Mamata Banerjee's anti-BJP rally to be attended by opposition leaders

Mamata's mega rally
 

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is ready to bury the hatchet and welcome arch rivals to ensure her party's mega anti-Bharatiya Janata Party rally is a success. She has formed a “publicity campaign committee” for the party rally to be held in Kolkata on January 19, 2019, and said many top Opposition leaders from across the country have confirmed their presence. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Telangana CM K Chandrashekar Rao and former Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah are among those expected to attend. Gujarat Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani, Patidar leader Hardik Patel and senior left leaders will also be invited, she asserted. “The CPI-M does many things against us because it does not have any ideology. But we do not think that all the leftists are bad. So, we will invite the Kerala chief minister. We will also invite the leadership of RSP, CPI and Forward Bloc,” she said.

Flip-flop is routine
 

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, whose speciality is the flip-flop — known as a U-turn in the UK and a backflip in Australia — has done it again, though this time with very little consequence. Kumar, who had often praised Jawaharlal Nehru's role in the freedom movement and described him as a national hero, said last week that he didn't “follow” him. Mahatma Gandhi, Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan were his role models, he said at an event in Patna, carefully distancing himself from the Congress, one of the partners in the anti-BJP mahagathbandhan. A Janata Dal United member urged that one shouldn't read too much into this statement “as he wouldn't want to upset any of his current partners”.

Cold comfort
 

Fans of ex-KGB agent and current Russian President Vladimir Putin from India's media fraternity were disappointed on Friday when the government restricted their entry to a business session where he was expected to speak. Scheduled to be an address to India Inc honchos, the event also saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi waxing eloquent about the everlasting bond between the two countries when at least one senior industrialist in the front row dozed off. In the end, hundreds of larger-than-life billboards set up across the diplomatic enclave of New Delhi, with the Russian leader's face printed on a saffron background along with a distinguishable halo, provided cold comfort.