Chatterbox: No early polls but not much time left either, Shah to BJP cadre

The BJP workers in Andhra Pradesh wanted to know if the chatter about early elections had any truth in them, only for Shah to warn them to pull up their socks for the ones scheduled and imminent.

No early polls

With so much chatter about early elections (following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refrain that elections should be held simultaneously — one nation, one election —  to save time and effort), some sort of announcement was expected. There has been an announcement, but to the effect that there would be ‘no’ early elections.

Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah was in Hyderabad recently for a meeting of party workers. He reportedly told the gathering that senior leaders in the party seemed to be in media conferences and “power-point presentations” whenever he met them. He told them to mingle with people to know the ground situation. A BJP MLA asked Shah whether there would be early polls. The response was classic Shah:  Even if elections were held as scheduled, they were not far away. “You have little time to face them(elections) and you are not in a particularly good condition,” Shah is learnt to have said. In a much nicer way, Roads Minister Nitin Gadkari said the same thing at a meeting with Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu in Visakhapatnam. He indicated the Lok Sabha and the Andhra Assembly polls would be held as per the usual schedule of summer, 2019.

Choosing battleground

Amid seat-sharing agreements between the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party, a picture is emerging of who will contest from where. Mayawati is looking at either Ambedkarnagar or Nagina in Bijnor. Akhilesh Yadav too will contest the Lok Sabha election from Kannauj, currently held by his wife, Dimple, who will not contest this time. But his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav will fight the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat.