The launch of NewsX Northeast channel in Guwahati was a high profile one with the Governor of Assam Jagdish Mukhi, Cabinet minister Jitender Singh, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, Finance Minister of Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma, Rameswar Teli, MoS Food Processing and MP from Dibrugarh, and Tarun Gogoi, ex Chief Minister Assam, to name a few, attending. Many headlines were made, especially when Himanta was candid enough to admit that he saw Hindu refugees from Bangladesh were welcome in India, but the Bangladeshi Muslims were not, as they already had a country specially created for them. There was also a feisty face-off between Gogoi and Sarma, for Gogoi claimed that it was Sarma who ran the show in Assam and not the state CM Sarbananda Sonowal, for one rarely heard the CM’s view on anything but Sarma’s line was always prominent. To this Sarma retorted that while he was no Super-CM as was being alleged, Gogoi would do well to take a look at his own party. Moreover, Gogoi hinted that even at age 84 he was still going strong and could contest the next state polls, thereby giving rise to the question as to whether he would emerge as the Congress party’s CM face in the coming state elections (due in 2021). To this, Sarma advised him not to fight a “losing battle”. “My advice to him would be don’t finish your political career with a loss.” Clearly, it was a momentous launch for NE News.
Musical Chairs
At the launch of NE News, when asked if other GenNext leaders from the Congress such as Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot or Milind Deora would follow his cue and join the BJP, Himanta Biswa Sarma said he had been approached by many Congress leaders recently who admitted that they misunderstood him when he left the party and now realised that it was a good move. But Sarma added, “When I joined BJP there was a vaccuum in BJP in the Northeast. But in the North and West there is no vacuum for these Congress leaders.” He added that the ecosystem within the Congress was such that the leadership slot would always be a game of musical chairs within the family—if not Sonia, then Rahul or Priyanka’s son.
What’s in a name?
On a lighter note, MoS for Food Processing and the MP from Dibrughar, Rameswar Teli said that when people in Delhi quizzed him about his name he would tell them that since he came from a state where there was a lot of oil refineries, he had named himself Teli (from tel, i.e. oil), just as Rajesh Pilot took the name Pilot to denote his profession.
Reset with Dr Swamy
As expected, the launch of Dr Subramanian Swamy’s book, Reset: Regaining India’s Economic Legacy, was a well attended one. Seeing the overcrowded auditorium, Natwar Singh asked Dr Swamy if he had under-estimated his own importance. To which, Swamy quipped, “Maybe I believed what the BJP keeps saying about me.” It is no secret that Swamy has his fair share of detractors within the party. But, as a beaming Kapish Mishra, the publisher of the book, pointed out, it’s very rare that he comes to a book launch with the first print of the book already sold.
Reading between the lines
When BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar was a 17-year-old, joining the BJP was clearly not part of his plans. For in his 12th standard he had reached out across the border to the physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Abdus Salam, to which he got a rather interesting reply and one that he still cherishes for its pinned on his Twitter handle. Salam wrote that while he was glad to hear about Rajeev’s resolution, “I must warn you of the frustrations ahead, particularly when you find Nature parsimonious in yielding her secrets and how painful research is or can be at times”. Even if Salam was not valued in Pakistan, he is given due credit across the border.