Daily Briefing: Ashok Gehlot’s Cong presidency plans under cloud; Ghulam Nabi Azad’s new political party; and more

The open defiance of the MLAs close to Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot Sunday has left the Congress leadership fuming. 

🔴 From a staunch Gandhi family loyalist, Gehlot’s overnight transformation to a near-rebel who cocked a snook at the leadership has put a cloud on his bid for the Congress presidency.

🔴 Sources told The Indian Express that there was no immediate decision to enforce the planned change of guard in Rajasthan.

🔴 They added that show cause notices will be issued to some of the organisers of the parallel meeting held by MLAs on Sunday. In an interview with The Indian Express, AICC general secretary Ajay Maken said that the parallel meeting amounted to “indiscipline”. He also flagged that the conditions put forth by Gehlot loyalists would cause “complete conflict of interest”.

🔴 Gehlot supporters, however, have said that the resignation of 90 MLAs was result of “resentment and anger”. The Sachin Pilot camp, meanwhile, is maintaining a studied silence and continues to hope he would be made the CM.

Only in the Express

As Russia makes more credible nuclear threats, C Raja Mohan opines on the debate over Europe developing its own nuclear arsenal. “While the discourse on a Eurobomb gains traction, the immediate focus might well be on strengthening NATO’s nuclear forces and boosting the US nuclear umbrella over Europe,” he writes.

From the Front Page

A 15-year-old Dalit boy in Auraiya district of Uttar Pradesh died on Monday morning, just over a fortnight after he was allegedly beaten up by a teacher. His death triggered violent protests in Auraiya in the evening. Two police vehicles were set on fire and at least two private vehicles were damaged.

The Enforcement Directorate has told a special court in Kolkata that former TMC minister Partha Chatterjee, who is under arrest in connection with the probe into the teacher recruitment scam, allegedly used “proceeds of the crime” to set up “bogus companies” with “dummy directors” including a person who ran errands for his aide and co-accused Arpita Mukherjee.

Nalini Sriharan and R P Ravichandran — both serving life sentence in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case — have sought a premature release, citing the Supreme Court’s May 18 order which directed the premature release of their co-convict A G Perarivalan. The apex court has issued notice to the Tamil Nadu government on their pleas.

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Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad launched his regional party on Monday and named it the Democratic Azad Party. During the official launch of his outfit, Azad requested the people in both Jammu division and the Kashmir Valley to dismantle “artificial walls” being created between them. 

Kashmir’s apple industry is facing a crisis in a year of a bumper crop. According to fruit growers, thousands of apple-laden trucks remain stranded on the Srinagar-Jammu national highway “for days” together, for which they blamed the “mismanagement of traffic” on the National Highway-44.

The bonhomie between Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad suggests a potentially significant realignment among the OBCs, where for the first time, Kurmis appear to be taking the lead. Kurmis are a landowning farming community whose status varies from place to place. We take a look at the community, its political history, and how it finds representation in the government.

And Finally…

Grandmaster Hans Niemann is facing allegations of cheating during his match with top chess player, the 31-year-old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen. With Niemann admitting to having cheated in the past, the debate turned black and white — the champion was white, the cheater black. Reality, though, is grey. Highly reliable analysis of International Master Professor Kenneth Regan showed that Neimann hadn’t cheated. There was no pattern in his play that day that suggested that he was aided by computers.

Delhi confidential: Back from the US, Science and Technology Minister Dr Jitendra Singh chaired the first-ever CSIR leadership meet. When the Council’s DG Dr N Kalaiselvi thanked the minister for making the effort in attending the meet, since he would have jet lag at the time, the minister quipped: “The Modi government knows no jet lag”.

🎧 In today’s episode of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, we discuss what led to the Rajasthan Congress political crisis, how the Central leadership could have handled it better, and what it reveals about its current situation.

Until tomorrow, 

Sonal Gupta and Anandu Suresh