Inside Track Arming Himself For Alliance

The coup in “coaxing” six Sena MPs from Uddhav Thackeray’s camp to switch to Eknath Shinde’s side was a six-month operation, culminating in the six being flown in a chartered plane from Pune, Nanded and Mumbai to Delhi, where they stayed at the Leela Palace Hotel. A fascinating figure in the operation was Abhishek Verma, the Chief National Coordinator for NDA Alliance and Elections in the Shinde Sena. Verma, an arms dealer who joined the party last year, was accused of being the middleman in the Rs 18,798-crore Scorpene submarine deal and was investigated in the naval war room leak, though he was later acquitted by the court. The BJP in 2006 held a press conference charging that the Scorpene deal involved the biggest kickback ever and Verma, the son of late Congress MP and poet Shrikant Verma, sued L K Advani for defamation.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met NSA Ajit Doval last week. Tellingly, Wang and his deputy were missing from the BRICS foreign ministers meet in May and China was represented by its ambassador in India. Doval often represents India in key negotiations with certain countries, instead of Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, suggesting the growing domain of the NSA at the cost of the foreign minister’s sphere. The 81-year-old former police officer is far more consequential in foreign affairs than his predecessors Brajesh Mishra, M K Narayanan and Shiv Shankar Menon. Doval, who founded the RSS-oriented Vivekananda Foundation after retirement, has cabinet rank. He moved out of the PMO and commandeered the entire Sardar Patel Bhavan for the National Security Council. Jaishankar seems content to focus on the US, the Americas and Europe, while Doval has cultivated special relationships with countries ranging from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. In 2021, he revived a flagging Indo-Russian relationship. Even France seems to be Doval’s stomping ground. When it comes to domestic issues concerning Islamic institutions and connections with Islamic countries, Doval has a special pipeline.

Businessman Parimal Nathwani has managed to defy the odds and alliance arithmetic and win a Rajya Sabha seat for the fourth time as an Independent from Jharkhand. Nathwani’s goodwill across the board is not merely because of his long association with the Ambani family, but because of his friendly nature. His son Dhanraj Nathwani follows in his father’s footsteps and is president of the Gujarat Cricket Association and is close to Jay Shah.

There was suspense as to whether Omraje Nimbalkar, one of the six defecting Sena UBT MPs, would switch camps. The buzz was that Nimbalkar placed a condition that those responsible for the murder of his father Pawanraje Nimbalkar 20 years ago be booked by the CBI. He even met Amit Shah. One of the accused in the murder case was Padamsinh Patil, 84, the brother of Deputy CM Sunetra Pawar. A fortnight ago, a CBI court exonerated all the accused in the Pawanraje murder. But Nimbalkar did not back out from joining the Eknath Shinde camp.

Of late, CM Devendra Fadnavis has become the unquestioned ruler of the state thanks to the weakened status of his formerly troublesome alliance partners, the NCP and Sena. Shinde, with six defectors on his side, commands 13 MPs compared to the BJP’s 9 MPs and hopes to be in a position to flex his muscles. Especially since Amit Shah’s immediate mission is to secure the magical two-thirds majority in Lok Sabha.