What Modi will do now?

Narendra Modi's spectacular win in the general elections 2019, and returning to power by an astonishing margin -- defying expectations, leaving the political opposition gutted and securing nearly two-thirds of the Lok Sabha. This election has proved how wildly popular Modi really is. The big question is: What is he going to do with that? He will probably continue along the same path.

• But there is a sizable chunk of India that voted against Modi, and many members of this anti-Modi crowd are deeply worried about his having a stronger hand.
• They see India as increasingly divided along caste and religious fault lines and an emboldened  Modi will send India farther down the path of becoming a religious Hindu state, which could be dangerous for minorities.
• Hindu extremists did very well in the election. Though Modi has not publicly used their same language, he has also done nothing yet to separate himself from them.
• Modi is not a soft liner. Modi’s deepening reliance on Amit Shah is a sign of the agenda ahead. Amit Shah is the man who recently referred to illegal Muslim immigrants as termites.
• Modi will come under pressure from within BJP to deliver on contentious planks of the party including building Ram temple over the ruins of a destroyed mosque in Ayodhya, abrogate Article 370 for Kashmir and removing special protections that allow India’s minority Muslim community to follow its own system of family law.
• Modi has no reason to deviate from the core agenda, because he received an unprecedented mandate despite the poor economic record and social disharmony.
• India’s path forward during Modi’s second term hinges on just who the real Modi might be.
• Those who studied Modi (68) say he is a complicated man: isolated, ascetic, trusting few, close to even fewer; a blend of populist, nationalist and a self-made success story. He is passionate about his Hindu beliefs and committed to economic development.
• After 5 years, the economy is not doing well and Modi is aware of how economy could define both his legacy and his future political fortunes.
• Modi has demonstrated desire to take his place on the global stage as the leader of world economic super power.
• In Kashmir, Modi might try to tighten control. So far India’s attempts to stamp out dissent have bred only growing resistance. Any further pressure put on Kashmir could mean more tension with Pakistan. Part of Modi’s election surge came from his appearing tough on Pakistan, trading military strikes across the border. The brinkmanship caused anxiety around the world, and Modi may well decide to continue that stance.
• Given the electoral victory he just won, he is unlikely to see any reason to change what has worked for him.
• At the top of his priorities is the urgency to create more jobs, and that is likely to require new laws to grant the government the power of eminent domain to seize land for companies to use to build factories.

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India is at the whim of one man

This election has produced the strongest government India has had. Even Jawaharlal Nehru did not have as much control over his party as Modi does. There was something surreal about this election. The fact that we've reached a point where truth does not seem to matter and that is a dangerous point for a democracy because democracy survives on the fragmentation of power. When people trust each other and distrust their leaders, you get democracy. When people distrust each other and completely trust their leaders, you get dictatorship. We are at the second moment right now. Armed with full majority, non existent opposition and tamed institutions -- Modi will continue with renewed vigor his hate filled destructive and disruptive policies. Only empty coffers, economic, agriculture and unemployment  problems will control him to certain extent.

General election 2019 blues

This is a waveless election (2019) wherein the preference or dismissal of a leader and issues seem to be pre-determined by the social background (caste and community) of voters. 

• The BJP  won 31% of the vote with 282 seats nationally in 2014. This is the highest vote to seat conversion indicating heaviest fragmentation of the anti-BJP votes. Plain arithmetic suggests that if all major non-BJP forces come together, the Modi machine will halt.
• Today BJP today rules 17 of 29 states (a year ago 21/29 states), either directly or with its allies. Despite BJP's countrywide presence, it is also true that the opposition has been winning most of the Lok Sabha by-elections which is a sign of defeat for the Modi-Shah combine in these elections.
• Anti Modi factors are: Demonetisation, GST, cow vigilante  lynchings, agrarian crisis, unemployment, inflation, cattle trade ban, etc.
• Pro Modi factors: Good governance, divided opposition, Balakot airstrike, surgical strikes, absence of major scams, etc. Factors such as welfare schemes like the PM Awas Yojana, Ujjwala Yojana (free LPG cylinder connection to BPL families), Rs 2,000 to the farmers, are secondary reasons for BJP.
• BJP which won in UP (71/80 seats), Rajasthan (25/25), Gujarat (26/26), Bihar (31/40), MP (27/29), Chattisgarh (10/11), Maharashtra (22/48) and Karnataka (17/28), in 2014, may lose most of these seats in 2019. 
• There is no perceptible Modi “wave” this time and the muscular nationalism plank that the BJP banks on fails to evoke the required response in the face of widespread agrarian crisis.
• The public resentment against the BJP governments is glaringly evident even though some believe that Modi has no alternative. It is also clear the BJP is not adding any new constituency of voters. The trends point to a clear reduction of the BJP’s tally from its commanding position of 2014. 
• Stung by the failure of the campaign based on muscular nationalism in the early phases of voting, the BJP desperately looks for new strategies and altered roadmaps, with emphasis on Hindutva. The candidature of the Malegaon blast accused, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, in Bhopal against Digvijaya singh is a major step towards Hindutva consolidation.
• Modi's election campaign is increasingly looking like his style of governance over the last five years, particularly the manner in which demonetization and GST were pursued. A new narrative every day, with new reasoning and strategies along with altered road maps to attain a proclaimed objective. This could also lead to results as chaotic as demonetization and GST produced.
• Congress party has scored some vital points in terms of ideation of new policy initiatives and programmes, but has failed to follow this up with solid organisational initiatives and electoral strategies.
• In Uttar Pradesh, multiple narratives are impacting the election in different ways. BJP's candidate's weaker profile as compared to BSP-SP-RLD alliance is widely acknowledged.
• People are not interested in communal issues but have economic concerns. The BJP had impar­ted a larger-than-life cult image to Modi. Even now they are projecting him as a lone lion in the jungle versus the rest. This is not going to work now.
• Had even a single person been killed in Pakistan by our our strikes, would they have returned Wing Commander Abhinandan in one single piece within days? Is Imran Khan not answerable to the people of Pakistan? So how did Amit Shah claim we killed 250 Pakistanis!” -- Raj Thackeray 
• EVM's are neither easy to tamper with and at the same time not tamper proof. Its non-transparent mechanism gives scope for losing candidate to think that EVM has been tampered with. Unless public confidence is earned, EVM will remain a contentious issue. EC telling that EVMs are perfect without explaining how they are perfect is nonsense.
• This election is not about who wins but to ensure that the BJP loses so that the nation survives. “We will take on each other later.”  -- Raj Thackeray 
• Mukesh Ambani had recently extended his support to Congress candidate Milind Deora in South Mumbai constituency. Raj Thackeray called this shift in Ambani’s loyalty from BJP to Congress is a big message to the country. Ambani is Uddhav Thackeray’s close friend but decided to side with a Congress candidate is a clear indication that Modi is heading towards defeat.

As things stand today, a weak opposition is Modi’s biggest strength and he is likely to benefit from the TINA (there is no alternative) factor the most, with other positives contributing towards making him virtually unassailable. Reactions from the echelons of the Sangh Parivar after the first two rounds of polling point towards a sense of unease. Many leaders admit that there is a possibility that the BJP would only win half the seats it had in 2014. 

Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik’s act of dissolving the Assembly when three non-BJP political parties in the State were on the verge of forming a coalition government is of a piece with the systematic undermining of democratic polity. Modi unleashing CBI, ED, Income Tax etc on all anti-BJP parties terrorizing opposing candidates and immobilizing their associates is gross misuse of institutions which are supposed work autonomously. In order to safeguard democracy it is important that Modi & BJP must be defeated in this 2019 elections and be watchful that future governments don't follow the same path. 

With majority eluding in 2019, BJP has to accommodate allies

As things stand at the moment, it is unlikely for BJP to get simple majority in 2019 elections but will retain the position of the single largest party. Assuming that large parts of the opposition remain together, BJP may hold on to at best 210 seats in the Lok Sabha. This would bring the BJP to the size of the Congress in the last UPA government. 

