Cool Breeze: Congress Musical Chairs

Congress Musical Chairs

Sonia Gandhi finished one year as the party chief on 10 August, but it seems as if the Congress is staying with status quo for a while for all those expecting change got a press release stating the same. According to a faction of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi was not ready to step back into office at a time when the Sachin Pilot rebellion was still on as he didn’t want to be seen as someone who cannot put his team together. Well, Sachin is back within the fold and there is talk that he would probably be made Congress general secretary at the Centre whenever Rahul reshuffles his team, because it is highly unlikely Gehlot would give Sachin his old office back as Deputy Chief Minister. And the state already has a new PCC chief in place. The other theory doing the rounds is that the party could opt for a Manmohan Singh like arrangement, with Rahul running the party via remote control. While this “proxy” would need to have some professional standing such as a Shashi Tharoor, he would also have to be lacklustre enough not to emerge as a potential challenge, for there is no room for a potential Narasimha Rao, or even a potential Jitendra Prasada or Rajesh Pilot. If loyalty is the sole criterion, it throws up K.C. Venugopal’s name, though there are some others such as Bhupesh Baghel or even Ashok Gehlot himself who have some standing as state leaders, organisational skills and yet are also loyal to the Gandhi family. And of course there is always the promise of a Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is charismatic, loyal, and has the party’s backing.

Reshuffle Buzz

Will the Prime Minister reshuffle his Cabinet in September? Definitely Jyotiraditya Scindia needs to get his promised ministerial berth—will it be a Cabinet post or will it be MoS level, but with Independent charge? Apart from this, there is also a buzz at the party level for there are four parliamentary board seats that need to be filled. There are vacancies arising from the deaths of Ananth Kumar, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley; while the fourth slot became vacant after Venkaiah Naidu became Vice President. Who will fill these? The names of Devendra Fadnavis and B.S. Yediyurappa are doing the rounds, along with those of Dharmendra Pradhan and Bhupendra Yadav. While the latter two are close to the Home Minister, the first two names would not top Amit Shah’s list, so it would be interesting to see which way this goes. Currently, there is no woman representative on the board, hence the name of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is doing the rounds as well.

Being Anandiben Patel

She is the Governor of two politically crucial states, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, but what brought her into the limelight recently was when she shared the stage along with the PM, RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath during the Ram Mandir Bhoomipujan. Sources say that she gets along famously with both her CMs, especially Yogi in UP—given her equation with the PM back to his Gujarat CM days. This equation has strengthened Yogi’s hand while dealing with other BJP senior leaders from Delhi from meddling in the state’s affairs.