Wednesday Post

In the last few days, few of the political stories  which caught my attention, and are worth pondering over and one of  them have been described below, others may be in my future blogs

Shatrughan Sinha- he is a Bollywood actor, who started from a bit role in 1970 and then later turned to villain role and afterwards he started acting as a leading man. In the 1970s he was quite popular as villain/leading man. In the 1980s he started appearing in multi star cast films and later turned into character roles. By the turn of 90s as his popularity started fading in the movies he turned to politics, and started campaigning for BJP. During the same time, LK Advani of BJP was fighting Loksabha election from New Delhi constituency, and  Congress fielded film star Rajesh Khanna against him. Eventually Advani won by narrow margin of about 1000+ votes. The next general elections happened within few years and this time Advani shifted his seat to Gandhinagar Gujarat, and Congress fielded again Rajesh Khanna from New Delhi. This time BJP asked Shatrughan Sinha to contest the elections against Rajesh Khanna, so it was Bollywood vs Bollywood fight, and in this fight the Congress’ nominee Rajesh Khanna emerged victorious. After the defeat, Shatrughan Sinha was nominated for Rajya Sabha for two terms, and he was Jr minister in NDA govt of Atal Bihari Vajpayee during 1999-2004. For the 1^st time Shatrughan Sinha contested Loksabha elections from Patna Sahib constituency in 2009 and was elected. During all these years he considered LK Advani as his mentor in BJP. In the elections of 2009 BJP fought the elections by projecting LK Advani as PM candidate and Vajpayee retired from electoral politics, but it was the UPA which again formed the govt. By the time of next elections, new leaders started emerging in BJP, and age was against LK Advani and he was getting sidelined along with other elderly leaders. BJP in the end decided to project Narendra Modi as PM candidate, Advani reluctantly accepted this changes. This time BJP won the elections with the majority of its own, and with their allies NDA got 330+ seats in Loksabha.

Shatrughan Sinha also won his seat from Patna Sahib constituency,  and was expecting to be inducted in the cabinet, but it never happened. He was also hurt, because his mentor was being sidelined and the similar fate happened to other senior leaders like Murali Manohar Joshi, Jaswant Singh , Yashwant Sinha & others. The main grouse of Shatrughan Sinha with central leadership was that he is not being importance that he deserves. But he failed to realise that with the new leadership at the helm, he can not demand the respect/importance unless he gives respect/importance to the present leadership. From the  time he was denied ministership, Shatrughan Sinha started sulking and started speaking against the leadership of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. To the credit of both these leaders they kept quite and never replied the Sinha’s outbursts against them. In between, when Nitish Kumar & JD(U) party returned to NDA, Shatrughan Sinha said that he was never consulted on this, as he being the MP from Bihar.

During last six months he started attending rallies organised by opposition leaders like Mamta Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal & others, but Modi & Shah kept quite. I feel, Shatrughan Sinha’s strategy was that let Amit Shah expel him from BJP, so that to the public he can play martyr card, but this also did  not happen. In the mean time General elections were announced and BJP leadership finalised the seat sharing arrangement with JD(U), and later candidates’ name from various constituency were declared by both BJP and JD(U),  and Shatughan Sinha’s name was missing from it.  So BJP’s leadership has left him in mid way, so as a last ditch effort he went and met Rahul Gandhi  and shown his willingness to join Congress. So it is certain that he will contest next election on Congress ticket from his constituency of Patna Sahib, as Congress presence is negligible in Bihar and they are searching for leaders to contest. The only problem is he will not be able to play the martyr card, which he had thought about earlier, on the contrary BJP will term him  as traitor in their campaign, and will project him as opportunistic saying that once denied ticket he has left the party which has given him so much in last 25 years.

In the end his position in the Congress will be similar  to what Navjot Singh Sidhu went through and what he is facing presently.

Awaiting your views/comments/feed backs.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

3^rd Apr 2019