Glasshouse

LOYALTY POINTS

Rahul Gandhi is done being evasive about who runs the Congress. A run of appointments has quietly rewarded the men who stood by him. Data man Praveen Chakravarty was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Tamil Nadu on a seat the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) handed the party. Manickam Tagore, the anti-DMK firebrand, now heads the state unit. Meenakshi Natarajan was pushed for a Madhya Pradesh Rajya Sabha berth (her nomination was rejected). But the rewards have made the old guard restive. In Punjab, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring was retained as state chief, triggering an open revolt by ex-CM Charanjit Singh Channi’s camp. In Madhya Pradesh, 79-year-old Digvijaya Singh publicly contradicted his own state chief Jitu Patwari’s Rs 500-crore land scam charge against CM Mohan Yadav of the BJP. In Rajasthan, ex-CM Ashok Gehlot has resumed his needling of Sachin Pilot. Still, Rahul’s message seems clear—the young turks who keep the faith will move up. The rest can read the memo.

SHIFTING PERCEPTION | THE HEX FACTOR

When Nitish Kumar’s son and new Bihar health minister Nishant Kumar moved into his 5, Deshratna Marg residence in Patna, the shifting vans carried more than furniture. They also revived one of Bihar’s favourite political superstitions. The bungalow, it seems, has a reputation: its occupants, especially those who served as deputy CMs, rarely complete their innings on a comforting note. Sushil Kumar Modi, Tarkishore Prasad, Tejashwi Yadav, all of them occupied the address at different points, and each saw his tenure ‘interrupted’. Yet the legend has a twist. Former deputy CM Samrat Choudhary left the bungalow to take on the top post. Perhaps, then, the jinx has run its course. Whatever be the case, it’s got Patna’s busybodies active again, dissecting the likely trajectory of Nishant’s innings in the bungalow.

MENDER-IN-CHIEF

Gujarat deputy CM Harsh Sanghavi is now the government’s go-to troubleshooter for politically sensitive negotiations. The recent resolution of the two-week-long farmers’ agitation in Morbi over compensation for land acquired for an Adani-linked project was another indication of this. Local BJP MLA Kanti Amrutiya could not persuade the government to meet the protesters halfway, and the embarrassment got worse after his brothers joined the agitation as well. Delhi then roped in Sanghavi, and the state finally reached a temporary compromise with the protesters.

LIVE CIRCUS

Nishad Party chief and Uttar Pradesh minister Sanjay Nishad found himself in the news for all the wrong reasons at a workers’ conference in Jalaun recently. A routine felicitation soon turned into a war of words between him and the party’s state secretary, Bharat Lal, all of it with the microphones on. The party chief was heard telling Lal “dimaag sahi kar lo (fix your mind)”, or he would fix it. Lal, in turn, complained that years of hard work had got him zilch in terms of opportunities. With the mikes relaying every nuance of the public spectacle, the meme makers had a field day.

AN ENEMY WITHIN

The Goa assembly poll, expected by this year-end, has begun to acquire a familiar Congress twist. After nearly 15 years out of power, the party had just started to sound confident about reclaiming the state, aided by reports of anti-incumbency against the ruling BJP. But then comes news of a new outfit, the Goa Congress, allegedly floated by disgruntled ex-partymen. The development has resuscitated that old question again: will the Congress be defeated by its opponents, or by its own internal contradictions?

—with Amitabh Srivastava, Jumana Shah, Avaneesh Mishra and Dhaval S. Kulkarni