• Regional parties that are not currently in it but have been at one time, like some of the Tamilian parties, may join in. Which were once there but have become opponents (TDP, BJD etc.) could join again or remain neutral. Therefore, even if the BJP loses 70 or 80 seats, it should still be possible for the party to return to power.
• This will be an entirely new situation for Modi, who became the chief minister of Gujarat without having fought a single election. He has always led a majority government. A few months into his term, Gujarat burst into flames.
• Modi's only experience is as a CM in heading government where he controlled the full majority and often a two-thirds one. Old leaders were sidelined. New loyal faces were brought in. Modi picked and chose his Cabinet and dominated by holding all the key portfolios.
• Amit Shah, the second most powerful leader in the country today, was not given cabinet rank and was kept as MoS in the decade he served under Modi in Gujarat.
• Modi’s brilliant campaign of 2014 then produced a similar situation in Delhi and he was the undisputed leader of a party that had previously had some divisions but was always more disciplined than the Congress. Old leaders like LK Advani and MM Joshi were shunted out. Others like Sushma Swaraj had to submit. The party is seen as a big happy family today but it is not. BJP also has many who are capable of doing more but are being deliberately held back. With BJP having less than 210 seats, these individuals & regional leaders will assert themselves in a way that they are not doing now. 

It will be fascinating to see how Modi, for the first time in his political life without a majority, will manage the ambitions and the conflicts. At 210 seats, the position of the PM will be like that of Manmohan Singh. He was wrongly seen as weak, rather than the position of a man whose allies have a veto on his actions. There is no defence against such allies except for martyrdom. One can sacrifice the government, or one’s position, and move on. But if one wants to lead in a government where the majority is missing, then allies will have to be accommodated. This is something which Modi never did. Running a minority government requires flexibility and the ability to swallow humiliation. Allies will make sure that their hold is made public and this will mean getting the government to bend a few times. It will be fascinating to see how Modi manages this, particularly for those who have observed the meteoric trajectory of his career. Minority governments and khichdi coalitions has not hampered India’s economic and social growth. Those who fear a minority government or a hamstrung BJP should not despair. Coalitions are not evil. What will be instructive will be to see how Modi manages one.

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Modi & Amit Shah duo would like to sit in opposition and allow a 'kichdi' coalition take charge and collapse with its own contradictions in an year or two and win back in mid term polls emulating fall of Janata Party and return of Indira Gandhi in 1980. Although not easier, RSS have given clear direction that it would like Modi to pave way to more acceptable person like Nitin Gadkari to lead BJP lead NDA government. Easing out Modi & Shah is a big challenge for RSS and softliners. 

Who is trying to bring down PM Modi?

The right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in India kicked off a three-day conclave in Delhi on Monday by praising the main Opposition Congress party for securing India's independence. It also clarified it did not believe in a Congress-mukt (Congress-free) India but a sarvalok-yukt (all-inclusive) India. It came as a surprise because the RSS' prime minister, Narendra Modi, has spent four years spewing venom against the Congress, its prime ministers and the family that holds the party together. Certainly, the RSS revealed its changed thinking when it invited Congress chief Rahul Gandhi to this conclave. Despite Rahul's surprise hug for Modi in Parliament, better sense prevailed and he spurned the RSS invitation (unlike former president Pranab Mukherjee, who attended an RSS function in Nagpur in June, thinking he was laying the ground for himself to head a coalition government after the 2019 election). And though the RSS is eternally tainted with the assassination of "Mahatma" MK Gandhi in 1948, it has occasionally flirted with the Congress as evidenced by the fact of dozens of RSS men named as culprits in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Still it is surprising that with a majority government still in the saddle and about eight months to go before the parliamentary election, the RSS finds it necessary to extend an olive branch to the main opposition party. It cannot be, as the RSS claims, that it is a misunderstood organisation and that this exercise is meant to dispel the wrong notions surrounding it. The RSS thrives on a certain element of mystery and myth given its rigid hierarchy and organisation and its para-military nature. There is only one explanation for the RSS's current behaviour: it has read the writing on the wall that its government is on its way out. Hence it is building bridges with opposition parties, because it fears what may come once Modi is out of power.

That things are not going well for Modi is evident from various other recent developments. NDA allies like Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) have started acting tough. The Bihar chief minister, who till recently was silently facing all-round opprobrium for dumping his electoral partner (the Rashtriya Janata Dal) and hitching his wagon to the BJP, is now demanding his pound of flesh before the next parliamentary election - he does not want just a handful of seats to contest and has formally inducted Prashant Kishor, the data-genius behind Modi's 2014 victory, into his party to ensure it remains the senior partner in any future electoral alliance in Bihar. Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has demanded an early assembly election in which he hopes to do well, and he is least bothered about Modi's pet project of a simultaneous parliamentary and assembly election. Even Ram Vilas Paswan, a dalit leader from Bihar who is reliably a political weathercock, has been talking about leaving Modi's National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The rats are obviously deserting the sinking ship.

The RSS would likely be concerned. In Delhi there is a general expectation that Modi's parliamentary tally will decrease to around 150 seats following the 2019 election, and while that would ordinarily be enough to remove a leader and replace him with someone acceptable to coalition partners (who have been silently licking their wounds of neglect the past four-plus years), the RSS also knows that removing either Modi or party chief Amit Shah will not be easy. Both these gentlemen are apparently willing to sit in opposition and let a coalition government totter about for two to two and a half years before finally collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Modi fashions himself after iron lady Indira Gandhi, and like her, might bide his time to return to the top post as she did in 1980, after a nearly three-year hiatus.

This does not suit the RSS, which would rather try to retain governance under a different prime minister, heading a coalition that was much like the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government. There are various advantages to this: to consolidate much of the hidden social work and deep changes in the education sector that the rightwing has undertaken since May 2014. Modi has been such a polarising figure that a replacement government would want to first of all undo much of the damage to institutions that he has inflicted, in the name of getting things done, where his will was supreme over any Constitutional nicety or propriety.

First things first, however: the RSS has to save its own skin. There are many political parties who would like to give the RSS cadres a thrashing of their lives. The RSS must be highly conscious of the fact that the atmosphere against it will change drastically once Modi loses power. Hence, the RSS top brass have humbly recounted Congress's contribution of independent India's history, and have extended the peace pipe to Rahul Gandhi. It is a heartening sign for Indian democracy that Rahul has showed the RSS its place - that it does not rule supreme over all Indians, but merely over a sullen part of society, whose achhe din are hopefully soon coming to an end.

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Amit Shah meets Uddhav Thackeray, at later's residence

Amit Shah meets Shiv Sena's chief Uddhav Thackeray on June 6, 2018

BJP president Amit Shah walked into Shiv Sena's chief Uddhav Thackeray's residence in Mumbai in an attempt to talk the Shiv Sena chief regarding his threat to contest the 2019 elections separately posed many uneasy questions.

• Only on June 3, 2018, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut described BJP as its biggest "political enemy", in one of the sharpest attacks after the recently held Lok Sabha bypoll in Palghar. The country "does not" want the duo of PM Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, he wrote in party's mouthpiece 'Saamana'.
• Shah, along with Maharashtra CM Fadnavis etc had called on Madhuri Dixit at her residence and presented a booklet containing the achievements of the BJP-led central government in the last four years to her during the meeting. During his meeting with Ratan Tata at his residence, Shah had presented a similar booklet.
• A day later Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam asked Dixit & Tata, in his separate letters, that the booklet were a “bundle of lies” and appealed to them not to fall for blatant lies of the BJP and its chief. 
• The issue of fighting elections together in 2019 remains unresolved, as Uddhav Thackeray was non-committal, and more meetings are planned in the coming days to improve relations. If the BJP and Shiv Sena decide to fight elections separately it is advantage for the Congress and NCP combine.
• Relations between BJP and Shiv Sena hit rock bottom in recent times. Last month's by-elections, the two allies fought against each other. Shiv Sena has signaled that as the ties between their people and the BJP have snapped. For the BJP, relationships are business calculations they opined.
• The by-elections to the Lok Sabha seats of Palghar and Bhandara-Gondiya clearly show that Shiv Sena, which is still undecided over its support for the BJP, can play spoilsport in at least 30 of 46 seats in Maharashtra.
• The meeting between the two leaders is aimed at cutting a political deal, nothing else. Shiv Sena going into sulking mode, indicates that the Shiv Sena was acting pricey to negotiate a better deal for itself.
• Shiv Sena isn't the only NDA ally to be visited by Mr Shah to mend fences. Mr Shah will be meeting with Akali Dal chief PS Badal and son Sukhbir very soon. Mr. Badal, however, prepped this meeting with a message to other allies to stand together as the general elections are in a year, they should resolve differences to strengthen the NDA to emerge victorious, Mr Badal had stated.

