Cool Breeze: Special Appearance

 

Nitish Kumar’s swearing in was the haute destination for the anti Narendra Modi camp. From Mamata Banerjee to Arvind Kejriwal to Farooq Abdullah and Sitaram Yechury, all were present to give out the right optics. The one missing was Rahul Gandhi, who made a late entry, claiming he got delayed as his plane was an hour late. Be that as it may, but the question is, why couldn’t Rahul have caught an earlier flight so that he would be on time like the rest? Especially since this was not an early morning event but one slated for 2 pm in the afternoon. More so as the young scion has been stating the need for Congress to look for more allies post Bihar. Clearly, making a late entrance was not quite the way to win friends and new allies.

 

 

There was much speculation as to which of his two sons Lalu Yadav would anoint as the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar. Both are first time MLAs, but Tej Pratap is the older one. However, it is the younger Tejawsi who has always been his father’s favourite, while Tej has his mother’s blessing. More than that, Tej’s penchant is for religious rituals rather than realpolitik, while the younger Tejaswi seems to have inherited some of his father’s gift of the gab, but he still needs to sharpen his delivery to match that of his mentor. So, in the Yadav household, the choice of Deputy CM was apparently a no contest. Lalu, it seems, still calls the shots at home. 

 

 

The Prime Minister, it seems, is planning a Cabinet reshuffle post the winter session. According to a source, the focus will be on those who can deliver. Earlier on, while forming the Cabinet, the PM had stressed on bringing in those who had a clean reputation, rather than those who knew the art of realpolitik. But now, facing complaints of non performance he is thinking of bringing in some of the old faces from the Vajpayee Cabinet, stressing on those who know the way around government and therefore can deliver. But the age limit of 75, apparently, is non-negotiable.