Party’s new vice-president Rahul Gandhi has got a lot Congressman excited about him. Ever since his appointment as the party’s vice-president, Congressmen have started to say that he should be sitting on the first seat. But Rahul himself didn’t like the idea and he wants to remain a backbencher in Parliament. So as soon as the Budget session started in the Parliament, one saw Rahul seat in the back row even during the President’s address. And in any case, Rahul has made it clear to the party workers that he would rather focus more on the organisation than the party.

The saffron party is now eyeing Delhi. Thus, news of working things out in venues such as Pune and Bhopal has been postponed. BJP’s new National Working Committee’s conference is set to take place in Delhi from March 1 to 3. The party has already begun its preparations for the same. Initially, the conference was scheduled to be held in Pune from February 16-18 and there was a possibility that Gadkari will become the party president once again. But the minute Rajnath Singh took over the reins there was news that the venue may be shifted to Bhopal from Pune. But in his presidential tenure, Rajnath Singh does not want to give extra mileage to any chief minister of a BJP-ruled state and thus Delhi was chosen as the venue for the working committee conference. And because Rajnath is an elected member of the party and not someone who was nominated, his presidential tenure does not need to be sanctioned by the National Committee either. But the real challenge facing Rajnath is choosing a new team for himself and the announcement of the same can happen any time before March 1.

BJP’s new party President Rajnath Singh is already preparing to build a new team and the announcement of his new team may be made in March this year. Trouble may be brewing for J P Naddha and Dharmendra Pradhan. For Pradhan especially, the phrase “Jahan jahan pair parey santan ke…”seem to be doing the rounds. All that states that were handed over to Pradhan to take care of – Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Jharkhand – saw the party eating dust. The Sangh and Rajnath are already in talks about building a new team. The Sangh wants Rajnath to concentrate more on having party workers in his team rather than glamorous faces. For instance, the names of Murlidhar Rao, Varun Gandhi and Amit Shah are doing the rounds for the post of party secretary. Advani camp is pushing for Amit Shah’s name. But Rajnath Singh is not quite sure about Amit Shah’s name since his stay in Delhi could mean support to those against Gadkari. There are chances that he may be arrested, too. Justifiably, Rajnath is confused.

Several of Congress’ Rajya Sabha members want to try their luck at the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Take, for instance, Rajiv Shukla, who holds a state minister’s post with the Manmohan Singh government and is having to make do with less prominent ministries. In order to give a bigger canvas to his political ambitions, Shukla is all set to contest elections from the Lok Sabha. Shukla ji is on an even keel with both the SP and the BSP. Just like Satish Sharma, his contacts reach till Behenji. So at present he is trying to convince Behenji to not let the BSP launch a candidate against him so that he can announce the seat of his choice. In the same way, Jayanthi Natarajan wants to contest the elections from Sriperumbudoor from Tamil Nadu, G K Vasan from Malladurai or Chennai in Tamil Nadu, Rahman Khan from Karnataka and Ashwini Kumar from Punjab. Khan and Kumar have sent applications to the AICC about the same.

Political activities have gained momentum after election dates were announced in Meghalaya as February 23. On January 5, P A Sangma announced the beginning of his new party, National Peoples Party. At present, it’s the Congress government ruling in Meghalaya under the captainship of Mukul Sangma. The primary battle in the hills states is between the Congress, UDF and National Peoples Party. The Congress has already announced its list of 33 candidates, of which seven Assembly members from the party are present. On the other hand, Sangma’s NPP is giving stiff competition in 20 of the 24 seats at Garo Hills. The significant point here is that both the church and local tribes here are in favour of Sangma. And this is also the biggest cause of worry for the Congress.

Since December 20, when the Gujarat election results were out, the party and the Sangh are still trying to figure out what should be done and how Modi should be treated. Because Modi’s keenness to join national politics can be seen from the fact that Modi’s victory speech after the results was in Hindi and not in Gujarati. He wanted his words to reach in all parts of India. If Modi does enter the national political arena, he has made an autocorrect mechanism to run Gujarat, where his team includes extremely reliable people such as some senior bureaucrats, Anandi Ben Patel and Saurabh Patel. Some voices in the party are also wondering if Modi should be launched as the new Hindu leader in the next Lok Sabha elections and made to contest from seats such as Lucknow or Varanasi, so that at least half of the UP seats go to the BJP. This will also have an impact on Bihar. But if this happens, what will be the outcome for the junior Modis in the BJP, such as Adityanath and Varun Gandhi?

Anna Hazare is currently extremely miffed with his beloved Arvind Kejriwal and in keeping with his simple, honest and frank image, Anna didn’t think anything of making his emotions public. Because of his anger with Kejriwal, he called the man greedy for power and money. Reasons for the same are now coming to light. Reliable sources close to Team Anna say Arvind not only took away all the money got as donation, but also the data base of list of donors, contributors and volunteers, which was gathered by India Against Corruption movement. Anna had let his grievance be known to Kejriwal, but the latter kept dilly-dallying on giving him the data. It is believed that this the reason behind Anna’s bad mood and he has announced that he will not campaign for Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party during the Lok Sabha elections.

Prominent Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has made her displeasure known about India on several matters. When she recently came to India to deliver the Nehru Memorial lecture, she frankly talked about it. It was upto Lok Sabha Speaker and Congress leader Meira Kumar to pacify Suu Kyi; Kumar is one of Suu Kyi’s close friends. And this friendship dates back to their school days. It is worth mentioning here that Suu Kyi’s mother was Burma’s ambassador to India then. And whenever she would have to go somewhere, she left her daughter with a close friend who was teaching at MGD School in Jaipur. Meira Kumar was also studying in the same school at the same time and both of them became close friends. The UPA government is hoping that the friendship between both women will come to some good.

On the day of Diwali, when people celebrate the victory of light over darkness, India’s most powerful woman Sonia Gandhi cancelled all her previous appointments. There was a long list of people who wanted to meet, greet and wish Sonia a happy Diwali. Of these, a few chosen ones had got the time of meeting her at 9 am on the day of Diwali but a notice was sent to these people that madam will not meet anyone. Sources reveal that it was probably because Sonia had suddenly become unwell, because of which her appointments were cancelled. Only Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit was the exception as she was able to meet Sonia Gandhi. Of the frontline leaders of the Congress members, maximum are those who are in opposition of Dixit. So whenever Sheila wants time to talk to Sonia about something, she somehow has to find time to talk to her and that she does.

Despite struggling against so much that is being said against Salman Khurshid, his political career is only getting better, leading to a lot of Congressmen being surprised at it all. Not only did Salman’s friendship with the Gandhi family stand him in good stead, he was also one of the ministers liked by the prime minister. This was probably the reason that during the reshuffle this time, Rahul Gandhi was in favour of Anand Sharma becoming the foreign minister, but Manmohan Singh doesn’t like Sharma for several reasons. It was because of his veto power that Salman got the foreign minister’s post. Then there was his foreign education and a lot of experience in politics that worked in his favour. He is from UP, a Muslim and from the old Congress family and his loyalty to the Gandhi family has been through several generations. His maternal grandfather was Zakir Hussain, while his father Khurshid Alam was an old Congress hand and has been a Rajya Sabha member and even held the governor’s post in Karnataka at one time. So instead of heeding Rahul’s advice, the prime minister chose to listen to his own mind.