BJP cannot ignore signals from Jharkhand! It is time Shah hold his horses on citizenship extravaganzas

Samikhsya Bureau

Top strategists may feel a lump in the throat looking at the serial laying of issues the union home minister Amit Shah is capable of to keep the people away from many important issues those matter most.

The collateral damages post the CAA is all for to see. Be it based on misconstrued logics or any hidden agenda, as alleged by protesters, but the show must go on, is what the governance under the NDA, perhaps, aims at.

It is all about identity nightmares!

Next in the line-up is the National Population Register(NPR) and very soon it is coming into effect. Which may ensure a ‘ comprehensive data base’ and the union cabinet has already started working out. Which will contain bio-metric data of all citizens along with demographic.

Although such an exercise had been done during the UPA in 2010.under Dr.Manmohan Singh as the prime minister. So the new exercise, which starts next April, may consume a good deal of time and funds from the exchequer.

NRC failure in Assam gave birth to new CAA  

NRC is already out of the womb and the NDA has already made it clear about its implementation pending the conundrum that still haunts Assam.

Experts believe that, ‘ had there been not such a pathetic set-back for NRC in Assam, the home ministry would not have gone for such a high-voltage legislation of the CAA. ‘That was a compulsive situation for the home minister of India’ said Prashant Kishor in an interview.

While the entire nation is on the boil over the CAA, people in Jharkhand have gone ahead to exercise their franchise in the recently concluded Assembly polls.

Jharkhand polls signal at a threat for saffron

What do the exit polls show? The NDA must not miss that. A marked decline in BJP’s vote bank. The signs are bit ominous for the saffron there as pollsters foresee a good new year for the Congress and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha(JMM) to wrest 31 to 39 seats while BJP may have to be content with 28-36 seats.

Whereas the India Today Axis survey has more consolation for the non-BJP alliance, pegging it to 38-50 for the Cong-JMM combine.

Before that, the recent bypolls in West Bengal had some ominous signals, when the Trinamool Congress swept all the three, that the BJP poll ‘pundits’ refused to acknowledge.

With Prashant Kishore taking over as the poll strategist for Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi may witness a keen contest pregnant with possibilities that may stun the BJP.

What has added fire to the discontent is the most volatile agitation over the CAA where, a majority of the students of the country participated. It is the spontaneity that cannot be clubbed with politics and demean the youngsters on the streets.

When there was already a Citizenship(Ammendment) Bill, 1955 which was amended in 2016, one doesn’t know the rationale behind such an out of the blue legislation now. The same could have been used with incorporations.

In nut shell, giving a short-shrift to myriad issues and let the triplet of CAA, NPR and then NRC clutch to the peoples’ neck like an albatross, it may not produce much more than a series of logistic nightmares like at the time of ‘demonetisation’..