By Sidharth Mishra

In the Bombay edition of Times of India dated 28 June 1975 was published a small obituary insertion, 22-words to be precise, in the classified columns. It said, “O'Cracy, D.E.M., beloved husband of T. Ruth, loving father of L.I. Bertie, brother of Faith, Hope and Justicia, expired on June 26.”

This was two days after Emergency had been imposed in the country and press censorship introduced. The government clerk sitting in the Times of India office and clearing the news reports and paid insertions saw nothing anti-government in the obituary insertion, when it was placed on the evening of 27 June 1975.

The next day, the advertiser, a young reporter with Reader’s Digest, called up a Times journalist to tell him about the obituary and explain how it “looked like a protest against press censorship.” Suddenly the Press fraternity of Bombay realized that everybody among them was not as pusillanimous as their editors were.

By Sidharth Mishra

Earlier this week, what was always feared by the Delhi government officials, actually took place. Delhi's Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash was, if not assaulted, at least roughed up at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence. The incident is alleged to have taken place in the presence of the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia. Some allege that the two MLAs roughed up the Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash after the CM and his deputy let loose a fusillade of invectives against the senior official.

After the matter became public, the AAP leadership issued a counter saying that Prakash had used casteist pejorative phrases for the MLAs. For those who know Prakash, it's very unlikely that he could use such language he is alleged to have.

By Sidharth Mishra

Prime Minister NarendraModi in his address in Parliament on the motion of thanks to the President's address last week was at his visceral best. He made most of the opportunity which came his way to lash out at the Congress party. This is not the first time that Modi has chosen to hit out at the Congress but there was certain amount difference in the genre of attack.

Modi on the earlier occasions took on the the nation's oldest political party as the spearhead of the Opposition. This time around he was attacking the Congress, which in the role of the Opposition now was out making mincemeat of claims of development of the NDA-II government.Congress plan for past six-months beginning with the run-up to the Gujarat assembly elections has been plain and simple. They have chosen the grammar and style-sheet of the BharatiyaJanata Party itself, which has been proving to be disconcerting for both the Prime Minister and also BJP president Amit Shah.

By Sidharth Mishra

New Delhi: In another 10 days’ time, the Delhi Development Authority would submit before the Supreme Court the amendments it proposes to bring in Master Plan 2021 to give ‘relief’ to the shopkeepers who are running their businesses in violation of building rules and regulations.

According to the definition given by the Delhi Development Authority itself, “A Master Plan is the long term perspective plan for guiding the sustainable planned development of the city. This document lays down the planning guidelines, policies, development code and space requirements for various socio-economic activities supporting the city population during the plan period. It is also the basis for all infrastructure requirements.” Contrary to the definition given above Master Plan of Delhi (MPD) 2021 has hardly had the opportunity to provide the city with “the long term perspective plan for guiding the sustainable planned development of the city.” Such are the interests of people that MPD 2021 has ended up being the most mauled planning document.

By Sidharth Mishra

With the likelihood of Dalits and minorities backing the Congress, as witnessed in Gujarat, the AAP would use all possible means to stall polls.From Monday, the Delhi High Court would start hearing the plea moved by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) against presidential consent to dismiss 20 members of the Delhi Legislative Assembly. 

The stand taken by the dismissed MLAs, all belonging to the Aam Aadmi Party and dismissed on the charge of holding Office of Profit, is that since no profit ever accrued to them from the office they were purported to have held, they should not be penalised. The counter view is that the intent was to make profit and therefore a bill was brought in the Assembly to include the office of Parliamentary Secretary to the ministers in the list of exempted positions. Since the bill sought to include these offices from retrospective effect and had other lacunae, it failed and thus the present fallout. Legalities aside, the larger question is, why the AAP leadership, which in the run-up to the Assembly polls in 2013 and 2015 had trumpeted the policy of going to people’s court for taking all major decisions, is fearing facing the public now. 

By Sidharth Mishra

Sheila Dikshit's success as Delhi CM was largely due to the understanding of the limited powers her position had, something which her successor Arvind Kejriwal refuses to comprehend.Those who have followed Sheila Dikshit’s career trajectory closely would vouch for her ability at histrionics and the use of right words at the right time. 

When she faced dissidence soon after taking over as Chief Minister of Delhi — she makes a mention about it in her soon to be launched autobiography Citizen Delhi: My Times, My Life — she had ‘feigned’ illness and gone into a shell, refusing to engage with her detractors. The first interview she chose to give on the rebellion, albeit after the dust had settled down a wee bit, was to this writer, where she had said that her differences with her colleagues were due to the “clash of cultures”.  These words went a long way to define her politics in Delhi — which largely focused at creating and addressing a new constituency which would take on the dominant Baniya and Punjabi communities of Delhi.

By Sidharth Mishra

The AAP leadership decided to hand out Parliamentary Secretary positions to MLAs to stop them from following Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav out of the party.The recommendation made by the Election Commission of India to the President to disqualify 20 Delhi MLAs of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is not suspect. Rather, it’s the delay by the Election Commission in giving the opinion which raises eyebrows.The matter was referred to the poll panel by former president Pranab Mukherjee more than two years ago and the opinion has come now, only after Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken met the Election Commission chief and registered protest over the delay for no palpable reason.It’s important to understand the context of the appointment of 21 Parliamentary Secretaries to various ministers by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal way back in 2015. Soon after the AAP registered a resounding victory in the 2015 Assembly elections with 67 of the 70 Assembly seats, the party was visited by major dissension by founders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav.

By Sidharth Mishra

Despite Finance Minister Arun Jaitley claiming during his one hour and fifty minutes long Budget speech on Thursday that its contents were bereft of any political considerations, the annual financial document 2018-19 is all about politics.

The present BJP leadership, symbolised largely by the triumvirate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, cannot do a thing without considering its political fallout. The annual financial statement 2018-19 can be best described as the political statement of the Narendra Modi government on its performance of the past four years.

The first forty-five minutes of the long Budget speech was devoted to the pro-poor measures which the government has initiated in the last four years and in saying its ‘budget of consolidation’, Jaitley meant that the government was now looking for electoral returns on the investments in the public policies made by it.