Anyone who is following Maharashtra's political space knows that Shiv Sena will not bridge a pre-poll alliance with its BJP for 2019, as they reiterated the meet as a ‘drama’. Amit Shah's strategy seems to make Shiv Sena officially break the alliance and then make Shiv Sena explain to voters where they stand, and not resort to fence-sitting anymore. In the 2014 Assembly elections, the Shiv Sena with 19.3% votes won 63 seats of the 282 seats. BJP secured 27.8% of the votes and won 122 seats. And Congress and NCP, secured 17.95% & 17.24% votes and won 42 & 41 seats respectively. If Congress and NCP come together, and Shiv Sena goes on its own, it will be impossible for BJP to reach the winning mark. For the kind of arrogance and audacity displayed by Modi, Amit Shah and BJP in the last 4 years, neglecting and insulting allies, no one would like stay put with BJP in NDA. Nitish Kumar's humiliation is the unforgettable example. But politics & power makes strange bed fellows. If Shiv Sena goes on its own and causes benefits to INC & NCP leading to defeat of BJP & Modi in 2019, Modi & Shah has to blame themselves for their headstrong behavior with allies.

Nitish Kumar ... No where to go

Nitish Kumar is a nowhere man now and he will do another somersault because the BJP and Shah are cannibalising him and without an ally he is negligible. He will still prefer to walk out, go it alone and become a martyr allying with the winner of 2019 ... says a senior JDU leader.

• Nitish Kumar has a soul which troubles him only when he has political power at stake. From being a contender for the PM's office to now being reduced to Shah’s collateral damage it has been a sharp and steep fall for Nitish Kumar.
• Yesterday’s loss of the Jokihat seat to the ally RJD, he betrayed was the latest in the series of reverses Nitish Kumar has faced after he joined hands with erstwhile bête noire Narendra Modi. 
• The latest in the serial snubs is Union Minister, Nitin Gadkari publicly turning down his demand for special status for Bihar, Nitish Kumar has had to repeatedly swallow his pride.
• Nitish Kumar’s humiliation at the hands of the Modi and Shah duo has a larger lesson to all the NDA allies of BJP. AP Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu reportedly told senior Congress leaders that he does not want to become Nitish Kumar in the hands of the BJP.
• Even Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena supremo who ended the longest running alliance of the BJP breaking ties has privately mocked Nitish Kumar’s plight. 
• The biggest lesson is how dangerous the BJP under Shah and Modi has become to its partners, that the Akali Dal lost its traditional seat it had retained for 20 years to the Congress in the by-polls yesterday, must be realizing. 
• Shah’s arrogant treatment of Nitish Kumar, his repeated insults, his gobbling up of the JDU’s political space and the recent warning that the BJP will not make any concessions in seat sharing have all been observed by the fence-sitting opposition leaders. Amit Shah's plans to cut Nitish Kumar and JDU down to size and grab more Lok Sabha seats is an open secret in Bihar. So much so that Nitish Kumar who had used Rahul Gandhi as a scapegoat to walk out of the alliance is now sending feelers to the Congress to bail him out.
• Nitish Kumar has also reached out to “friend” West Bengal CM Mamta Banerjee, who was his colleague in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government. Much to his consternation Banerjee bluntly told him “Modi is no Vajpayee. He will eat you up alive”.
• Left with no options, Nitish Kumar might break all alliances and is likely to go "Solo" in 2019 General elections, like Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena supremo. Amit Shah is likely to eat humble pie in front of Thackeray as Maharashtra accounts for the second largest number of Lok Sabha seats (48), but Nitish Kumar will be given no quarter. But it is unlikely that Thackeray will give in to Shah’s sweet talk but Nitish Kumar is desperate for any BJP deal.
• Navin Patnaik, Odisha CM has now reached out to the leaders of the united opposition after seeing how the BJP treats allies. Patnaik already had a quiet meeting with Sonia Gandhi. Naveen Patnaik is likely to make some joint moves with the united opposition as Rahul Gandhi is in touch with him. Patnaik realises the writing on the wall that the Modi wave is over and hence sitting on the fence is no longer a feasible option.
• Shah is facing allies bleed away from him due to his shortsighted pursuit of winning every electoral battle that has compelled divided opposition to get united for survival. 
• Rahul Gandhi, on the other hand, is acting as a catalyst of opposition unity having brought together opposite community leaders Jignesh Mevani and Hardik Patel in Gujarat and giving BJP a fight and fright.
• The Congress's new MPCC chief Kamalnath is negotiating with Mayawati for an alliance in MP which would add at least another 4-6% Dalit votes. The Congress is committed to reaching out and creating a rainbow opposition coalition across the country. And uneasy Shah has put in CBI on the job of breaking the BSP away.
• But as the Air Asia case registered against Ajit Singh on the eve of the Kairana result showed that vendetta politics of Modi and Shah have diminishing returns. The leaders being targeted are more determined to band together. Sharad Pawar of the NCP, who Modi hailed as his political guru, has also ended his tacit understanding with Modi and is now a prime mover of the united opposition.

However hard Amit Shah tries, it seems that he is unable to split and divide the opposition. The BJP’s  unprincipled power grabs are now working against it. Sources close to Nitish Kumar says that he thought Modi was here to stay. The same Nitish Kumar now privately says that Modi was an accidental PM. A bubble on a wave which will burst in the big fight of 2019. 

Nitish Kumar’s somersault has now become a statutory warning to the united opposition - ally with the BJP at your risk.

DK Shivakumar: The man who checkmated Amit Shah in Karnataka

Tasked with keeping the flock together after the Karnataka Assembly Elections verdict revealed a fractured mandate, DK Shivakumar passed with flying colours on Saturday May 19, 2019.

The name of Doddalahalli Kempegowda Shivakumar is met with fear and awe in Karnataka in equal measure. The Congress’s master strategist, Vokkaliga strongman and former state Energy Minister will go down in history not only for engineering the loss of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the political thriller that followed the 2018 Karnataka verdict, but also for taking BJP National President Amit Shah head on and emerging victorious.  

Tasked with keeping the flock together after the Assembly verdict revealed a fractured mandate, DK Shivakumar could even be seen smirking by the time two-day Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa said that he was stepping down. Shivakumar is credited with personally keeping the flock together, ferrying the MLAs to Hyderabad and back, and ensuring that the BJP didn't get through to the Congress-JD(S) combine.

However, this isn’t the first time he was tasked with the job. In 2002, when the then-Congress leader and Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh was staring at a no-confidence motion, Shivakumar, a trusted aide of SM Krishna and the then-Karnataka Urban Development Minister, hosted the Congress MLAs at the now-infamous Eagleton Resort, and escorted them to Mumbai on the day of the trust vote, ensuring that they cleared it.

Less than a year ago, DK Shivakumar successfully prevented the horse-trading of 44 Gujarat MLAs ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls. This, just a week after there were Income Tax raids on 64 locations connected to him in a tax evasion case.

From his earliest days in Karnataka politics, Shivakumar has been an astute leader who has always played his cards well. When he filed his affidavit for the 2018 Assembly elections, he and his wife declared assets worth Rs 730 crore.

Born into an agricultural family, Shivakumar has been a member of the Congress since the beginning of his political career, after playing a leading role in the Youth Congress since his RC College days. He held the position of General Secretary of Karnataka State Youth Congress between 1983 and 1985. His first electoral success came when he was elected to the Zilla Panchayat in 1987.

At the age of 25, Shivakumar went up against seasoned politician HD Deve Gowda in Sathnur, where he lost by a slender margin. He contested again in the 1989 elections as an independent candidate and won. He became the youngest minister in the state just two years later, at the age of 30, where he served as a Minister of State under Chief Minister S Bangarappa from 1991 to 1992.

A seven-time MLA, Shivakumar was the campaign committee chairman – a post held by former Chief Ministers Siddaramaiah and SM Krishna earlier.

However, Shivakumar’s record is nowhere close to clean. He has been accused of illegal granite mining, encroachment of government land, tax evasion, Forest Act violations and corruption.

This record is said to be the reason former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah maintained his distance from Shivakumar when he came to power in 2013. The legislator from Kanakapura was then offered the Energy portfolio in 2014.

Politics

Even though Shivakumar has fought tooth and nail to install HD Kumaraswamy in the Chief Minister’s chair, there is no lost love between Shivakumar and the Gowdas. Both Vokkaligas, the battle has often been in Ramanagara district, the Vokkaliga heartland in Old Mysore. Shivakumar has gone head-to-head with former Prime Minister and veteran leader HD Deve Gowda in the past.

In the 2002 Lok Sabha bye-polls, Shivakumar lost to Deve Gowda. He then rose to fame during the 2004 Lok Sabha election, when he supported the candidature of newbie Tejaswini Sriramesh, a television journalist-turned-politician against Deve Gowda in Kanakapura. She went on to win by a landslide, and earned the reputation of being a giant killer. But it was Shivakumar, who was then the Urban Development Minister and Sathanur MLA – which was a part of the Kanakapura constituency – who earned the praise and trust of the Congress top brass by ‘discovering’ Tejaswini. 

He is also credited for the seven JD(S) MLAs rebelling against their party supremo and cross-voting in the 2016 Rajya Sabha polls.

The 2018 elections

A man with strategic prowess, D K Shivakumar has proven his mettle time and again, and has made clear that he intends to sit in the Chief Minister’s chair someday. With Shivakumar eyeing the post of Deputy Chief Minister for now, one will only have to wait and watch for what the Congress’ Chanakya does next.

Yedurappa resigns. But what about Governor Vajubhai Vala?

• Just two days after taking oath as the Chief Minister, Karnataka BJP leader BS Yeddyurappa resigned ahead of the crucial vote of confidence on the floor of the house.
• Outnumbered by the Congress-JD(S) combine, the BJP needed the support of 111 MLAs to sail through the vote of confidence on the floor of the house. It had only 104 and its efforts to buyout few MLAs from JDS and/or Congress fell flat leaving indelible blot on their face.
• In a surprise farewell speech in the Assembly, an emotional Yeddyurappa said he will campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and ensure that BJP wins all 28 LS seats in the state.
• The BJP never had the numbers, but the governor invited them to form government and generously gave 2 weeks time for horse-trading and winning trust motion on floor of the Assembly. But Supreme Court curtailed the time to just to 36 hours, only to avoid judicial scrutiny of actions of constitutional office of Governor.
• The Supreme Court today ordered live telecast of the floor test, when Congress challenged the appointment of KG Bopaiah (BJP MLA) as Protem Speaker who is not the senior most MLA but also with questionable past record as speaker.
• In a democracy we have to accept not only people's verdict but also the follow the rule of law.
• Earlier in the week, BJP which had emerged as the single largest party, was invited by the Governor Vajubhai Vala to form the government ignoring the post poll coalition between JDS and Congress, which together had 115 MLAs, well above the mark of simple majority of 112/222 which was challenged by JDS & Congress in Supreme Court for staying the swearing-in of BS Yedurappa as the Chief Minister. 
• "The Governor has invited us to form the government. The swearing in ceremony will be organised on Monday May 21, 2018. I have personally invited Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, Chandrashekhar Rao and Chandrababu Naidu to attend the ceremony," Kumaraswamy told reporters.

Governor Vajubhai Vala's  baseless and senseless decision to invite minority BJP leader Yedurappa, ignoring JDS+Congress combine's leader HD Kumara Swamy with clear majority that lead to intense horse trading activity by BJP with unlimited budgets of several thousands of crores of rupees was thwarted by JDS & Congress leadership, cadre with support of Supreme Court interventions, almost all opposition leaders across many states, JDS & Congress MLAs unwilling to cross parties within hours of electing by public. Karnataka showed that the BJP's downslide has started with arrogant and audacious actions of Modi and Amit Shah, who lost their face with steep fall from their high moral ground to deep corruption. Their credibility is totally lost and this fiasco will have its telling effect on 2019 General Elections on Modi & BJP. The need of the hour is that Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala must resign and get out.

Modi unites all opposition parties against himself

• Recent developments suggest that Narendra Modi and his BJP can no longer afford to be over confident about their prospects in the next parliamentary elections. 
• BJP's recent victory in Gujarat is so much narrow that in next LS elections it may not even get 13 of 26 seats. In last elections BJP won all 26 seats.
• BJP's impressive victory in Tripura and in North East has just 24 LS seats only. 
• The recent LS bye poll humiliating defeats with massive majority in MP, UP, Rajasthan and Bihar only indicates its vulnerable position in Hindi heartland states, where it has won thumbs down in 2014, almost 90% LS seats.
• RSS survey had warned that unless BJP makes some in roads in South, East and North East, BJP may not be able to form Government in 2019, even with the help of allies.
• BJP allies from several states have either jumped ship recently or have begun making dissonant noises and a federal front is being talked about, and many has begun exploring viable anti-BJP groupings.
• The realignment conversations could be described as signs of political desperation and opportunism, the BJP will take these lightly at its own peril. Even the smallest allies that had  contributed to the 2014 result and their exit will hurt.
• Regional and small parties are usually more closer to the people, and their growing openness to considering non-BJP options suggests that they may be sniffing a change in voter mood.
• The first is the puncturing the exaggerated claims of the Modi government and its all-round failure in delivering "achhe din" by the Congress took with some success in Gujarat.
• The second is the Modi government’s callous attitude to regional aspirations and its unfair treatment of regional opposition-led states, the factors said to be behind the TDP’s exit from the BJP-led NDA.
• The third is the strong anti-democratic strain in the functioning of the BJP and Modi government, with sweeping decisions such as demonetization taken without much consultation, opposition leaders being hounded, much energy being devoted to sabotaging opposition governments and installing BJP/NDA state governments even after electoral rejection, and meddling in the working of constitutional and other authorities.
• The SP and the BSP tie-up for the UP by-elections has made the most news, but there are others too. 
• The BJP is facing criticism on non-performance, regional neglect and anti-democratic attitude, but the fact of the matter is that these have emerged as the principal themes and much of the blame must go to the Modi-Amit Shah duo. 
• The BJP’s top two have made no secret of their Congress-mukt Bharat agenda or their desire for a longer stint in the government, to realise a "new India". Political ambition of Modi-Shah duo’s chosen approach are exceptionable as their plans to continue in power appear to rely less on demonstrated performance, more on headline management, a systematic crippling of the opposition, and projection of their electoral record as a popular vindication of positions and endorsement of performance.
• The BJP has never spared the Congress for the propaganda and opposition stifling the grand old party resorted to in its heydays, and its position on electoral record smacks of duplicity. If the BJP’s election wins reflect the people’s approval of what it is doing, surely the Congress must have performed extremely well for it to have ruled the roost for decades.
• The Modi-Shah recipe, viewing BJP more as an election machine has driven the BJP to high-voltage propaganda, riding roughshod over regional sentiment and established democratic proprieties.
• Modi’s carefully crafted larger than life persona is another reason for the kind of Opposition build-up being witnessed. In painting Modi as a hugely popular, unassailable political mastermind, and Modi himself seriously invested in perpetuating the image, the BJP has hastened the process of self-reflection across various Opposition parties and given a certain credibility to charges of self-aggrandizement and totalitarianism against Modi.
• It is likely that the Modi-led hegemony not been pitched so strongly and that the men and strategies that catapulted the BJP to parliamentary majority and have delivered several important Assembly election wins will emerge as the party’s weak links now. But then, as Shah himself says, every election is different and the past matters little.

