Political parties and proliferating television channels did not get to rest even after the Gujarat elections were over as they were both busy deploying panelists for the never-ending discussions on the counting day. With several prominent leaders not available in the year-end week, the task is not easy for parties and the channels.While Union Minister Kapil Sibal, the most sought-after panelist for all seasons, will hop from studio to studio from nine in the morning till 11 in the night, BJP’s numero uno Arun Jaitely will only do it from home through outdoor broadcasting units.BJP, which has deployed its lungpower through a centralised mechanism, has 15 people for as many channels ensuring that one person is available for each channel from morning till night. The Congress has left it to individual leaders and Sibal has been the most generous with his time — having agreed to appear on virtually every channel in the city. Digvijay Singh, AICC general secretary and prominent among the Gujarat strategists, has refused to be on any channel. “I will go only if media department chairman Veerappa Moily asks me to go,” Singh said.Since some of the regulars are going to be absent, some youngsters will get an opportunity to test their mettle — BJP’s Sidharth Nath Singh and Congress’s Randeep Singh Surjewala will be seen on several channels that day. However, BJP’s Yashwant Sinha, Sushma Swaraj, Murli Manohar Joshi, Vinay Katiyar and Dharmendra Pradhan will not be in Delhi on Sunday.S S Ahulwalia, V K Malhotra, Muktar Abbas Naqvi, Ravishanker Prasad and Rajiv Pratap Rudy are the BJP faces for Sunday. For the Congress it will be Abhishek Singhvi, Ambika Soni, Ashwini Kumar, Renuka Choudhary, Mohan Prakash, besides Sibal. Studios of channels are present in three locations — NOIDA, central Delhi and south Delhi. The panelists have arranged their appearances in such a fashion so that they finish one side of the city before moving to the other.There are two key leaders who will not be seen in any of the studio debates — BJP president Rajnath Singh and Congress political secretary Ahmad Patel. However, some leaders are selling themselves hard. Renuka Chaudhary has been pro-active to ensure appearances on several channels and so has been Ashwini Kumar. Uma Bharati, who has been out in the cold, has also worked her strings to appear on three channels on Sunday.
