The delegation consisted of the BJP’s Madhya Pradesh in-charge and party vice president Vinay Sahashrabuddhe and minister Viswas Sarang. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan o... Read more
Minutes ahead of vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha on 17 April, 1999 Mayawati sprung a surprise on then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the entire lot of the ruling BJP. Till that... Read more
Climate and culture are directly linked as without this calamity cannot be avoided, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after he was conferred the ‘Champions of Earth’ award of the... Read more
Karat the single biggest achievement of independent India is the fact that we have adopted a democratic political system for the country. The democratic system is facing an imminent danger f... Read more
Gujarat Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani on Monday called on West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and urged all “pro-poor progressive forces” to keep aside their ideological dif... Read more
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi will be at the Sevagram Ashram in Wardha for the meeting and the party will take Mahatma Gandhi’s message all over the country, a party leader said. The Con... Read more
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and younger son of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav Tejashwi Yadav has said reports of a rift within his family are planted at the instance of Bihar Chief Minister Nit... Read more
The Congress leader said India could have bought more aircraft if it finalised a lower price than negotiated earlier. Former Union minister P Chidambaram on Monday asked the Centre to explai... Read more
The parties have sought President’s rule in the state till the elections are held. The Telugu Desam Party, the Congress and the Communist Party of India have formed an alliance in Telangana,... Read more
Setting the tone for the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said he sees “no challenge” to the BJP and described unity efforts among Opposition parti... Read more
 and claiming, on-record and off it that this alliance was going to finish off the BJP in next General Election. He even predicted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s defeat in the Varanasi, his Lok Sabha constituency. The Congress leaders conveniently forgot that she was a hard-boiled politician, who has risen through the ranks because of sheer personal grit and overpowering ambition. She is the one who keeps the other side on tenterhooks till the last minute. The bargain always has to be in her favour. If she makes a mistake or two, she learns from them and returns the favour in due course. Even in Bengaluru, the pictures of Mayawati and Sonia featured Rahul in the frame as a mere bystander, standing by his mother’s side without exchanging words or conveying positive body language with regional leaders. It was clear that she would accept Sonia as a partner even a leader of larger coalition, but wouldn’t accept Rahul as leader. In one single shot, she punctured the hype around the ‘one nation, one Opposition to Modi and BJP’ Mahagathbandhan fostered by the Congress and the like-minded. Calling the Congress “casteist and communalist”, just as the BJP was for her, she concluded her press conference on Wednesday by saying, “One thing I want to make absolutely clear. Considering the Congress’ attitude, my party will not fight elections with the party at any cost. With this important announcement I am ending this media briefing.” Consider her charge against Congress: That “the truth is Congress in the name of a coalition wants to finish BSP”. Although she made a villain out of Digvijaya Singh, a look at what she said about the Congress makes it clear that she smartly used the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and senior Congress leader as an easy pretext to dump the party. Consider her words: “Congress party ki galatfahmi ke saath-saath uska ahankar bhi ab sar chad kar bol raha hai… rassi jal gayee par ainthan abhi tak nahi gayee… waise toh Congress ki har mamle me abhi bhi dayaniye sthithi hai phir bhi Gujarat ki tarah abhi tak yeh galatphami bani hui hai…” The essence of her message was that the Congress was drunk with arrogance and misinformed notions. She went to add how Congress had ill-treated Dr BR Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram. Mayawati sent out a message to her social constituents by making it public that while negotiating for an alliance in Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the Congress leadership was not giving the due honour and dignity she felt her party and its supremo deserved. She made it public that the Congress was offering nine to 10 seats out of a total of 200 seats in Rajasthan, 15 to 20 out of 230 in Madhya Pradesh and five or six out of 90 in Chhattisgarh. The BSP leader reduced Congress to a sorry figure, just a day after the Grand Old Party had adopted a resolution CWC meet at Sewagram, Wardha that like Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India movement in 1942, the Congress under Rahul’s leadership was launching a “new freedom movement” to throw the Modi government out of power. By stitching together an alliance with Deve Gowda’s JD(S) in Karnataka, OP Chautala’s INLD in Haryana and Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress in Chhatisgarh, and a proposed alliance with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Ajit Singh’s RLD in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati is effective forming a Third Front without saying so in as many words. The JD(S) and INLD have proposed her name as a prime ministerial candidate in 2019. Her own party is pitching her for the top slot. She is open to alliances with smaller parties in other states. She has also been smart in her utterances against the Congress. She blasted the party alright, but has not said anything personally against Sonia or Rahul. That is designed to keep the support line open from the Congress, if need be and keep that one percent chance of a pre-poll alliance for 2019 alive, provided the Congress can bend to her whims. The BSP chief with zero seats in the Lok Sabha has outsmarted Rahul and the Congress both in perception and political astuteness.){kind=link}