While not understating Modi's charisma and oratory skills of mesmerizing and carrying audience with him, the fact of the matter is that the people in the seats of power must deliver to the expectations of people over time of 3-5 years. Otherwise, building up anti-incumbency is inevitable. In 2014 it is not Modi's victory but loss of elections by UPA regime. Same thing will repeat in 2019, due to no-performance by Modi and humiliation of allies & opposition parties. All BJP electoral victories from 2014 onward, are mainly due to divided opposition not an endorsement of its performance. Now visible BJP's losses are also due to unification of opposition parties. The desire to defeat Modi is reverberating, unification of all opposition parties is a certainty by 2019 general election and that would ruthlessly consign Modi & Co to their hometowns. The ever increasing crude oil price will aid economic distress for people of India and will aid destruction & demolition of Modi & BJP. 

Modi & BJP's desperation to form government in Karnataka, despite falling short of majority while JDS+Congress having clear majority, with the help of their own Governor and SC passing strictures has only united all the opposition parties in the country. In the end, truth will prevail i.e. JDS+ Congress will form government and BJP will stand isolated. That would seal BJP's ambitions to make way into South and will have negative effects in 2019 elections.

Sonia Gandhi outmaneuvers Modi in Karnataka

Karnataka Elections 2018 Results

What Karnataka Governor Can Do?

Recent Precedents Favoring BJP

Arun Jaitley - Goa Assembly Elections 2017

By hook or crook, BJP is hell bent on formation of government in Karnataka, despite falling short of numbers by 8. While JDS has accepted post-poll coalition with Congress, for CM position to its leader Kumaraswamy, independents & others are just 3 and are in no position to help BJP. The only option left for BJP is to engineer defections from JDS or Congress and that is what they are doing exactly by making Governor not inviting Kumaraswamy to form government and BJP leader BS Yedurappa asking Governor for inviting him, on the basis of being leader of the largest party, to form Government without majority numbers and no confirmed support and asking one week time to prove majority on the floor of the house thus getting sufficient time for horse trading of JDS & Congress MLAs, shamelessly. When the Governor acts decisively and correctly or what shape the issue takes and ends up is for the time to decide.

Earlier while BJP was rejoicing their certainty of reaching magic figure, Sonia Gandhi & Rahul Gandhi moved in swiftly by offering JDS to form government and Congress willing to support from outside unconditionally was readily accepted by Deve Gowda & Kumaraswamy with a condition that Congress be a part of coalition with Dy.CM, Speaker and 19 ministerial positions and JDS taking CM & 12 cabinet positions which Congress actually wants to get from JDS. Realising the situation BJP too reached out to JDS offering them with DyCM post etc, but was ignored by them. Deve Gowda always maintained that he was secular and always opposed to RSS-Hindutva idealogy.

Now Modi & BJP's central team staying at Bengaluru todo every possible thing for BS Yedurappa forming BJP Government unethically, immorally, unconstitutionally etc and luring all non-BJP MLAs is nothing but murder of democracy and rape of constitution in the streets of Bengaluru by Modi, Amit Shah, BJP, Governor etc. But they won't care. All that they want is power in Karnataka and perceived political entry into South India, otherwise Modi & BJP are certain to lose 2019 General Elections in the reality of negative vibrations in West & North India due to Modi government's gross under performance and economic distress, as per political analysts. BJP & needs to win as many MP seats as possible in South, East and North East otherwise Modi & Shah will get dumped back in Ahmedabad.

RSS predicts Congress clean sweep in Karnataka Elections.

  

 

As seen in Gujarat elections Modi & Amit Shah and BJP will stoop down to any level and do anything to win Karnataka elections. Playing communal card is a time tested option for BJP. But what they would do is no easy guess. EVM tampering is a possibility apart from dumping money for buying votes. They may very well campaign Rahul Gandhi & Co as anti-nationalists, desh-drohis, etc. But my gut feeling is that all these will only boomerang on BJP & Modi's face. With so many forces working against BJP with Modi's arrogance & audacity, anger of minorities, Telugu people, Tamil people, caste divide etc all are likely to aid each other in trouncing BJP. PM Modi few days ago sang paeans to HD Deve Gowda, the JDS patriarch and influential Vokkaliga leader, four years after offering the shelter of an old-age home to him. Whereas now Modi is probably seeking Deve Gowda's help in forming Government in Karnataka, in case of hung assembly. Congress president Rahul Gandhi had rightly called the JDS the "B team" of the BJP.

Political narrative slipping out of Modi’s hands

It is not unusual for governments to become unpopular in their last year or two. But what surprised many is that the same thing happening to Modi, the master communicator, the king of narrative, the man who sets the agenda others follow, the slayer-of-demons who won UP despite the failure of demonetisation, and who knows how many rabbits he could still pull out of his hat.

• The gory details of the brutalisation of women, recently at Kathua, J&K and Unnao, UP,  shocked people and angry protests followed. PM Modi maintained stoic silence for weeks as usual, breaking his silence only after public outrage, protests that continued even after the government has woken up. April 2018 could well have been December 2012. The intensity then was much greater, but the pattern is similar.
• The government appears to be out of control and has lost its grip over the political narrative. Every week there’s a new crisis that makes the government look worse than it did the previous weekend. The negative headlines drown out PM Modi’s photo-ops.
• A year ago, after winning UP elections with three-fourths majority, the Modi government looked so powerful people thought it would rule forever. Everyone had exclaimed. Modi and Shah inspired fear and awe alike. 
• On July 31,2017, the provincial princeling of Patna, Nitish Kumar, felt compelled to give into the force of gravity, falling into the BJP’s waiting arms. Nobody can defeat Modi in 2019, he had declared triumphantly.
• Exactly a month later, on 31 August, GDP for the Q1 of 2017-18 were published. India’s GDP had fallen to 5.7%, the impact of demonetisation was writ large. It was clear that things weren’t going to look up anytime soon because the mangled, badly designed and hurriedly rolled out and messy implementation of GST on July 1, 2017 slowed down business activity and hurt job creation. 
• UP voters knew the truth is that demonetisation had failed to save any black money but voted for the BJP for other reasons. But demonetisation and GST hurt everything: jobs, rural economy, private investment, government revenues, consumer confidence and so on. The government cherry-picked economic data to defend itself. Spin-doctoring can make you believe any lies except the bit about the money in your pocket. 
• The government managed to carry the political narrative over disastrous demonetisation and GST as successes, only till the GDP numbers were out. Since then, the Modi narrative has fallen week after week. Less than a year after the stupendous victory in UP, the Modi juggernaut is not looking beyond the pale of the cycle of anti-incumbency that inevitably follows mandates of hope.
• Week after week, the Modi government’s own tall promises made through lofty slogans -- Beti Bachao, Digital India, Re-exam warriors, Co-operative federalism, Na khaoonga na khaanay doonga, Chowkidar of public money, Saffron Ambedkar all have boomeranged on Modi's face.
• I&B minister Smriti Irani’s attempts to muzzle the press with the fake news bogey backfired. An unprecedented press conference by four sitting Supreme Court judges fuelled speculation that the government was interfering with the independence of the judiciary. The government’s attempt to shove Aadhaar down people’s throats without a consensus furthered its anti-democratic image.
• The BJP’s big reply to its critics was that it keeps winning election after election. The party’s good performance in the NE was overshadowed by its humiliating loss of Gorakhpur & Phulpur in UP. Dalit alienation by Yogi government in UP forced the BSP to ally with SP that raising doubts over the BJP’s election machine.
• The Gujarat election result was a victory that didn’t feel like one. Instead of improving BJP performance dropped to below 100 seats for the first time since the party’s rise to power, due to farm distress. The story was repeated in bypolls in Rajasthan’s Ajmer and Alwar. Farm distress and unemployment both became big stories that overshadowed the government’s tall claims. This, more than anything else, cast doubts over the party’s invincibility, and the inevitability of their 2019 victory. 

