General Elections 2014 – Day 19

Pramod Muthalik
We will defeat ourselves - B.Jhagara.P
Pramod Muthalik
We will defeat ourselves – B.Jhagara.P

What can you achieve in 5 hours? The Chief of Sri Ram Sene Pramod Muthalik and the BJP proved that you can earn a lot of insult for yourself and the people associated with you. You can also quickly lose millions of voters gained over a period of time and make millions more oppose you vehemently.  Pramod Muthalik is the same bully who had gone around Mangalore pubs on Valentine’s day in 2009 beating around women and calling them names. It was violence against women at its best and today BJP rewarded him by inducting him to the party. Probably Muthalik would have started seeing himself as the Home Minister of India after the fanfare with which he was inducted. People were not amused and there was a huge backlash from within BJP and tremendous outrage elsewhere. Looks like Modi Ji, Jaitley Ji, Rajnath Ji and company realized that they can’t take more collateral damage and decided to dump him.

This time there was Goa CM fighting against the President of Karnataka unit and Delhi intervened and put the blame squarely on the Karnataka unit. If you go by what BJP’s central leadership has to say, the Karnataka unit of BJP is morally bankrupt. BJP once again worked hard to damage itself and has succeeded in the same – the Bharatiya Jhagada Party way of running the show so late in the race can be very bad for numbers. Arun Jaitley tried to do some damage control by saying the state unit of BJP has missed the bus when it comes to India’s evolving value system. Wow! Some attempt.  BJP was counting at least 20 seats from Karnataka, looks like this adventurism can bring down the number by half.

The BJP is adding to internal agendas very quickly and not disposing off at even half the speed. Yesterday’s crisis still persists, Jaswant Singh Ji has neither resigned nor has been expelled from the party and is going around declaring himself as the candidate from Barmer. Of course, he would have to fight as an independent and BJP would be forced to expel him. BJP is in for lot of attention on this count, it will bring lots more column centimetres and TV time,  which I am sure BJP could well do without.

Congress finally got its act together, today Kapil Sibal and Digvijay Singh both took the BJP head on. If Kapil Sibal was trying to put on logic in place on why Modi can never become Prime Minister of India, Digvijay Singh was challenging the BJP to explain that if there indeed was a BJP wave, why they were removing their storied leaders. Last week or so has been very bad for the BJP. Whether Congress is able to derive any success out of this strategy or not is a tough question, at this stage.

Good Morning! Looks like Akhilesh Yadav just woke up to the reality of parliamentary elections taking place in India, and the fact that his state has 80 seats. Getting into business of calling names he has started by calling BJP a cunning, communal force which must be defeated.  Unfortunately, Akhilesh Yadav has exposed himself so much that his statements are hardly seen to be serious enough.

It looks like Tamilnadu has more challengers per seat than any other state. All seats in Tamilnadu would have at least four serious candidates. Ten out of 39 seats may witness six-cornered contests, this elections. Probably, the most expensive elections for any state.

AAP’s teething trouble is turning into a severe migraine at more places than one. In complete embarrassment to  Arvind Kejriwal and AAP, the Aam Aadmi Party’s Gurgaon unit resigned en-bloc, creating a crisis of sorts for Yogendra Yadav, the contestant from Gurgaon. AAP had more than fair chances from Gurgaon and after yesterday’s drama and public spat, those chances have reduced significantly.  If Gurgaon was bad, Rewari was almost equally worst for Kejriwal, black flags and agitation, of which he himself is a master in, are greeting him at more places than one. Making rallies a success, is an art, which Aam Aadmi Party hasn’t understood so far.

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