YouTube 'looking into' Cong claim that Rahul's Adani videos' viewership suppressedPremium Story

The Indian Express | 2 months ago | 30-03-2023 | 01:45 pm

Google’s video platform YouTube has told the Congress that it is looking into a claim made by party leader Rahul Gandhi that views on his videos on industrialist Gautam Adani are much lower than his other videos with similar user engagement, it is learnt.The Congress had written to YouTube earlier this month suggesting that it suspects viewership of Rahul’s two videos on Adani were suppressed.The issue was flagged by Sam Pitroda, head of the Indian Overseas Congress, in a letter to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on March 11.“Mr Gandhi has raised the issue of cronyism of the ruling government with one industrialist, Mr Gautam Adani, through speeches in India’s Parliament and specific videos released exclusively on his YouTube channel. His team has found that the views on these videos are much lower than what they normally are for other videos of Mr Gandhi for similar user engagement,” he had stated.Pitroda had argued that Rahul’s social media team find “this a bit bizarre and are searching for an explanation. They have used YouTube’s own data and analytics to show that viewership of videos of Mr Adani are being suppressed, perhaps unwittingly or algorithmically.”To back his claim, Pitroda also forwarded a presentation made by the party’s data analytics department, comparing viewership data of the video on Adani and Rahul’s other videos from the Bharat Jodo Yatra and recent speeches in Parliament and at Cambridge University.Mohan, sources said, has replied to Pitroda saying that a “team is taking a look” at the Congress’s claim. Sources said Pitroda and Congress data analytics department head Praveen Chakravarty have had discussions with YouTube’s top executives over the issue.In the presentation, the Congress had claimed that one Bharat Jodo Yatra video has less positive interactions than the first video on Adani but has five-times more views. The container video from Yatra, it said, has 83,602 positive interactions, whereas the first video on Adani — titled ‘Mitr Kaal episode 1’ — had 99,197 interactions.But the ‘Mitr Kaal’ video got only 4.78 lakh views, compared to 20 lakh-plus views of the container video.Similarly, the party had claimed that the second video on Adani “has double the interactions of Cambridge video but similar number of views.” While the Cambridge video had 28,360 positive interactions, ‘Mitr Kaal episode-2’ had 49,053 positive interactions. Both videos had 2 lakh-plus views.“Our estimate is that Adani video, too, should have had 8 lakh views based on interactions metrics, but only has 2.6 lakh views,” the Congress said in its presentation.Arguing that there was a “clear case of algorithmic suppression”, the party said in the presentation that most people watch videos through the YouTube Browse feature, where the YouTube homepage shows videos and suggested videos.The party said the browse feature in Rahul Gandhi’s channel was down since February 9. “YouTube algorithm has suppressed the browse feature for Rahul Gandhi’s videos,” it said.

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Why Karnataka Congress's plan to reverse BJP's cow slaughter ban is controversial

