2019 Lok Sabha polls: AAP urges Yashwant Sinha to contest elections

The Aam Aadmi Party is moving fast in trying to put the Delhi unit of the Congress under pressure to agree to a seat adjustment for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. On Saturday, the AAP leadership requested former Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha to contest from the New Delhi constituency. Sinha currently leads the 'National Forum'. There are leaders, both in the AAP as well as the Congress, who believe the two parties will lose all the seven seats in Delhi in a three-cornered fight against the BJP. The AAP is keen to field credible faces to force the Congress to agree on a seat adjustment.

A note of thanks

Manipur Director General of Police L M Khaute was full of praise for Delhi Police, especially its elite Special Cell unit, in a recent letter written to Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik. In the letter, Khaute named several officers from the Cell and outlined how their co-operation has led to the arrest of many alleged insurgents from the north eastern state. A special mention was a case where the Delhi cops had helped their Manipur counterparts in arresting a man whose alleged audio threat to the state chief minister went viral. While inter-state coordination among police forces is key in solving and preventing crime, the Special Cell, because of the anti-terror operations it carries out round the year, often has to venture way beyond the city borders which leads to turf wars. This time, however, the case was different.  

Remembering veterans 

The Bharatiya Janata Party held its national executive meeting over the weekend in New Delhi. With former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee having passed away less than a month back, the leitmotif of the meeting was recalling his contribution to the party as well as nation building. The road leading up to the venue had huge hoardings with Vajpayee's pictures. Other senior leaders, particularly L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, have largely been forgotten by the party after having been placed in the 'margdarshak mandal', or mentors' group, of the party. Even after four years of it having been set up, the group hasn't held even a single meeting. But with the party remembering Vajpayee, it also ‘remembered’ Advani and Joshi. Hoardings with their photographs rivalled for space with those of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah.