Manoj Sinha
Lucky Location
Those from Varanasi seem to be getting lucky in the BJP. A number of leaders from and around Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency have been given plum posts. The latest in the list is Apna Dal president Ashish Kumar Singh Patel, husband of MoS Health Anupriya Patel, who has been fielded for the UP legislative council elections. The BJP’s MLC candidates — Ashok Dhawan and Vidya Sagar Sonkar — also have links with Varanasi. While Dhawan was election-in charge of Varanasi in 2014, Sonkar belongs to nearby Jaunpur. There are four ministers from the region in the Yogi Adityanath government, including two from Varanasi district and one each from adjoining Ghazipur and Jaunpur districts. Union Minister Manoj Sinha is MP from Ghazipur. There are already two MLCs from Varanasi. UP BJP president Mahendra Nath Pandey, too, is an MP from Chandauli, that shares boundaries with Varanasi.
Colour Bar
Congress rallies at the Ramlila ground have in the recent past been marred by skirmishes between the Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Ashok Tanwar factions of the Haryana Congress. Tanwar even faced physical assault during a Congress protest in Delhi in 2016. The party had to appoint Sushil Kumar Shinde to find the truth about the assault. The rallies became a show of strength for both factions, with their supporters turning out in large numbers wearing pink and red turbans. Keen to avoid a repeat at the AICC rally in Delhi on April 29 , the Congress high command has told Haryana leaders to shun coloured turbans. The message from Ashok Gehlot and Kamal Nath at a meeting on Tuesday was clear — no coloured turbans and props to identify factions. Haryana leaders have been asked to bring 50,000 party workers to Delhi.
Homework Done
Senior counsel Rakesh Dwivedi, defending Aadhaar in the Supreme Court, left everyone wide-eyed with his grasp on artificial intelligence. Perhaps sensing the awe he had inspired, Dwivedi told the bench that he had invested not less than Rs 50,000 in the last few months on books on artificial intelligence, from which he had gathered the “little knowledge” about the technological intricacies of various digital platforms. This, he told the bench, was so that he could answer the questions on technology thrown up by the petitioners.