The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The Indian Express

12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020, which was brought into force by the previous BJP government, to impose a near total ban on cow slaughter in the state, is at the centre of a controversy again, now that the newly formed Congress government is making a move to withdraw the law.The Congress party indicated ahead of the 2023 state assembly polls, and during the poll campaign, that it intends to withdraw cow slaughter ban on account of difficulties faced by farmers due to restrictions imposed on the trade of sick and unproductive cattle by the 2020 law.The situation came to a head recently, after the new minister for animal husbandry in the Congress government, K Venkatesh, indicated the the party’s intent  by saying “If bulls and buffaloes can be slaughtered, why not cows?”These remarks invited protests from the opposition BJP, which emphasised upon the sacrality of the cow in Hindu culture, and forced Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to indicate that any amendments to the 2020 law would only be done after due discussion. Randeep Singh Surjewala, Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP,  also rebuked the animal husbandry minister for his remarks on Thursday.What is the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020?The law came into force in 2021 after being passed in the state legislative assembly and council by the ruling BJP government – amid objections by the opposition Congress and Janata Dal Secular parties. It is a stringent law to restrict the slaughter of all forms of cattle in the state.The 2020 law repealed and replaced the less stringent Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act, 1964 which has been in the state since then. While the 1964 law banned the killing of “any cow or calf of she-buffalo” it allowed the slaughter of bullocks, and male or female buffalos if certified by a competent authority to be above the age of 12 years, incapacitated for breeding, or if deemed sick.Under the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020, cattle have been designated as “cow, calf of a cow and bull, bullock and he or she buffalo” and their slaughter is banned. The only exemptions are buffaloes above the age of 13 years and certified by a competent authority, cattle used in medical research, cattle certified for slaughter by a veterinarian to prevent spread of a disease, and very sick cattle.The new law has also increased punishment for breaking the law, to the range of three to seven years of jail, or fines ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 5 lakh or both. As per the 1964 law, the maximum punishment was for a period up to six months of imprisonment and a fine of up to Rs 1000.The new law also prescribes punishments for illegal transport of cattle, sale of meat and purchase or disposal of cattle for slaughter – namely, a prison term of three to five years, and a fine of Rs 50,000 to Rs 5 lakh.Why did the BJP introduce such a stringent law in the state?The ban on cattle slaughter has been a prominent demand of right-wing Hindutva groups like the RSS, the VHP and others, which form the core support base of the BJP. These groups have viewed cattle – especially the cow–– in a religious rather than an agrarian context.During the BJP’s tenure in Karnataka between 2008 and 2013 the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill, 2010, was passed by the B S Yediyurappa led government.The 2010 law however did not receive the assent of the Governor, and the Congress party, which came to power in 2013 reverted to the less stringent 1964 law, which allowed cattle slaughter on a limited basis – especially those classified as being old, sick or unproductive on farms.After the BJP returned to power in 2019, the Cow Protection Cell of the party in Karnataka wrote to chief minister BS Yediyurappa seeking a re-introduction of the 2010 law that was shelved by the previous Congress government.“As the chief minister in 2010 you tried to enact the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill, 2010. The Governor did not give his assent for the law to come into force. The Siddaramaiah government subsequently withdrew the bill,” the BJP Cow Protection Cell said in a letter to the CM dated August 27, 2019.“Now the BJP is once again in power in Karnataka and the party in its manifesto for the state assembly elections has stated the need for banning cow slaughter and introduction of a more stringent law than what was drafted in 2010. The government must examine the issue and introduce a bill in the next session of the state legislature,” the letter stated.In December 2020, the BJP government tabled and passed the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill, 2020 in the state assembly while the opposition, Congress and JDS, staged a walkout. The opposition alleged gross violation of principles for functioning of the legislature by the BJP, in context of the manner in which the bill was tabled and passed without a debate.“It is considered necessary to repeal the Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act, 1964 to prohibit the slaughter of cattle and for the preservation and improvement of the breeds of cattle and to endeavour to organize agriculture and animal husbandry in terms of Article 48 of the constitution of India by enacting a comprehensive legislation,” the new law said in its statement of reasons for introduction.In February 2021, the bill was passed in the legislative council despite the BJP having fewer members than the combined strength of the Congress and JDS in the house. The two parties once again opposed the bill, with Congress leader BK Hariprasad stating that the BJP has double standards on cattle slaughter – one where it supports slaughter in states like Kerala, Goa, Manipur and Meghalaya, and another where it opposes slaughter.What have been the repercussions of the 2020 law?The agrarian economy has been majorly impacted by the 2020 law, especially in southern Karnataka, where cattle is an integral part of livelihood in terms of dairy farming and agriculture. Farmers have been up in arms over the ban on cattle slaughter, and there has been widespread complaints in the farming communities that the BJP’s ban on cattle slaughter has deprived farmers of alternatives when cattle fall sick or turn unmaintainable.The latent anger in the farming community against the cow slaughter ban, coupled with other aspects of the tenure of BJP government – including the high cost of fertilizers and fodder – is believed to have played a central role in the defeat of the BJP in the 2023 polls.Traditional cattle markets have been slowly shutting down and there were few merchants to buy cattle. Moreover, there have been also been incidents of right-wing cow vigilantes – who are granted immunity under the new law – taking law into their own hands to prevent the transportation of cattle for slaughter to states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu.“The government claims that the ban on cattle slaughter has benefitted the ecosystem but it has done nothing. Farmers would sell cattle earlier if they were unproductive but that cannot be done now. The cattle cannot be sold in the markets because a case will be filed against the farmer,” current Congress CM Siddaramaiah said in February 2023 as opposition leader.“Remove the cattle slaughter law, it is a hidden agenda and communal agenda. There are no buyers for sick and aged cattle. It is a loss for the farmers,” he said.What is the newly elected Congress government likely to do?One of the promises made by the Congress party in its manifesto for the 2023 Karnataka polls was “to repeal anti farmer laws enacted by the BJP government and to withdraw all politically motivated cases against farmers.”Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who has been a vocal supporter for the repeal of “anti farmer” laws like the cattle slaughter ban, the Karnataka Agricultural Produce Marketing (Regulation and Development) (Amendment) Act 2020, and the Karnataka Land Reforms (Amendment) Act, 2020, told a delegation of farmers recently that he will review calls for amendments to the Cattle Slaughter Act, the APMC Act and the Land Reforms Act.The Congress is likely to seek a return to the 1964 law, which imposed a ban on the slaughter of cows but allowed the restricted slaughter of cattle of other forms on the condition of old age, sickness and lack of productivity. The party is expected to project the move as being critical to the livelihood and economic survival of farmers, rather than a religious issue.“They (BJP) amended it once. We reverted it to the earlier provisions. They have amended it again. We will discuss it in the Cabinet meeting,” Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah said recently.However, the Congress party is likely to face strong opposition from the BJP on the matter and is expected to tread cautiously despite its numerical advantage in the legislative assembly. There are some concerns that a move to repeal the 2020 law ahead of the 2024 parliament polls may be detrimental to Congress interests in northern India, where the move could acquire a religious connotation that is unconnected to the realities of the agrarian economy.The word of caution given to the new Congress minister for animal husbandry by the Congress central leadership “to stay within his limits” on the cattle slaughter ban issue is seen as an indication of the Congress adopting a calibrated approach to fulfilling its poll promise to repeal “anti-farmer” laws enacted by the BJP.

