By Sidharth Mishra

New Delhi: In a state-wide operation run by the Uttar Pradesh government over 36 hours last week around two lakh people were evacuated and dropped safely under much challenging situation. This is an extra-ordinary story about an efficient and alert bureaucracy which worked overtime to end a near catastrophic situation created by an equally callous administration of the neighbouring state.

On March 19, the Prime Minister, following the outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic, had announced plans for Janata curfew on coming Sunday and the bureaucracy was sounded of a possible longer lockdown thereafter.

By Sidharth Mishra

Country’s strategy to fight Coronavirus though not totally dreary but has certainly been vacillating at places. The most disturbing evidence of the same was the siege which the migrant labourers from across the national Capital laid at Anand Vihar - Kaushambi on Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border. The crisis emanated not just from the lack of coordination between the two state governments but also the various arms of state government working at cross purposes.

This happened because of the erosion of the political edifice and larger than life role assigned to the social media. The support provided by the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) to ferry migrant labour to the border has been attributed to a message by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on the micro blogging site Twitter. Can a social media post be taken as cornerstone of inter-state relationship?

By Sidharth Mishra

Bang on Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border across Anand Vihar is a small quite colony – Kaushambi. The colony is home to mutli-storeyed apartment towers, which were built much before they came into vogue in Noida or for that matter Gurugram. Several of these towers house quarters of the officials of the Indian Revenue Service, SAIL, HPCL, public sector banks, Bureau of Indian Standards and such other prominent institutions in addition to privately owned apartments and bungalows.

The township was in news a few days ago when a Corona positive case was detected in one of the towers and thereafter it has been in a lockdown. Though next to Ghazipur vegetable and meat wholesale market, both are in short supply. The upmarket provision stores, which have been listed by the Uttar Pradesh administration as supply points, have not been able to bring much succor to, would not say starved but definitely mentally harassed residents.

By Sidharth Mishra

As one approaches Delhi from the North, the first major landscape which attracts attention on entering the national Capital is the garbage mount at the Mukarba Chowk. Once a busy crossroad leading to jams, the movement here is now relatively free thanks to the grade separators built during the Commonwealth Games. On taking left turn from Mukarba Chowk and driving down the road one approaches the sleekly built Signature Bridge.

Built about eight years back and made operational only two years ago, the Signature Bridge is gateway to North-East Delhi, the epicenter of the recent Hindu-Muslim conflagration. Parallel to the Signature Bridge still exists the Old Wazirabad Bridge and the road leading into this portion of the sprawling trans-Yamuna area is called the Wazirabad Road.

By Sidharth Mishra

That the Delhi BJP is in poor shape, one really did not really need to know from the organ of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh – Organiser. In the editorial of its latest edition, it has been stated that the state units should not expect Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to win all elections for them.

What the editorial preferred not to mention was that if the Delhi state unit was in poor shape, it was the making of the Central leadership. The state unit has been led for past four years by Manoj Tiwari, who is for sure is not an organisation man. A political traveler, Tiwari started his career from the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, hobnobbed with the Congress for a while and finally took refuge in the Bharatiya Janata Party.

By Sidharth Mishra

The results of the Delhi Vidhan Sabha polls were somewhat foretold in the statement of RSS top functionary Suresh Bhaiyaji Joshi, who just a day earlier had mentioned that those opposing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were not necessarily opposing the Hindus. He also mentioned that the BJP was just a political party and it should not be equated with Hindu being.

The resounding victory of Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the just concluded Delhi assembly polls has shown that a majority of the Hindus living in nation’s Capital have decided to vote against the BJP. The apparatchiks and the propagandists for the BJP are already blaming the “selfish Delhi voters” for having overlooked the “need to care for nation’s security and Hindus safety.”

By Sidharth Mishra

Campaign has ended for one of the most bitterly fought elections in the city. Ever since the Delhi Assembly came into existence in its present avatar in 1993, one doesn’t remember an election where the development of the city was reduced to such a cameo role in the poll narrative.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in his interview given to at least four English and same number of Hindi dailies on a single day before the campaign ended, has claimed that this was the first time that votes were being asked in the past 70 years on the basis of development work done. Such claims by Delhi chief minister are excusable as Kejriwal is known for making tall claims without much ado and then also forget about them.

The political arena of this country in the second half of the post Mandal phase has been full of instances where development work has returned leaders to office. Some of the examples being Chandrababu Naidu, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and SM Krishna down South, Naveen Patnaik in the East and Nitish Kumar in neighbouring Bihar.

By Sidharth Mishra

Delhi is just a few days away from casting vote on February 8 to elect the new city government. As the campaign enters the last lap, three very visible points emerge: 1. Arvind Kejriwal overcame the rout the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) received in 2019 Lok Sabha to start off as favourite for the assembly polls. 2. Despite a late start, the BJP campaign has peaked matching the AAP seat-to-seat though there is absence of a charismatic face at Delhi level. 3. The Congress has frittered away the gains, in term of vote percentage, it made in 2017 municipal polls and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The BJP performs well in Delhi whenever there is a three-way division in the vote share in the national Capital as it has a static support base, is the general perception. With the Congress campaign failing to take off with a complete breakdown of the poll campaign machinery, the AAP stands to again as it happened in 2015, polls pundits are tending to believe.