With an year to go for the 2019 general elections, Narendra Modi landed himself perfectly on a sliding slope, with no hope for him to rise and shine again? 

Read the source article

Modi proved himself as the worst PM India ever had, so far, did nothing for poor, peasants, unemployed youth & common man and focused in only enriching richer people, who hitherto fills his coffers. He ruthlessly destroyed informal sector which provides employment to masses but doesn't pay taxes. He has only empty rhetoric promises for them only to be forgotten in next few seconds. He doesn't care for constitution, democracy, rule of the law, laws of the land, institutions, traditions, allies or anything that comes his way. He was only successful at winning almost all elections till date. When he loses elections in 2019, which is almost a certainty, BJP leaders would be more happier than anyone. 

VIP hate speeches rise 500%, under Modi

 

The use of hateful and divisive language by high-ranking politicians has increased almost 500% in the past four years, an NDTV data collection exercise has found.

• A day, or a week doesn't go without some senior politician - a member of Parliament, minister, MLA or even Chief Minister making a hateful comment, be it in the language of bigotry or calling for violence. The rise in use of social media by politicians has only amplified this disturbing trend.
• NDTV collated the data from public record, internet, as well as using their reporters, scanning nearly 1,300 articles and going through 1,000 most-recent tweets of top politicians and public figures. NDTV says that this is not a perfect record, and doesn't claim to be comprehensive. 
• From May 2014 to the present, there have been 124 instances of VIP hate speech by 45 politicians, compared to 21 instances under UPA 2, an increase of 490%. 90% of hateful comments made during the NDA's current terms are by BJP politicians. 
• During UPA-2, 21 political leaders made hateful comments, of which 3 instances (14 %) were from the Congress, which anchored the coalition. Politicians from the BJP took the lead, recording 7 instances of hate speech.
• Of the 45 leaders responsible for hate speech since the Modi government came to power, in only find six cases (only 5% of all instances) of evidence of a politician being reprimanded or cautioned, or issuing a public apology. 95% of the time, the 'VIP hater' faced no consequence.
• In at least two cases, hate speech appears to have paid off. 

1. Yogi Adityanath, the current CM of UP, was a MP from UP when, in Nov 2015, he said "There is no difference between the language of Shah Rukh Khan and that of Hafiz Saeed". In Sep 2014, he ascribed the rise in riots in Western UP to the population growth of a minority community. "In places where there are 10 to 20% minorities, stray communal incidents take place," he said. "Where there are 20 to 35% of them, serious communal riots take place and where they are more than 35%, there is no place for non-Muslims." In all, there are 6 instances of hate speech by the UP CM. All were made before he was promoted to his current office.
2. Anant Kumar Hegde was a BJP MP from Karnataka when, in Mar 2016, he said, "As long as we have Islam in the world, there will be no end to terrorism. If we are unable to end Islam, we won't be able to end terrorism." In Sep 2017, he was promoted as Union Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. Since 2014, Mr Hegde has made seven such hate speeches. Three months after being made union minister, in Dec 2017, Mr Hegde declared that the party would remove the term "secular" from the Constitution, saying "These people who call themselves secularists are like people without parentage or who don't know their bloodline."

• Mr Hegde is one of three serial 'VIP haters' in poll-bound Karnataka. Shobha Karandlaje, a  MP from Karnataka and the general secretary of the Karnataka BJP, has posted at least nine hateful tweets since June last year. Pratap Simha, another MP from Karnataka, has also posted four hateful tweets since September last year. 
• In further proof that hate has no consequence on the careers of political leaders, at least 21 political leaders (or 48%) had recorded more than one instance of hate speech. They were not reprimanded for their hateful comments, nor did they issue apologies. Prominent amongst them is T Raja Singh, a BJP MLA from Telangana, who has repeatedly made public speeches inciting violence. In Nov 2017, he threatened to burn down theatres screening "Padmavat." Since Dec 2015, Mr Singh has made at least ten hateful comments.
• BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has written hateful tweets against Muslims, posting at least 17 of these since Sep 2017.
• The reluctance of BJP to crack down on its hate speech 'offenders' is due to the fact that the its top leadership does not seem averse to playing the communal card, albeit using veiled language. Prominent amongst such instances are speeches by BJP party president Amit Shah, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.

"If there is a cemetery in the village, there should be a crematorium as well; If there is electricity on Ramzan, it should be there on Diwali as well; there shouldn't be any discrimination," Mr Modi had said in Feb 2017, during an election rally in Fatehpur, UP, in the run-up to the assembly elections that his party swept. 

• During the same campaign, Amit Shah sparked controversy with this comment: "If by any mistake, BJP loses, the victory and defeat may be in Bihar but fire crackers will go off in Pakistan."
• Read the source article for complete list of hate speeches by BJP and UPA leaders.

Read the source article

Hate speeches are the hall mark of BJP's propaganda, especially during elections and during parliamentary debates. Modi goes way beyond others with deep desire to eliminate all national parties and establish monopoly of Hindutva forces paving the way for Hindu Rashtra. He fails to understand federal cooperation with states, diversity of the nation and the need to have balanced approach for unity & integrity of the nation. His facial expressions and body language evidently expresses his thoughts, intentions and actions. With his intolerance, arrogance coupled with lack of skills required for administering a large nation, and India was so much divided today like never before. For the first time since liberalisation in 1992, Indian economic outlook was so much distressed. Modi must be credited with shooting at the Tyres of the racing car (Indian Economy) without having an iota of what he was doing with his hare brained demonetisation and senselessly designed & hurried roll out of mangled GST.

Modi and BJP fading away in Hindi heartland

In 2014-15 BJP president Amit Shah's proclamed an uninterrupted BJP rule at the Centre for the next 50 years. Even those who factored in unforeseen political challenges had little doubt that the BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah would have an easy ride at least for 15 years. But such conviction is a thing of the past. These observations were made by a senior BJP leader from UP within days after the BJP suffered shock defeats in the byelections in Gorakhpur and Phulpur. UP CM Yogi Adityanath, the BJP's latest mascot candidly admitted that they had been done in by overconfidence. 