Manipur crisis reveals the limits of BJP's politics in the Northeast

The Indian Express | 1 day ago | 09-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The Indian Express

1 day ago | 09-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The continuing violence in Manipur ought to be shocking for many reasons. But its sheer scale, endurance and brutality is still not getting national attention. As is typical, the prime minister who is never shy of taking leadership credit, is completely absent when there is an actual crisis that goes to the heart of both constitutional values and national security. In this instance, it seems like the double-engine sarkar, even after invoking Article 355, is unable to control the violence.It takes nothing away from the culpability of the present dispensation to acknowledge the long-standing and irresolvable contradictions of Manipur politics. Whenever the central organising axis of politics is a distributive conflict between identity-based groups, there is a high chance of violence. This is particularly the case where the conflict inherently has the character of a zero-sum game. In Manipur, the politics of distribution between Kukis and Meiteis turns on four goods whose inherent logic is zero-sum.The first is inclusion in the ST quota which is the proximate background to the current conflict. By its very nature, the inclusion of more groups in the ST quota will be a threat to existing beneficiaries. The second is land, and the tension between the valley and the hills. This is also a zero-sum resource, where protecting the land rights of Kukis is seen as foreclosing the opportunities for other groups. The third is political representation, where historically Kukis have felt dominated by the Meiteis. The fourth is patronage by the state in the informal economy, in which groups compete against one another for control of informal trade. Each state intervention in regulating trade becomes a locus of conflict.Place on top of that a default demand that the boundaries of ethnicity and territorial governance should, as much as possible, coincide. In principle, these demands could be negotiated through building inclusive democratic institutions. But this is easier said than done, when every policy instrument in contention — quotas, land, representation, and the state-economy nexus — are defined in terms of zero-sum games. The tragedy of Manipur was that, in part, there was no other game in town, one that could prise politics away from this zero-sum alignment of distribution and ethnicity.Dealing with such a situation requires at least three things. It requires a capable state impartially enforcing constitutional values. It requires a political culture that respects identity but does not politicise it. It requires a development narrative that all sections of society can potentially participate in.Instead, the Indian state made Manipur a charnel house of human rights violations, abetted violence and militarisation to unprecedented levels. It opportunistically used ethnicity both for electoral alliances and divide and rule. In some ways, under colonial divide and rule, the state pretended to hover above the various contending groups. The point of divide and rule was to present the state as neutral and shore up its legitimacy. But in democratic India divide and rule has meant the state itself getting implicated with one group or the other. The result was a weakening of the state’s capacity to govern. We can see the long-term effects of this even in the present crisis, where there is widespread agreement that the state security forces and police cannot be trusted to be neutral and impartial. This creates a vicious cycle where all ethnic groups feel the need to preemptively protect themselves. And finally, the state was not a neutral actor in the economy.It is worth remembering this structural contradiction when we diagnose the present moment. The politics of majoritarianism in Manipur was always more complicated. It was this history that had first given the BJP an opening, where the Congress was seen as an instrument of the Valley, so much so that the Kukis called for supporting the BJP. But the current dispensation, rather than seizing the opportunity to create a new politics, has made the same mistakes. Only this time, the consequences are even more tragic and irrevocable.The violence has given a lie to the BJP’s project in three senses. The first is that the BJP can build a capable law and order state. In this instance, that state has proven to be both deeply incompetent and partisan. The ease with which literally thousands of weapons have been looted would shame any half capable state. But more disturbingly, the pattern that the state is seen to be a partisan actor in the violence continues unabated. Second, it exposes the ideological dangers of the BJP’s project.The BJP tried for a brief moment to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. It tried to capitalise on Kuki construal of Congress in Manipur as majoritarian at the same time as it politicised and promoted Meitei identity. Now that contradiction has burst open: A visible demonstration of the limits of Hindutva accommodation. Contingently convenient alliances will, in the end, be overrun by the ideological juggernaut. And third, it has shown that the BJP’s political instincts can be overrated: Its capacity to negotiate complicated social fissures in the North-east has been overestimated. What the BJP had touted as the moment of its greatest ideological triumph, winning in the North-east, is turning out to also expose the limitations of its politics.It is not going to be easy for Manipur to recover from this violence. There are no credible public institutions that can hold perpetrators of violence to account, impartially. The nature of the violence is such that both the Kukis and Meiteis will be left with a deep sense of victimhood. But there is a deeper question: Is there any political force left in the state that can do the job of political mediation? In a situation where, singly, all parties are considered partisan, the only possibility would be an all-party mediation, one that tries to lift Manipur out of a fatal combination of zero-sum identity politics. But such imaginative gestures are now beyond our ruling establishment.When I first read journalist Sudeep Chakravarti’s book, “The Eastern Gate”, one line stood out. He recounts a visit to Churachandpur, ground zero of the current violence, where he sees a sign by a church: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death.” Alas, these words seem all too prophetic at the moment, when no one is prepared to break the mould of politics in Manipur. Nero will, of course, continue to fiddle, while Manipur burns.The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express

