Sore at his elevation, JD(U) cadres give Prashant Kishor the cold shoulder

Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United) president Nitish Kumar on Tuesday appointed Prashant Kishor (pictured) as the party's vice-president, making him the second most powerful person in the party. Kishor, who has worked for a number of parties as poll strategist, had recently joined the ruling party in Bihar. But not everybody is happy within the JD(U) at the appointment of an 'outsider' at such a senior position. Party's national general secretary and spokesperson K C Tyagi, a friend of Kumar for nearly 40 years, issued a cryptic statement: “JD(U) hopes that Kishor's experience and expertise will take the party to a new height.” Kishor's experience and expertise, at least until now, were in devising political strategies. Party sources said Tyagi's statement didn't use descriptions like he ‘welcomed’ Kishor's appointment, indicating the frostiness with which the appointment had been received.

From BJP to BJCP

Two Congress legislators in Goa quit the party and relinquished their membership of the state assembly on Tuesday. Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi in the evening. With that, Congress ceased to be the single-largest party in the state assembly. The development came at a time when there was speculation that Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar would quit because of ill health. In the assembly elections in March 2017, the Congress had emerged the single-largest party and had repeatedly staked claim to form the government. The smaller parties had supported the BJP on the condition that Parrikar would lead the government. With Parrikar likely to retire from active politics, there were fears that some smaller parties and independents would gravitate towards the Congress. But with these two joining the BJP some of that fear has been allayed, leading some in the state to quip that the BJP had transformed into Bharatiya Janata Congress Party.

Renaming spree

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) plans to launch a programme to galvanise party workers for the forthcoming assembly and Lok Sabha polls by initiating a 'volunteers' programme. The programme will be launched on October 24, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing these volunteers through his NaMo app. It was initially named Me2V, an abbreviation for 'me to volunteer'. However, the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment forced the party to rename the programme as 'Self4Society'.