No alliances please
Despite being cold shouldered by the BSP in the coming state elections, the Congress is in an upbeat mood. One reason for this is that recent opinion polls are giving the party the edge in not just Rajasthan but Madhya Pradesh as well. The fact that Rahul’s rallies are drawing decent crowds has also boosted party morale. This was one of the considerations before the party when it considered Mayawati’s rather sizeable demand for seats, more so when the BSP has not been able to convert its vote-bank in the state into a sizeable chunk of seats in the past. The view within the party is also that if the Congress ends up giving in to the allies’ demands in states where it is the bigger player, then it will have little bargaining clout in states like Uttar Pradesh where it’s a lesser player.
Politically correct?
The Congress has also taken note of the fact that the two BJP CMs in the election going states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had been in the centre of two high profile scams—Shivraj Singh Chouhan in the Vyappam case and Vasundhara Raje in the Lalit Modi scandal—but the party had not given in to public censure and asked for their resignations. And with time, the allegations have lost steam and are not major issues in the coming elections either. Compare this to the Congress when it immediately asked for Ashok Chavan’s resignation as Maharashtra CM in the Adarsh case (though he has since been given some relief by the High Court in December 2017). Now the Congress feels that it was wrong to take the moral high ground and demand resignations until the charges have been cleared. Instead, it should have taken the BJP way and let the accused continue in office till the charges have been proved.
The write word
Shashi Tharoor knows just how to play the social media—and to market his upcoming book. His recent tweet about The Paradoxical Prime Minister (published by Aleph Book Co) claiming that the book was a 400-page exercise in Floccinaucinihilipilification had the Twitter world abuzz and the dictionaries open. That’s one way to sell the book.
#NotMe
Those who know the ebullient Raian Karanjawala, were taken aback when he was accused by a junior in a case of sexual harassment. Seema Sapra, the lady in question, has alleged in a blogpost that during her tenure with Karanjawala and Co (where Raian Karanjawala is Managing Partner), she was invited by Karanjawala for a nightcap in his room after a late night dinner. She declined and claims that she was targeted since the incident and forced to leave the firm. (She worked with the firm between 1995 and 2000, during which period she alleges the incident took place). However, once these reports were picked up by the media, a legal notice has been sent to the publications on behalf of Karanjawala (through Sandeep Kapur, a founding partner at the firm), which raises some interesting questions. For one, the notice points out that the accuser actually rejoined the firm in 2010. “Her rejoining the firm shows that she had no misapprehensions of any mistreatment,” states the notice. The legal notice also points out that this is not the first complaint filed by Sapra and nor is Karanjawala the only one to be targeted but, according to the legal notice, Sapra had made a series of allegations against several senior judges, advocates, senior officials at GE and Planning Commission, accusing them of graft while some doctors from Apollo & Max hospitals have been accused of a conspiracy to murder her. According to Kapur “these habitual allegations against all and sundry” were dismissed by a High Court judgement dated 2 March 2015 as “baseless and self-serving” and a fine of Rs 2 lakh for abusing the PIL option.