Sour dhoklas in Keshubhai camp

Party on slow burn

The turmoil within the BJP ever since the Hubli case concerning Uma Bharati and then her expulsion from the party has had a noticeable impact on the party’s Gujarat unit. Important issues begging for attention of the national leadership for quite some time are yet to be dealt with. There is growing resentment among a large section of the party’s leadership and workers alike as a result. Two crucial issues are the pending appointment of a new president of the state unit and the appointment of chairpersons of various boards and corporations.

Acting state party president Rajendrasinh Rana’s term expired nearly a year and a half ago. While Narendra Modi has been pressing for minister Kaushik Patel, Keshubhai Patel wants MP Vallabh Kathiria. BJP national general secretary Sanjay Joshi’s visit on November 20 was expected to clear the air, but he kept mostly to the planning of proposed agitations to protest against the arrest of the Kanchi Shankaracharya. All eyes are now on Advani’s visit sometime in December.

A cosmically networked card

The multi-colour, multi-feature card sent by GPCC leader B K Gadhvi and his son Mukesh Gadhvi on Diwali was a heady mix of religion and politics. The cover had a Ganesha right above an encircled photo of Sonia Gandhi, who was shown as tyagmoorti. Tricolour stripes followed, underneath which was a lamp flanked by peacocks and a new year message.

The inside was even more interesting: on the left was a full-page portrait of Ambaji, while the centrespread had father-son pictures around a tricolour and lots of lamps with the Congress symbol in the middle, surrounded again by new year greetings from the ‘B K Gadhvi Parivar’.

The next page had important phone numbers of Banskantha district, the native place and karmabhoomi of the Gadhvis, while the last page had a solar calendar, but from Diwali to Diwali. Basically, every reason to preserve the Gadhvi card till next year.

Fulsome praise

‘‘An able ruler does not believe in halting or bowing. Shri Narendra Modi is a perennial force of strong will, a leading light of self-confidence and the spirit of Gujarat’s strides of progress…He has got all the six attributes of an able politician as described in the Mahabharata.’’ These were the words of praise for the Gujarat Chief Minister by a man who as Congress candidate for the Ahmedabad Lok Sabha seat had given a good fight to the BJP in the 1998 general election. He described Modi in these words at the award ceremony of the Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management, which honoured Gujarat for its post-earthquake relief and rehabilitation work.

But Girish Dani’s transformation doesn’t surprise anyone. He has friends in every party and is known to have short-lived loyalties. But this would have disappointed his father, the late Popatlal Dani who remained a staunch Congressman till his last.