• As in March 2018, BJP is in power 15 states and shares power in 5 other states. While 3 states are in Congress fold, 6 states are ruled by regional parties.
• Despite its massive presence in the country, today BJP is trembling with negative vibrations across the nation and elections for 5 states are slated for 2018 and general election for 2019 and Modi is desperately searching for a magic wand, that will work.
• In a span of 10 days, BJP suffered stinging defeats in UP’s Gorakhpur and Phulpur, constituencies held earlier by CM Adityanath and DyCM KP Maurya. While Tripura was wrested by BJP ending the 25-year-old Left Front regime, BJP surrendered their 27-year-long  domination of Gorakhpur to a loose alliance of the SP and BSP. In Bihar, revived alliance with the JDU did not bring any benefit as RJD retained the Araria LS constituency and the Jehanabad Assembly seat. Indeed, you never can take the Indian electorate for granted.
• In the RS polls, BJP’s strength in UP Assembly assured its victory in 8 seats, but it managed to win another seat by engineering cross-voting from the opposition to ensure the BSP candidate’s defeat. Managing a victory in a RS election through backroom manoeuvres is in no way a measure of public opinion.
• The reports from the Hindi heartland States of UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, MP and many more affirm that the popular mood is definitely turning against the BJP. The party is witnessing a steady erosion of support on account of agrarian crisis, the economic hardships on account of demonetisation and GST reforms, and the general failure to live up to the high expectations generated through the rhetoric of leaders like Modi. There is little doubt that this is bound to reflect in reduction of seats for the BJP in the 2019 general election.
• The fact of the matter is voters in the Hindi heartland States are fed up with BJP and they need to face it squarely without taking recourse to convoluted logic and lame excuses. The vote share of the BJP fell by 1,04,495 in Gorakhpur from the 2014 count and by a massive 2,20,102  in Phulpur.
• It is more daunting for the BJP since a mere arithmetical aggregation of SP and BSP votes of the 2017 Assembly elections shows the two parties ahead in as many as 50 of the 80 LS seats in the State. If this arithmetic is getting supplemented by an emotive appeal, a potential SP-BSP alliance will make rapid strides in UP’s electoral politics. Projections on the basis of a cumulative vote share assessment of the 2017 UP Assembly election results are that the SP-BSP combine has a lead of 1.45 lakh votes across 57 LS seats. The BJP and its allies lead in 23 seats by 58,000 votes, a sharp fall from the 71 seats won by BJP and 2 seats won by its allies in 2014.
• Akhilesh Yadav, SP president and former UP CM is of the view that the voter dissatisfaction with the BJP regimes at the Centre and in the States is fast acquiring big proportions and is bound to spread nationally in due course. He opines that Gorakhpur and Phulpur were merely precursors. 
• Akhilesh Yadav said that efforts to portray the BJP defeats in Gorakhpur and Phulpur as the mere fallout of electoral arithmetic is a mechanistic assessment that fails to take into consideration the larger social, economic and political context marked by misrule, the human misery caused by that misrule.
• The TDP  decision to leave the NDA and move a no-confidence motion against the Modi government is another indication of BJP mishandling its NDA allies.
• The manner in which the BJP’s sought to counter the no-confidence motion underscore a sense of panic. The party seems to have unleashed the AIADMK, which has become completely servile to Modi and Shah after  Jayalalithaa’s death, and the TRS to continuously disrupt Parliament on some pretext or the other so that the no-confidence motion cannot be taken up. It seems that like the UPA-II, the Modi Ministry is desperately seeking to run away from parliamentary inspection. The debates on the no-confidence motion would have been telecast live and this too could have added to the government’s discomfiture. But such desperate filibustering will ultimately aggravate voter disenchantment with the Modi government.
• The opposition parties have reinforced attempts to rally anti-BJP forces. While the Congress laid out its plan of action for non-BJP coalition in a special plenary and others are seeking to stitch an alliance of regional parties and these are based on the premise that the BJP is no longer in the position of strength that it enjoyed in 2014. 
• In the RS election in UP, the SP. and the Congress had announced support to the BSP candidate but lost due to cross voting in favour of 9th BJP candidate. The BJP leadership saw in the situation a chance to make mischief between the allies to split them. However, in the press conference that Mayawati said that BSP saw through the BJP’s dirty tricks and vile political games and horse-trading and made it clear that the alliance would continue. 
• BJP and RSS knew that Yogi Adityanath’s stock had taken a big beating. Projected last year as a potential successor to Modi, he has been exposed as an inefficient and ordinary “non vote catcher” leader who cannot even retain his own pocket borough that he had literally lorded over for decades. That does strengthen the Modi-Shah duo as the only vote catcher in the BJP, but the Hindi heartland States account for approximately 200 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha.
• The BJP is known traditionally to be an urban-centric party. The low turnout in the urban areas in the Gorakhpur at 33% and Phulpur 31% was disconcerting in the context of electoral challenges. This showed that the rural antipathy towards the party continued, its urban core base was resolutely refusing to rally behind it. It remains to be seen how Modi and Shah will tackle this. Certainly empty rhetoric cannot contain these jolts and there is widespread agreement with this observation among the Sangh Parivar rank and file.

Read the source article

Having not ruled the country during first two years and misruled the country with disruptive reforms without preparation and leaving all vulnerable people to their fate without any support, time is now for Modi and BJP to pay the price. No matter what he does, his graph will continue to plunge, an RSS survey has warned Modi. The only way to limit damages is to go for flash polls. That is almost certainty if Karnataka result stuns BJP, which is likely as per opinion polls. Arrogance and dictatorial attitudes will never pay. Consequences are inescapable. Modi's wrong behavior and non-performance and corruption & scams etc has no bounds, much worse than Congress and UPA. Modi must realize that empty rhetoric will not work all the times.

Modi insult Advani, a national shame

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Tripura on Friday March 09, 2018 to take part in the oath-taking ceremony of Biplab Deb, who was has been sworn as the state's new chief minister. Narendra Modi and several other senior BJP leaders including LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, party president Amit Shah had participated in the swearing-in ceremony of Biplab Deb as Tripura Chief Minister. As greeted by everyone on the stage, PM Modi responded to them individually. However, when LK Advani greeted him, PM Modi snubbed him without responding to his greetings. The video of Modi snubbing Advani has received flak from netizens who rebuked Modi's head-strong attitude. Many Twitterati recalled how Modi had traveled with Advani as his assistant carrying Advani's microphone.

• Had Modi intended to really insult and humiliate LKAdvani, he would not have invited him in the first place.
• It was Advani who made Modi, not even an MLA, chief minister of Gujarat. How Modi manipulated Advani to pull down Keshubhai Patel is all together a different story.
• BJP won only two Lok Sabha seats in the elections of 1984, in the aftermath of assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1983 and in the resultant sympathy wave BJP was washed away. 
• It was Advani's Rath Yatra of 1990 that helped BJP win 120 seats in 1991 general elections. Later in 1996 elections BJP won 161 seats and in 1998 midterm elections it won 182 seats to form NDA govt headed by AB Vajpayee.

• Riding on the popularity after Rath Yatra, in 1996 he could have got chance to become PM but he got his senior Vajpayee's name for leadership. He was rightful claimant for the position for building the party but gave up. Vajpayee was only a face of the party, Advani was brain and real organisation man.
• In 2002, when PM AB Vajpayee had prepared the ground for removal of Modi, seen as presiding over the worst communal riots the country, it was Advani who saved the day for Modi. Vajpayee, who had asserted that Modi should adhere to “raj dharma”, bowed to Advani's pressure.

It is clear the future of all parties lies temporarily in coalitions. Coalitions demand consensus, adjustments, the fine art of political management and statesmanship. It is clear that Mr. Modi is not a carrier of such values. It is also clear that the BJP is a graceless party.

Once you get past charm, good looks, intelligence and sense of humour, 

it is modesty that stands out.

Culture of a person, society or the country
is the way they treat their women, disabled, aged and weaker sections.

Pranaam ka parinaam Aashirwaad ... Mahabharat

Modi insults Advani at BJP CM swearing in ceremony at Agartala 

It is a matter of national shame that our prime minister, Narendra Modi, is a manner less and culture less person who insults 90 year old man, LK Advani, who was also Modi's mentor and protector until yesterday on a public platform at Agartala. India's future is unsafe in the hands of this culture-less and ill educated person thy name Narendra Modi.

Modi’s own record of ‘Raincoat Bathing’

