The Congress lost the Tura Lok Sabha seat in Meghalaya, where the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate, Agatha Sangma defeated her Congress rival by nearly a lakh votes. The Thane seat in Maharashtra to the Shiv Sena and the Hamirpur seat in Himachal to the BJP chief minister’s son Anurag Thakur. It also lost the Assembly by-elections in South Amritsar, Punjab, to the Shiromani Akali Dal. In fact, since the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government came to power at the Centre in 2004, it has lost eight major states: Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Himachal and Gujarat. The only saving grace for the Congress is that it won two (Indri and Gohana) of the three Assembly seats in Haryana.

Notwithstanding the tall claims made by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Karnataka, both parties failed to make any impact and failed to win even a single seat. Recall the BSP had boasted of winning 15-20 seats and playing the role of a king maker, whereas the SP led by former chief minister, S Bangarappa, was hoping for a post-poll alliance with ‘like-minded parties’ to form the government. Far from it, the SP had to bite the dust. Perhaps, now it can consider a rapprochement with the Congress in the run-up to the general elections next year. Small parties too, such as Lok Parivartan, formed by the Indian Institute of Technology pass-outs (IITians), which had put up a number of candidates in Bangalore and the Sarvodaya Karantaka Party formed by farmers and Dalits were unable to open their account for the Vidhan Soudha.

Meanwhile, the BJP is in an upbeat mood. It sees the Karnataka poll as a ’turning point’, and as its campaign manager Arun Jaitley asserted, “The victory has given a pan-India presence to the party.” In fact, Karnataka has helped it create history. The BJP has its government in South India, for the first time, without any crutches or a coalition partner, like it had the Janata Dal Secular (JDS) in the previous election.

Gujjars lay siege in and around Rajasthan
Yet to come to terms with the terrorists’ attacks a fortnight ago, Rajasthan is now literally under siege. This time, it’s the Gujjar community, which is playing havoc with the law and order situation in the BJP-led state. In the sixth day of their agitation for inclusion in the scheduled tribes (ST) category, hundreds of Gujjars under the banner of Rajasthan Gurjjar Arakshan Sangharsg Samiti have descended on the streets, railway tracks in the state and even parts of Delhi and UP. Both the Vasundhara Raje government and the Centre have been put on high alert, with the latter rushing additional para-military personnel. So far, 41 Gujjars have been killed in police firing and hundreds arrested, but no solution appears in sight. The Gujjar leader Colonel Kirori Singh Bainsala has rejected the state government’s offer of a Rs 282 crore special relief package. It seems to be now a tug-of-war between Raje and Bainsala. Will the Centre come to the rescue?

Junoon in Kashmir
It was junoon alright, but of a different kind in the Kashmir Valley. A crowd of about 10,000 people, mostly youth, gathered at the Dal Lake, in Srinagar last Sunday. No, it was not to protest, but for the biggest musical concert held in two decades. The youth ’rocked’ to the rhythmic beats of Pakistan’s sufi band Junoon, which too had braved the terrorists’ threat. “Join us in a musical jehad for peace and ring the bells of harmony,” urged the band leader Salman Ahmad to the ecstatic crowds. The concert was organised by the South Asia Foundation (SAF) to mark the opening of the Institute of Kashmir Studies at the Kashmir University and attended by the Pakistani human rights commission chairman, SAF’s Pakistan chapter’s chairperson, the union minister for water resources Saifuddin Soz among others. Hope the event, will help defuse hatred between Pakistan and India.

Cong strategy to counter Mayawati
The Dalits in UP are soon to receive a bag full of goodies from the Centre. The UPA is all set to initiate a number of measures for Dalits, including a Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana on the lines of Ambedkar villages in UP. All to stall the state chief minister, Mayawati’s BSP from eating into the Congress Dalit vote bank in several states. A 16-member committee of ministers on Dalit affairs, headed by foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, has recommended a revamp of the Bharat Nirman guidelines for the development of villages with over 40 per cent Dalit population. The new guidelines include: providing free uniforms, footwear and stationary to all scheduled castes (SC) children before pre-matric, additional Navodaya Vidyalays in districts with more than 20 per cent Dalit population, no fees for Dalit students enrolled in higher classes etc. The ball is now in Mayawati’s court. Let’s see what she has to offer now.

With all this, the UPA government is in a fix and is left with no way chalk a successful plan.