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If the BJP leadership had agreed, today it would have been the saffron party instead of  AK’s AAP. A chief strategist with the Congress had directly called up Nitin Gadkari and assured him that if the BJP was ready to leave alone Sheila Dikshit and Robert Vadra, four votes from Congress Assembly members will go to the BJP during the vote of confidence. Sources reveal that a day before the confidence motion in Delhi Assembly, these four Congress Assembly members were at a five-star hotel J W Marriott in Mumbai. And this is possibly the reason why on the due date the Congress did not release any whip for its MLAs and that is why Protem Speaker Mateen Ahmad carried out the exercise by merely the raising of hands. There was no secret voting for proving a majority. Informed sources have revealed that Nitin Gadkari was okay with this idea in a broad way, party’s senior members turned it down saying that this might create a dent in BJP’s public image.

A group of politicians close to Rahul are in favour of supporting AAP. These people believe that the more traction AAP gets during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Narendra Modi’s chances of becoming a prime minister will become that much dimmer. After the AAP formed the government in Delhi, the Congress conducted a people’s opinion survey and see it getting about 102-112 seats in India, and that too when the party is set to get 16-17 seats from Karnataka. The same survey has also shown that if AAP gets more than 10 per cent vote share in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP may lose at least 30 seats and NaMo’s chariot may not move beyond 160. The survey also showed that if in Bihar, the coalition of Lalu, Paswan, Congress and NCP works out, it may win more than half the seats there. In Bihar, Lalu wants to give Congress and Paswan six seats each, Tariq Anwar one, and 27 seats for himself. The survey also brought to light the fact that Nitish may not hit the bull’s eye in the coming elections. He may have to satisfy himself with just three seats – those in Nalanda, Samastipur and Ujjiyarpur.

Congress’ new strategist Rahul Gandhi seems to have emerged in a new light. He is taking quick and prompt decisions nowadays and is in a hurry to see things done. As a result, even the big shots in the Congress are not getting a chance to speak out and several of them have met Sonia and complained about it saying that the party’s joint-decision making has vanished and the entire practise has gone into the hands of Rahul and his coterie. For instance, nowadays, Jairam Ramesh is giving Rahul Gandhi lessons about direct democracy and participatory democracy. This is the reason Rahul is behaving like a political activist. In matters of organisation, Rahul Gandhi is talking to Jairam Ramesh, Madhusudan Mistry, Janardan Dwiedi and Kanishka Singh. He has handed over all media matters to Ajay Maken, Deependra Hooda is taking care of the war room. Sam Pitroda is among those who are close to Rahul and Rahul consults him on all sorts of matters. Suman Dubey takes care of all his speeches and statements, while an international company Ipan is taking care of his image.

Aam Admi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal set a precedent of sorts in Indian politics by taking the oath as Delhi’s chief minister from Ramlila Maidan. Anna and AAP’s way of politics may be new in the Indian scenario, but these winds of change have been flowing for a long time in the world. In 2009, blogger, comedian and revolutionary Beppe Grillo in Italy started a big movement there by talking about direct and participatory democracy. Today, AAP in India is talking about the same participation of direct democracy. In a developed country such as Israel, TV anchor Yair Lapid spoke out against the state of things in 2012 and formed a new political party, which mostly has people from the civil society. Even in the US, such party formation and its work is nothing new – Tea Party Movement is already on there. AAP’s efforts in this direction seem to be towards realising people’s ambitions for them.

AAP’s founder Arvind Kejriwal wants to move out of the comfort zone and take chances. While the party is struggling to take a decision whether it should form a government in Delhi with the Congress support, Kejriwal played another hand at the party’s core team meeting. This was that if the party will need to form a government in Delhi, Manish Sisodia will be the next chief minister of Delhi. The reason being that Kejriwal wants to keep himself free for the Lok Sabha elections; after all, his party has zeroed in on nearly 150 seats with opportunities all over India. Kejriwal wants AAP to make a difference at these seats. Maybe that is reason that in AAP’s letter to the residents of Delhi, nowhere was it mentioned that if AAP forms a government in the state, Arvind Kejriwal will be the chief minister.

Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, that is AAP, has given restless nights to several well-established political parties. In the coming 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Aap has chosen about 100 Parliamentary seats, of which 50 have been identified and candidates for several of them have been finalised. The seats that the party has given precedence to in its first list include nearly all 17 seats in Delhi and Haryana, six local seats in Mumbai, as well as Bengaluru, Mysore, UP’s Gautam Budh Nagar, Ghaziabad; Kanpur, Sultanpur, Allahabad, Mau, Amethi and Lakhimpur Kheri. Arvind Kejriwal himself may contest from Chandni Chowk, while Manish Sisaudia may contest from East Delhi, Shazia Ilmi from New Delhi, Prashant Bhushan from South Delhi or Allahabad, party spokesperson Sanjay Singh from UP’s Sultanpur, Gopal Rai from Mau, Kumar Vishwas from Amethi, Iliyas Azmi from Lakhimpur Kheri, Anand Kumar from Varanasi, and Yogendra Yadav from Delhi or Haryana.

The coming days aren’t going to be easy for Kapil Sibal either. Arvind Kejriwal has shared with his close friends that he had decided to contest the coming Lok Sabha elections in 2014 against Kapil Sibal from Chandni Chowk. He made the going tough for a seasoned politician such as Sheila in this time Assembly elections. Similarly, the BJP is trying to corner Sandeep Dikshit and has decided to launch Bhojpuri actor Manoj Tiwari against him in East Delhi. That is because the area has a significant Purvanchal population – one among which Tiwari is pretty popular.

The Delhi Assembly elections have become really interesting now. In 2008 Assembly elections in the capital, the Congress left the BJP behind with 21 per cent more votes than the BJP; it got 54.16 per cent votes while the BJP got 41 per cent votes. But this time, both the BJP and the AAP party are trying to eat into the Congress’ share. The incumbency factor is so great that the Congress and the BJP’s elected Assembly members are finding it tough to save their seats. In such a scenario, BJP’s woman candidates are far more confident. For instance, in Malviya Nagar, BJP’s former mayor Aarti Mehra is giving stiff competition to Congress Minister Kinar Walia. While the BJP’s Purnima Vidyarthi is seeing tough times ahead, former mayor Rajni Abbi seems to be ahead in the race. BJP Delhi’s Secretary Shikha Rai is going to contest elections for the first time from Kasturba Nagar, but she is all ready for the big fight with Congress’ Neerja Basoya. Both Basoya and AAP’s Madanlal are from the Gujjar community. In such a scenario, Shikha might just win this one with support from Punjabi, Sikh and votes from Purvanchal.

This is a season for CD, it seems. In the days to come, CDs on the BJP and Narendra Modi may come into the market. One of the CDs on Modi is about how several IT companies in Bangladesh and the Philippines and being paid huge sums of money to hype his social media sites. Congress’ Dirty Tricks Department is pretty excited about the CD explaining how several fake accounts are in circulation to increase the number of followers for Modi’s Twitter account and “likes” for his Facebook account. It is worth mentioning here that similar allegations have also been made on Rajasthan’s Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot as well that he bought over “likes” from a specific country.