• Narendra Modi is truly a street-smart politician. His ‘rain coat in a shower’ metaphor for Manmohan Singh is accurate description of Manmohan Singh’s ten-year long prime ministership. He allowed scams like 2G spectrum, coal block allocations and the Commonwealth Games loot to happen right under his nose without any direct charge of personal corruption sticking to him. His staunchest critics could not call him a corrupt prime minister. 
• Congressmen failed to point out how Modi himself has been a master at the art of being seen as clean, like a lotus, while remaining immersed neck deep in muck. 
• For 14 years Modi as Gujarat chief minister held the home portfolio. While his deputy minister of state for home, Amit Shah, was arrested, jailed and then externed for a spate of extra-judicial killings, the chain of evidence never travelled beyond Shah. As Shah and his loyalist police officers did time in jail, Modi reaped a rich political harvest by polarising society using these killings. His other ministerial colleague Mayaben Kodnani was sentenced to 28 years in prison for the Naroda Patiya massacre. 
• Babu Bajrangi, who killed women and children in Patiya and later, after being released on bail, ruled the streets of Ahmedabad for several years, kidnapping girls, blocking the release of films and terrorising minorities, all along openly flaunted his proximity with the chief minister. In 2012, he was convicted and sentenced to life based on eye-witness accounts and his own confession on a spy-camera, but his statement indicting Modi was dismissed as hearsay. 
• As chief minister, Modi presided over the killings of more than 1,000 men and women, and yet used every repudiation whether from within the party or without, every judicial stricture, every effort to inquire into his culpability, to further cement his stay in power.
• When it comes to the art of enjoying a shower without getting wet, Narendra Modi is many shades better than Manmohan Singh.
• CAG reports on the 2G spectrum, coal blocks and Krishna Godavari Basin singed Singh, politically and personally. But CAG reports on the scams of the Modi government in Gujarat faded without a whimper.
• In 2012, the Modi government earned strictures from the CAG for giving away a 10% participating stake in a KG Basin gas field measuring 4,57,000 acres it had won in an expensive bid to a mysterious overseas company named GeoGlobal Resources, incorporated in Barbados, with a capital of just $64, for free. As per the Modi government’s own estimates, announced in a press conference, the gas field was worth about $20 billion. Though state government-run GSPC, the owner of the gas field, had spent in excess of Rs 20,000 crore in drilling and exploration costs, Geo Global’s share of Rs 20,000 crore towards expenditure cost was also borne by GSPC. The issue failed to get the attention of the national media as Modi was on the ascendance and the corporate media owners could see which way the wind was blowing. Arvind Kejriwal’s hour-long press conference on the issue was blacked out. Till date there has been no inquiry into this shady deal nor any investigation into the real operators behind Geo Global, which was incorporated just six days before the joint venture with the GSPC. A new CAG report last year indicted Modi’s Gujarat government for wasting Rs 20,000 crore of public money in an exploration process which has yielded one-tenth of what he had promised.
• Just weeks after Modi’s inauguration as prime minister, the CAG released five different reports for the year ending March 2013, highlighting financial irregularities by the Modi-led Gujarat government amounting to more than Rs 25,000 crore, which included Rs 1,500 crore in undue benefits to companies like including Reliance Petroleum, Essar Power and the Adani Group.
• Modi as Gujarat chief minister gave away about 16,000 acres of land to Adani SEZ for rates between Rs 1 and Rs 32 per square metre. Other companies like Bharat Hotels, Larson & Toubro, Essar Steel and real estate developer K. Raheja also got large parcels of prime land for a fraction of market price. It had all the hallmark of crony capitalism: arbitrariness, private gains at the cost of the exchequer and proximity between beneficiaries and the chief minister. 
• When the opposition’s demand for a probe into land deals reached a crescendo, in 2011, chief minister Modi appointed an inquiry commission under a retired judge, a time-tested technique of deflection and obfuscation. The report of the commission was never made public and with neither media nor courts interested in holding him accountable, the Gujarat government had little incentive to release the report. Modi’s proverbial raincoat remained intact.
• For 13 years, chief minister Modi didn’t appoint a lokayukta in Gujarat. His government spent Rs 45 crore of taxpayer’s money in litigation blocking the appointment of retired justice R.A. Mehta, widely regarded as honest and competent, as lokayukta. For the last three years, Modi has not appointed a lokpal. Yet he projects himself from every pulpit as a warrior against black money.
• Between 2004 and 2015, the BJP has shown more than three-quarters of its funds as cash received from unnamed sources. The same funds catapulted Modi to prime ministership. Yet he has been drumming about the virtues of a cashless economy.
• As Modi’s march to Delhi was gaining pace, the UPA in a rearguard attack launched a probe into the business affairs of Gautam Adani, Modi’s principal backer. A probe by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) nailed the siphoning off of hundreds of crores abroad by the Adani Group by an intricate conspiracy involving over-valuation in imports for projects subject to a low or nil rate of customs duty. The report was finalised days before the results of Lok Sabha elections were due. Seeing the body of evidence against Adani, the UPA quickly moved to hand over the case to the CBI. For two years, the CBI, which reports to the prime minister’s office, is sitting tight on the file.
• In July last year another, the DRI probe revealed that 40 of the country’s biggest energy companies, including Adani and the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, were prima facie found involved in over-invoicing of imported coal. The scam was conservatively estimated at Rs 29,000 crore, with the common power consumers bearing the brunt of the inflated power bills, a direct effect of over-invoicing. Modi goes on publicly embracing both Adani and Anil Ambani. 
• The UPA was shamed into removing Ashok Chavan after the Adarsh Scam, Suresh Kalmadi after the CWG scam, A. Raja after the spectrum scam, Pawan Kumar Bansal after a bribery scam and Ashwani Kumar after the coal scam status report scandal. No such scruples bother Modi. After more than 40 suspected killings connected with the admission and recruitment scam called ‘Vyapam’ which happened on Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s watch, Modi has not said a word about the propriety of a tainted chief minister continuing in office. 
• Public outrage after Vasundhra Raje and her family were found to be mixed up with fugitive Lalit Modi failed to evoke a response from Modi. Addressing an election gathering in March 2014 in Chandigarh, then prime minister-designate Modi blasted the Congress for giving a ticket to the tainted Bansal. 
• On his watch, Modi’s alter ego Shah appointed tainted B.S. Yeddyurappa, who presided over many scams including the infamous Bellary scam and whose corrupt image had compelled the BJP to expel him as Karnataka state president in April 2016. 
• Modi as a prime ministerial candidate talked of bringing lakhs of crores of black money deposited in offshore bank accounts back to India. On his watch as prime minister, Vijay Mallya fled the country.
• The list of Modi’s wrongdoings runs long. His omissions and commissions in the Gujarat pogrom and the subsequent subversion of criminal justice system are shocking to the conscience of a reasonable person and a “kalank” for us as a nation. His silence over episodes like the Dadri lynching is as troubling as Singh’s silence as prime minister. Though perhaps he will never to have to face an inquiry into the alleged Sahara-Birla payoffs.
• The persecution of political opponents at the hands of police agencies, the harassment of civil rights activists and the systematic chipping away of institutional integrity and autonomy have surpassed the record of Congress regimes of the past. 
• If Singh was an accidental prime minister, notebandi has shown that Modi is an arbitrary prime minister. 
• Manmohan Singh has never had to face criminal prosecution for any of his actions or omissions. Modi too so far has staved off a criminal prosecution. The prime minister who ran the most corrupt central government in independent India’s history ironically remained for ten long years in public imagination as Mr Clean. It was only towards the end of his stint that his sheen wore off and he became a figure of ridicule and revulsion. 
• The present prime minister, who is running one of the most duplicitous, insensitive and arbitrary governments since independence, is similarly projecting himself as an honest man. It remains to be seen how history will judge Modi, but so far, he has managed to reap a rich political harvest from all the wrongdoings of his government and his party, without one charge sticking to him. 
• This may be attributed to the inadequacy of our legal system that has always failed to hold the powerful to account, or to the artful device of “raincoat in the bath” as Modi himself has put it. Though their styles contrast – one professorial, the other a relentless demagogue – both Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi have made a fine art of donning the raincoat.

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On Modi's Watch, 20,000 Crores Vanished. The Big "Gas Scam"

The above list of misdeeds of Modi is neither exhaustive nor conclusive. 

1. In his book 'Karmayogi' Modi swears by caste order ‘Scavenging a spiritual experience for Valmiks’ which stirred controversy that compelled to withdraw all 5,000 copies published by his 'manasaputri' GSPC. 
2. In Aug 2017, ONGC has completed the Rs 7,738 crore acquisition of 80% stake in debt ridden GSPC's KG basin gas block for which GSPC had spent over Rs.20,000 crores, borrowed from 15 PSU banks, in the past 10 years and failed to discover any gas. A month before, Oil ministry raised flag over danger in government nudging ONGC to make sub optimal investments in GSPC that doesn't make business sense to them. ONGC doesn't have technical capability to complete the exploratory phase of drilling, as on date. It needs to invest lot more money to complete drilling and bring the gas field into production.
3. No sooner Modi became PM, Mayaben Kodnani was granted bail on health grounds. The Naroda Patiya convict Babu Bajrangi was granted bail 14 times, so far who is said to have lost his eyesight, mostly on the ground of his own and his wife’s health.

Needless to say that LK Advani and AB Vajpayee did greatest disservice to the nation by promoting non grata Modi as Gujarat CM and protecting him in 2002 riots that enabled him to become PM a decade later. Gujarat in particular and India in general stands destroyed.