Pradhan a small sacrifice for BJP's bigger goals?
Hearts and messages are generally carved on the wooden desks of colleges. "Today's a gift, that's why it's called present" is one of the cheesier
Hearts and messages are generally carved on the wooden desks of colleges. "Today's a gift, that's why it's called present" is one of the cheesier ones. The BJP didn't study in one of those small-town colleges. A big part of its education came from the streets of competitive post-Independent India, where survival was the primordial instinct, and tomorrow was always the concern. Read Full Story Millions in India believe Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan should have gone long before the crowds swelled at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar seeking his head. There was the NEET-UG paper leak, followed soon after by the CBSE online marking scheme fiasco. There was neither action nor communication from the party and the government as India's higher education looked like the crumbled blocks of Jenga on a table. With the Opposition missing, the cockroaches turned up on the table. Sonam Wangchuk fed the fledgling movement with his hunger strike. But what they might have failed to achieve was done by Delhi Police and the RAF. The brutal use of force on July 20 on protesters, thousands of whom were minors, pushed the BJP into the proverbial cul-de-sac. With 'what if tomorrow...' on its mind, the BJP tried to delay what was destiny. That Pradhan's resignation might create a precedence was one of the key reasons why the brass tried to save him. However, the more the delay in packing off Pradhan, the more it presented itself as a rigid regime, showing no flexibility to accommodate people's demands.
With the monsoon session of Parliament about to begin, political activity in the capital intensified. Leaders from Opposition parties started streaming into Jantar Mantar to be seen with a fasting Wangchuk. The monsoon session began on July 20 and the first week was a washout. Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, protested both in the House and in front of the PM's house and got detained. The Opposition was in no mood to let Parliament function. It knew what the government was aiming for. The government knew what the Opposition was striving for. Two senior ministers — JP Nadda and Jitendra Singh — succeeded in getting Wangchuk to end his fast, toning down his demand for Pradhan's resignation. But by then, the protest had become way bigger than Wangchuk or the Cockroach Janta Party. The fire had spread and it needed a sacrifice made. No stringent laws or fast-track courts or portrait-mode videos would satiate the leaping flames. It needed Pradhan, who had become the face of the crumbled Jenga blocks. The BJP now thought, and thought seriously about tomorrow. About the future. Precedence can be taken care of, and the bigger goals, thus, took precedence. The crucial delimitation bill, sources have revealed, might be introduced in the monsoon session. Though it wasn't among the five bills listed by the government, reports suggest the landmark bill could be brought in the session that would continue till August 13.
The BriefWire