Chatterbox: Interesting politics in the offing

Power of Saffron

The one thing that the Bharatiya Janata Party has in surfeit, is confidence. Party President Amit Shah’s office has a map that shows all the BJP states marked in saffron. When the struggle to claim Karnataka was still on and the party had not yet reached the majority mark, the state was marked out in saffron in that map just to remove any doubts workers might have had. The world according to BJP?

Interesting politics in the offing

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has told supporters to get ready for a mini General Election. Five YSR Congress MPs — Mekapati Rajamohan Reddy , YV Subba Reddy, Dr V Varaprasada Rao, YS Avinash Reddy and PV Mithun Reddy — had submitted their resignations to the Speaker on April 6 from the Lok Sabha on the issue of the denial of special category status to AP. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan is expected to call each of the MPs and verify their resignations. She might accept the letters after that. Naturally, the vacancies will have to be filled. So a mammoth round of by-elections is likely to be held in AP sometime in the next six months. Both YSR Congress and Telugu Desam Party will fight tooth and nail to get the seats. After Naidu pulled out of the National Democratic Alliance, YSR Congress is looking to claim that spot. This is one round of elections TDP simply cannot afford to lose. The BJP, which now has a new chief, will also contest the elections. TDP had attacked party President Amit Shah’s convoy in Tirupathi. So winning the by elections is a matter of prestige. The politics flowing from that will be interesting.