'Space given to separatists not good for ties': Jaishankar on Canadian event celebrating Indira's assassination

The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The Indian Express

2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

India has hit out at Canada for allowing a float in a parade in Brampton that apparently ‘celebrated’ the assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi.The six-second clip was shared on Twitter by one Balraj Deol who said that the float was part of a 5 km-long parade in the Canadian city on June 4. Diplomatic temperatures rose after the video showed a tableau in a Brampton parade with Gandhi wearing a blood-stained white saree and her hands up as turban-clad men pointed guns at her. A poster behind the scene read: ‘Revenge’.“Frankly, we are at a loss to understand other than the requirements of vote bank politics why anybody would do this… I think there is a larger underlying issue about the space which is given to separatists, to extremists, to people who advocate violence. I think it is not good for relationships, not good for Canada,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said Thursday during a media briefing in Delhi.“If you look at their history, you would imagine that they would learn their history and they wouldn’t like to repeat that history,” he said.The Congress condemned the incident and demanded that Jaishankar take it up with the Canadian government.“As an Indian, I’m appalled by the 5km-long parade which took place in the city of Brampton, Canada, depicting the assassination of IndiraGandhi,” Congress leader Milind Deora posted on social media.“It’s not about taking sides, it’s about respect for a nation’s history and the pain caused by its Prime Minister’s assassination. This extremism deserves universal condemnation and a united response,” he added.I entirely agree! This is despicable and @DrSJaishankar should take it up strongly with the Canadian authorities. https://t.co/LrketZk9OS— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) June 8, 2023Endorsing the tweet, Congress spokesman Jairam Ramesh said: “I entirely agree! This is despicable and Dr S Jaishankar should take it up strongly with the Canadian authorities”.On Thursday, Canada’s High Commissioner for India Cameron MacKay condemned the incident. “I am appalled by reports of an event in Canada that celebrated the assassination of late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. There is no place in Canada for hate or for the glorification of violence. I categorically condemn these activities,” he, too, said on Twitter.Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her bodyguards in the aftermath of Operation Bluestar, whose 39th anniversary was marked earlier this week.

A UP story: In conviction of Mukhtar Ansari, a fight of two strongmen, a battle for justice

The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The Indian Express

2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

On June 5, when a court in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi convicted jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari and sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder of a local strongman Awadhesh Rai in 1991, his younger brother and Congress leader Ajay Rai hailed the verdict, highlighting that this marked the end of a 32-year-long wait for justice for his family.Awadhesh was 30 years old when he was shot dead. Ajay was then 22. According to the prosecution’s case, on August 3, 1991, Awadhesh was standing outside his house in the Maldiya area of Varanasi when some assailants arrived in a car and opened fire at him. Ajay Rai and an associate were present at the spot, who rushed Awadhesh to the hospital. However, he was declared dead on arrival.An FIR was registered against five accused, including Mukhtar Ansari and his associates, at the Chetganj police station. The complainant was Ajay, who claimed to have witnessed Mukhtar and other assailants gunning down his brother. According to former government counsel Alok Chandra, who had pursued the case, the murder was the fallout of a local “supremacy dispute”. Apart from being a local muscleman, Awadhesh was also engaged in politics and business.In the course of over three decades, Ajay, who switched several parties but continued his legal battle against Mukhtar in his brother’s murder case in which he was a witness and complainant. Before joining the Congress, he had been with the BJP and also the Samajwadi Party (SP).A musclemen turned politician himself, 53-year-old Ajay is a five-time MLA, who has been booked in several criminal cases over the years. He was said to be associated with gangster-turned-politician Brijesh Singh. He belongs to the Bhumihar caste, retaining his hold over his community as well as over Brahmins and seers of the Varanasi region. It is for this reason that the Congress fielded him from the Varanasi seat against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.Ajay started his political career with the BJP, getting elected as the MLA on the party’s ticket thrice from the Kolasla constituency of Varanasi during 1996-2007. He was eyeing the Varanasi parliamentary seat and parted ways with the saffron party after it decided to field Murli Manohar Joshi from there in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. He then joined the SP and contested against Joshi on its ticket. While Mukhtar Ansari also contested that election on the BSP’s ticket, Ajay came third after Joshi and Mukhtar.However, Ajay soon broke ties with the SP as well and decided to contest the Kolasla seat bypoll as an Independent candidate that he won.Ahead of the 2012 Assembly polls, the then All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in charge of UP Digvijay Singh managed to get Ajay join the Congress fold. He then contested from the newly-formed Pindra seat in Varanansi as a Congress candidate and won.While Ajay could not win the 2017 election from Pindra and lost to Avadhesh Singh of the BJP, he was chosen by the Congress to contest against PM Modi from the Varanasi parliamentary seat in the 2014 general election, when Modi picked Varanasi as his constituency for the first time. In that election, when the then fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s chief Arvind Kejriwal also took the plunge to contest against Modi, Rai finished third behind the runner-up Kejriwal.In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress again pitted Ajay against PM Modi in Varanasi. While Modi garnered over 6.5 lakh votes, SP candidate Shalini Yadav secured 1.95 lakh votes, with Ajay again coming third with1.52 lakh votes. AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had then held a road show in his favour.After Mukhtar Ansari’s conviction in his elder brother’s murder case, Ajay hailed the court’s verdict, saying, “This is the end of a long wait for us. My parents, I, Awadhesh’s daughter, and the whole family kept patience… Governments came and went and Mukhtar strengthened himself. But we did not give up. Because of our lawyers’ efforts, today the court has found Mukhtar guilty in the murder case of my brother…we are thankful to the court.” He maintained that he and his family fought for 32 years for justice in the case.Ajay also demanded that his security be tightened now. “The man, who stood constantly against all odds should be provided security by the government. If required, I would continue to fight the case even in the Supreme Court,” he said. He has long been demanding security from the government, expressing fear for his life.A prominent Bhumihar leader of the Purvanchal region, Ajay is currently one of the six regional heads of the Congress party in UP. He is party in charge of the Prayagraj zone, where the Bhumihar community has a dominant presence. With the Lok Sabha elections less than a year away and the Congress continuing to remain on the margins of UP politics, Ajay’s work seems to be cut out now amid speculation that major players like the BJP and SP are also looking to make overtures to him.

