The launch with a Post Script
The book launch of “India Inked, Elections in the World’s Largest Democracy” written by investigative journalist Poonam Aggarwal was a well attended event. The discussion saw a heated debate between the only politician on the panel, Pawan Khera and members of the civil society with Jagdeep S. Chhokar, Founding Member & Trustee ADR leading the charge. The controversy arose when Khera commented that unlike the UPA era where civil society was vibrant and asked questions of the government this was not the case with the current government and added that it looks as if civil society was in the ICU. This led to the panel protesting that given the nature of the discussion this clearly wasn’t the case. The book takes a deep dive into electoral funding with a focus on electoral bonds. The book talks about the beast that is Indian elections, the cost of contesting an election and how there are no free lunches with political finance. The discussion was deftly moderated by the book’s publisher, Bloomsbury’s Chirag Thakkar, with the other panellists being Ashok Lavasa (former Election Commissioner), Justice Madan Lokur and Anjali Bharadwaj (activist). When Khera was asked why the Congress took the benefit of electoral bonds given the fact that transparency (of funding) and anonymity (of the bonds) do not go together, he replied quite candidly that the Congress was only following the law of the land (since it was the Parliament that had brought in the bonds); and as a political party the Congress too needed funds to contest the elections. At that time, this was the legal way to raise funds, he pointed out, scoring a debating point against the panel. That’s a sobering postscript for our politicians.
The Shashi Tharoor-Manish Tewari hyphenation
Much has been made of the way the Congress has handled the multi-party delegations. The Congress party’s main grouse was the inclusion of Shashi Tharoor’s name on the list, though along with Tharoor, it also bracketed the two other names, Manish Tewari and Salman Khursheed, who were included by the Government in the delegations, despite the fact that the Congress list did not feature these names. The BJP’s stance is that this is not a parliamentary delegation since it includes domain experts who are not parliamentarians. This is a government delegation and so the government is free to send whomsoever it likes. The Congress party’s reply to that is that then the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kirren Rijiju should not have reached out to them asking for a list of names. And there the standoff continues. The key question that emerges is will the Congress take action against Tharoor, who announced his okay even before the Congress could decide whether it wants him to go or not? And what next for Shashi Tharoor, who has clearly emerged as one of the key faces of damage control in the global narrative on Operation Sindoor?
Taking Home Fire(brand)s Abroad
The affable and very diplomatic Baijayant “Jay” Panda will have his hands full as he leads the multiparty delegation to the MENA countries—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Algeria. Apart from the global messaging, he may have to deal with some firefighting within, as his team has two outspoken leaders who have been at loggerheads with each other on social media—Asaduddin Owaisi and Nishikant Dubey. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s landmark judgement recently regarding the standoff between the Tamil Nadu Governor and a non BJP state government, when the court set a deadline for President and Governors to clear bills passed twice by the legislature, Nishikant had made some comments that could be construed as critical of the courts. To which Owaisi had replied (on X) that “You are tubelights, you are thumbs-up… You are threatening the courts? Article 142 of the Constitution (which gives the Supreme Court special powers) was brought by BR Ambedkar. Ambedkar was more far-sighted than you.” However, both sent out positive messages when they were told that they were part of the same global delegation and more importantly, Panda is confident that the sparring will not spill over on the global messaging.
