BJP sees gun bearers in Pawan and Jagan?

The high-octane drama in Karnataka is over. The dust is slowly settling down and Kumaraswamy will soon take oath as Chief Minister of Karnataka. But then the new question that now arises is how long the coalition between Congress and JD(S) will last.

Will Congress be able to play a second fiddle and create an interesting model for 2019 general elections? If it can, well then, the political scenario would be a repeat of 1977 when all parties came together to defeat the Congress led by Indira Gandhi who had imposed national emergency in 1975 when elections were suspended, and civil liberties curbed.

It was like mumps or chicken pox on the body politic of India. After 21 months of suffering, all parties came under the umbrella of Janata Party, and the Congress was trounced. But this time, the saffron party will not take it lying down. It has not given up its dream of southern surge. Certainly, it would work out strategies for another surgical strike.

Operation Kamal has failed but that does not mean the BJP has run out of its ammunition. It will wait for skirmishes in the coalition and would take up an Operation Akarsh.

Already, the BJP leaders in Telangana made it clear that Telangana and AP would continue to be its target. Amit Shah would soon be visiting these two states to assess the situation before coming out with an action plan. A 'Panna Pramukh' could be appointed, under whom BJP workers will reach out to every family. A ‘panna’ literally means a messenger or a page.

The BJP also has Jana Senani Pawan Kalyan and YSRCP president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy over whose shoulders it would be firing more aggressively, from now onwards. The first indication came on Sunday when Pawan announced that he was in the race for chief ministership and would form Jana Sarkar and his government would be the game-changer.

Pawan says determination, not any previous dabbling in politics, is key determiner in his strategy to usher in a new political culture and become the CM, and he also cites the example of Kejriwal; but, he is unclear about laying out his political agenda.

He only hints that the teaser for his next political movie will be out soon. He continues to lash out at AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, saying the latter had made over 600 promises in his manifesto and did not keep any of them. The question is does Pawan feel they are promises worth fulfilling.

If so, will he implement them when it is his turn? He continues to blame TDP for accepting rotten laddus from Centre in the name of special package, but dares not slam the BJP for cheating the people with rotten laddus.

The YSRCP, on the other hand, took a pro-BJP stand during the Karnataka crisis. All this clearly indicates that the BJP will utilise these two parties against the TDP in the run-up to the general elections and mount a full-scale attack against it and try to give it sleepless nights.