Delhi Confidential: Shift In Focus

With the polling in the southern states over, the focus of the Lok Sabha election campaign has shifted to the Hindi heartland. The BJP is now dedicating its time and energy to Uttar Pradesh, a state where increasing the existing tally of 62 is crucial for the party. For the 14 Lok Sabha seats that are going to polls in UP on May 20, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to address seven rallies in the next two days. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, one of the party’s key campaigners across the country, is also camping in his state.

Reading Between Lines

After Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav’s joint  appeal for support to the SP-Congress alliance candidates in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal is set to meet the SP chief in Lucknow on Thursday. He, too, is expected to seek support for the SP-Congress combine candidates as the AAP is not contesting elections in UP. Kejriwal was scheduled to be in Lucknow on Wednesday to meet SP leaders but his programme was cancelled on Tuesday evening. Now, political circles are abuzz with speculation over Kejriwal and Kharge’s separate meetings with Akhilesh. Some believe that people are reading too much into it.

Office Anomaly

The present office of MoS for Culture Meenakshi Lekhi on the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) premises, which is an anomaly to have a ministerial office inside a museum premises, is expected to be shut down once her term is over in a few weeks. The other MoS Culture, Arjun Ram Meghwal, has his office on the premises of Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, another organisation affiliated to the Culture ministry . The two ministers assumed charge in the ministry in 2021 after the Cabinet expansion, and had to be accommodated in these complexes for a lack of proper office space at Shastri Bhawan.