Chatterbox: Congress in Punjab, BJP in Haryana get into election mode early

The elections are nigh. In Punjab, the Congress has declared decentralised committees with all the top leaders being involved in campaign and election strategy but interestingly no leader is part of more than one. So while Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu are on the same committee, they are only members of one. Party Chief Sunil Jakhar is also a member and so are Ambika Soni, Preneet Kaur and Manish Tewari, all ministers in the UPA regime. 

In neighbouring Haryana, it is the Bharataiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Chief Minister M L Khattar that has been quick in taking decisions. Ahead of the last session of the Legislative Assembly, the cabinet has taken a slew of decisions. The pay of 4,500 Special Police Officers (mostly ex-servicemen) will be hiked from Rs 14,000 to Rs 18,000 per month. An industrial policy was announced in 2015. Now, a new pharma policy is out: Pharma parks will get tax breaks, land will be given at concessional rates to investors, and clearances for the creation of a pharma park will given quickly. 

Rift within

Rifts in the Himachal Pradesh unit of the BJP are thriving. Firebrand leader and MLA from Nurpur, Rakesh Pathania, took his government to task for its lack of supervision of cancer wards in the state hospitals: so much so that the CM had to come to the health minister’s defence. Some months ago, Pathania was invited to a function for farmers where the CM was present but he left midway fuming that he could not take the humiliation of being ignored. He was not invited on the stage.