Chakravarty and Pawan Khera. So, watch this space.
WHY TROLL OUR OWN?
There is a lot of angst on social media about the lack of sympathy towards those stranded in Dubai. Barbs such as “those looking for tax shelters are now looking for bomb shelters” on social media have not gone down well. What is worse is that these are coming mostly from right wing sympathisers, with a BJP MP joining in. A visibly hurt Yashwant Deshmukh, who has been living in Dubai for a while now, and was trying to make it back to his own family when the conflict broke out, was a target of some of these comments. Given the circumstances this kind of behaviour is certainly not called for.
OLD GUARD PREVAILS
The DMK-Congress alliance is back on track. And this is clearly a setback for Team Rahul, which tried hard to push the party towards the TVK. But the older guard seems to have prevailed, with P. Chidambaram reaching out to M.K. Stalin directly (or was it vice versa?) to smooth over any differences. This has come as a sigh of relief for most in the Tamil Nadu state unit as the TVK is untested at the hustings, while the DMK is a tried and tested alliance. But the reach-out came a tad late, for the DMK had already tied up with other allies and the Congress had lost some of its negotiating heft. Clearly, radical decisions like changing alliance partners need to be taken much earlier and not on election eve.
