Diggy Raja

Diggy Raja

Rajeev Sharma

Daruwalla has made some interesting predictions about Rahul and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. He says that the lunar eclipse won’t affect Rahul much, though as Prime Minister, Rahul would face major difficulties and even a Bofors-like scandal. About Modi, Daruwalla says that he will rise to “fame and power” and the months of June and July would be most rewarding for him as his sun sign Scorpio by the Indian calendar is directly related to the moon.

Bhambi is dismissive of the notion that eclipses affect individuals though he too has forecast that the Congress would lose the next election. He has warned that stars are not favourable for the Manmohan-Sonia combine and they are bound to earn a bad name. Bhambi has also forecast the civil society intensifying its agitation and that disillusionment among all sections of society against the government would increase.

Monsoon Session

The UPA government, besieged and under pressure from all quarters on a myriad of issues, has one foot on the banana peel and runs the risk of skidding out of office. A peeved DMK supremo Karunanidhi, who chose not to attend the UPA alliance meeting convened by the Prime Minister on June 21 evening despite being in New Delhi and instead sent TR Baalu as his representative, is a fence-sitter. DMK has 18 MPs, plus two ally MPs.

Moreover, the Congress is unsure of its 11 MPs from the Telangana region as there is a distinct threat of their enmasse resignations from the Lok Sabha with the Telangana cauldron on the boil.

BJP’s Shahnawaz Hussain cleverly pointed to these two chinks in the Congress armour on June 21 when the government deferred the Monsoon Session of Parliament by a fortnight and decided to convene it from August 1 to September 8 – a move that the BJP roundly criticized. Hussain said the scam-tainted government was “scared” of facing Parliament as it no longer enjoyed majority in the Lok Sabha. He said the Congress MPs from Telangana region were rebellious and the Congress could no longer count them in the numbers game.

The BJP is not far off the mark and the government is indeed on a sticky wicket in terms of numbers in view of the snowballing Telangana agitation and the fact that a sulking DMK supremo Karunanidhi is waiting for an opportunity to take his revenge from the Congress party for the continued incarceration of his daughter Kanimozhi in Tihar jail in the 2G scam. The deferment of the Monsoon session of parliament, which the government was earlier thinking of starting from the second week of July, will also inevitably miff the Anna Hazare-led civil society as delayed parliament session would substantially reduce the chances of passing the Lokpal bill by August 15 even if the government pilots the bill on the first day of the session. The opposition parties are already sharpening their knives for the government on a large number of issues and want a thorough debate on the bill, a time-consuming exercise. Hazare has already announced his decision to resume his agitation from August 16 if the Lokpal bill does not become a law by then and that too in the shape the civil society wants.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said the decision to defer the Monsoon session was taken because the government needed more time to be better prepared to take on the Opposition. Besides, two other equally important bills like Judicial Accountability Bill and Disclosure of Assets Bill are also to be finalized and placed before Parliament and the government needed time for that. Over and above all this, Prime Minister is mulling over re-jigging his cabinet that is likely to happen in the first half of July 2011.

Implications of the deferment of Monsoon session of Parliament are clear. It will embolden the Opposition to accuse the government of no longer having enough numbers in the Lok Sabha. If Congress MPs from Telangana and allies like the DMK are not handled properly, it will create conditions for the Opposition to close ranks and bring in a no-confidence motion against the government.

SONIA SNUBS ANNA

Gone are the days when the Congress used to crawl when Anna Hazare would ask it to bend. The change in the party’s attitude to the Gandhian leader was apparent in a sixline letter by Congress President Sonia Gandhi on June 19 in response to a three-page letter Hazare wrote to her on June 9.

Sonia has said nothing new in her response, but what is of more important political significance is that she has chosen not to be all sugar and honey that she had been in her April 19 letter to Hazare. Instead, Sonia has been dismissive and not even apologetic for her late response. Though she has told Hazare that her late response is because she was “out of station”, she did not bother to tell him that she was actually in Italy for over a week. Besides, she has been reproachful of Hazare for making public his letter to her. "I had received your letter on June 09, but as I was out of station, I could not reply. Meanwhile, you have made the letter public. I will try to find out more on this issue," she said.

Sonia was also dismissive of Hazare’s displeasure over Congress leaders calling him the face of the BJP-RSS combine. Her single-sentence response to Hazare’s complaint was: "As far as the questions raised by you in the letter, I have already clarified my stand in the previous letter dated on 19 April." Nowhere in the letter has Sonia assured Hazare that she would rein in her party colleagues. Tellingly, Sonia wrote the letter in her capacity of the chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC) and not President of Congress. There is recent history behind the worsening of relations between Team Anna and the Congress-government combine. Sample some barbs thrown by the two sides at each other: