Bijay's Blog

The Story So Far AAP winning landslide in Punjab is making disproportionate hype in the media. Now quite obviously, the Delhi-based greenhorn trumpeting this with deafening volume to win election elsewhere. They did the same after winning the Delhi assembly election in 2013. Those who follow political news and AAP very casually, it’s no doubt a big win for them. But the fact is Punjab is the only state that gave AAP representation in Lok-Sabha in 2014 when AAP could not open its account elsewhere in India with most of its leaders lost miserably including their convenor Arvind Kejriwal. In spite of their consecutive victory in the Delhi assembly, they could never win a single seat in Delhi Parliamentary election in both 2014 and 2019. The volatility of Punjab politics continues since ’80s, support for the Khalistani Movement, Operation Blue-Star, and the Assassination of Ms.Gandhi, Anti Sikh Riot always occupied popular Punjabi sentiment to date. In the last 3 decades, normalcy prev...

Beyond This Election After a couple of days of euphoria, I am bit pensive again of course after micro analysis of the results. Beyond reasonable doubt, this is an incredible mandate for Modi powered by many factors both positive and negative, worked in favor of the man of the moment. The BJP and its previous incarnation BJS, in the election fray right from 50's, have gone through many ups & downs and notably few of the landslides of Indira and Rajiv. Never before in the history, a non-Congress party had such a huge mandate nor the Congress suffered such a humiliating decimation. Such was the extent of the loss that the grand old party could not even open its account in 13 states and non of the 6 union territories. In rest of the country, Congress was merely an act of saving face than actually fighting an election for another turn. Well, the figures speak for itself, national tally of 44 while no individual state touching a double digit, turned the national party that ruled...

Charismatic Leader In late nineties, they already decided to move on sans those core but contentious issues. National Democratic Alliance (NDA) drafted its common minimum program that put those matters in back burner in the interest of good governance. The decimated Congress without firm leadership never enthused electorates enough to rally behind it, so nobody made any fuss about the said shift in BJP's election strategy. Also BJP's political formation at national level seem to be the only available and a formidable option. As usual Congress was more concerned about its conventional pockets to put forward a good fight. The rhetoric of secularism and allegations of communal agenda against the nationalist party never gained any ground. The reason was quite obvious, leading the pack was an unblemished character, AB Bajpai. He was able to march the whole bunch of ideological fence sitters behind him. The noteworthy exceptions here were already marginalized, let that be the e...

Anything for Vote Most of the experts still wondered about the Delhities being gullible but to their complete surprise the same Delhi people did outsmart AAP by voting for the unrealistic promises. In fact, its there way to say, well fulfill those promises now. Kejriwal was initially confused with the so called mandate but as they digested the election results little bit, the clueless-ness about the purpose of the mandate was clearly evident from their behavior. Media houses were actually embroiled in deep quandary, i.e not in a position to continue supporting Congress against popular public sentiments neither interested in promoting the rising sentiments in favor of BJP. Sooner than later AAP became the blue eyed boy of the entire print & electronics media with 24/7 coverage of all the developments including the nonsense ones. The Great India Nautanki Show hosted by Kejriwal, catered cheap entertainment to public across India. For a moment the impression was BJP's all rou...

Who Really Cares A red carpet welcome to a new player in the game, to change the very rules of the  game, the Politics. The game has already witnessed many legendary rise and dramatic falls with hardly any space for a new player. The grand old party is sitting cosy in the assembly for the 3rd successive term. The nationalist party could only hold its forte in the Local body (Municipal Corporation) though very convincingly. Several attempts to grab power turned to be futile with some small players particularly a casteist one spoiling the party. The national mood echos in the city walls reverberating anti incumbency ripple. The grand old lady still stands her ground, defying the popular view to unsettle her regime. Coming back to the game, the match calendar is already published, a year ahead from now. This is claimed to be a typically  interesting  match consisting of the veteran/popular teams, few dark horses, an underdog and of course few spoilers. The ...