News and Views

How do you respond when someone calls your father names? Do you punch him in the nose, launch a counter-attack on his family, or do you send him love and a hug to boot?

Incredibly, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who is undoubtedly the main challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this long and gruelling general elections, has opted to do the latter. When Modi called his father Rajiv Gandhi, a former Prime Minister who was assassinated 28 years ago, "Bhrashtachari No 1", Rahul responded with a tweet that said, “Modi ji, The battle is over. Your Karma awaits you. Projecting your inner beliefs about yourself onto my father won’t protect you. All my love and a huge hug.”

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In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha Election, one issue that has been discussed and argued over a lot in the Supreme Court is that of electoral bonds scheme. But why so? Because of the alleged opacity of the scheme.

In an RTI reply to Vihar Durv, the State Bank of India has revealed that Rs 2,256,37,12,000 crore (over Rs 2,256 crore) worth of electoral bonds were sold by the Bank in the month of April 2019 alone, and that too in just 10 days.

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Many parts of India are yet to vote but parties have already started preparing their strategy for result day – 23 May. Strangely, the first initiative hasn’t been taken by the BJP or the Congress but by the two Deccan satraps: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

While Naidu’s strategy has been clear from the beginning – uniting all anti-BJP forces – it is KCR, whose moves are most interesting.

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Madhya Pradesh was tipped to be one of the states where the BJP was hoping to use Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “popularity” to bounce back from its loss in the Assembly elections last year.

But data and inputs from the ground indicate that Madhya Pradesh isn’t heading for a BJP sweep like the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in which the party won 27 out of 29 seats with only senior Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia surviving the wave. This time, the Congress seems all set to improve its tally from the two seats it won last time due to a number of factors.

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