Look who’s Congress’s new friend in Madhya Pradesh: Bajrang Sena

The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The Indian Express

2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The beat of drums grew louder, announcing the arrival of a bhagva (saffron) rally, slowly making its way to the Madhya Pradesh Congress state office at Indira Bhavan here. Present to greet them was former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath.As he began speaking, his voice hoarse from a gruelling campaigning stint in Mandsaur district, Kamal Nath’s supporters raised slogans hailing him. He allowed these to die down before coming up with one more fitting for the occasion: “Jai Shri Ram.”With that, and the chanting of Hanuman Chalisa, the Bajrang Sena, a right-wing outfit dedicated to the cause of Hindutva, merged with the Congress.It might have been unthinkable earlier, but under Kamal Nath, the Congress has been unequivocably and unapologetically making a rightward shift. The soft Hindutva, going further than most such Congress experiments, started off as a bid to shake off the BJP accusations of the party being anti-Hindu, and is now potent enough to make the latter sit up and take notice.The first step by Kamal Nath in this direction was portraying himself a Hanuman bhakt, holding religious events centered around the Lord Ram devotee, setting up a massive Hanuman idol on his political turf Chhindwara, and even courting controversy when he cut a temple-shaped cake with the portrait of Hanuman on it on his birthday in November last year.The merger of the Bajrang Sena on June 6, marks at least one more turn in that transition. The Hindutva outfit’s goals have been protection of cows and Hindu saints, construction of gaushalas and a monthly stipend to temple priests – as per them, all this aligns with what the Congress is promising now.The organisation’s entry into the Congress was orchestrated by Deepak Joshi, a BJP-turned-Congress leader, whose father late Kailash Joshi once headed a BJP government in MP. Deepak joined the Congress in May, saying he felt sidelined by the state BJP leadership.It took him less than a month to prove his “value” to his new party. Joshi says he held several meetings with the Bajrang Sena to convince them to join the Congress, promising that the party was on the same page as the Bajrang Sena on core ideological objectives.Bajrang Sena national president Ranveer Pateria says they actively campaigned for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as recently as last year, for his second stint at chief ministership, and had also campaigned for Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.Set up 10 years ago, in Chhatarpur district in Bundelkhand region, the Bajrang Sena now claims to have its branches in over 12 states, with several lakh members across India. Pateria, a former Bajrang Dal leader, was among its founders. The merger, for now, seems confined to just Madhya Pradesh.Explaining his disillusionment with the Bajrang Dal, Pateria says: “They did not like what I was doing. I managed to organise hundreds of bike rallies, while they were limited to their programmes, green lit by their leaders. They asked me to stop making my own decisions and follow the organisation, and I gave up.”It was a meeting with Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, the president of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust (for building the Ram temple in Ayodhya), that convinced him to set up the Bajrang Sena, he adds.Since then, the outfit has grown, drawing new members with its bike rallies, cow protection programmes, and one eyeball-grabbing incident when it protested against the sale of Kama Sutra copies near the Khajuraho temple. The Bajrang Sena got another bump when veteran politician Raghunandan Sharma, among the first BJP leaders in Madhya Pradesh, who held charge of the BJP Yuva Morcha in the state for a while, joined it in 2018.Sharma told The Indian Express that one of his close associates in the Yuva Morcha had been Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the current BJP CM. “We would travel around the state on a motorcycle, helping the BJP grow in districts.”He says he left the BJP following growing differences with the state leadership, particularly over implementation of the SC/ST Atrocities Act. “The party also blamed me for their defeat in the 2018 Assembly elections,” Sharma says.Changes in the SC/ST Act by the Chouhan government, seen as a dilution of the legislation’s provisions, had provoked major protests in Madhya Pradesh in 2018. With the violence leading to the death of nine people, the government had backtracked on the issue.The Bajrang Sena claims it was Sharma’s induction that landed it in the BJP government’s cross-hairs, with the outfit’s members facing action such as arrests over their cow protection programmes. The Sena then went on to target the Chouhan government over inadequate work on gaushalas, further distancing it from the BJP.Meanwhile, came the Covid lockdown, when the Bajrang Sena played an active role in distributing food ration packets in the most backward districts of the Hindi heartland, and acquired a new set of followers.On the merger with the Congress, Bhupendra Singh, the Delhi unit chief of the Bajrang Sena, says: “We wanted to give the BJP in Madhya Pradesh a jolt… We have not joined the Congress in any other state. We want to see how this experiment plays out.”In the coming Assembly elections, Bajrang Sena leaders say, they will actively campaign for the Congress. “We will go to every village and tell them that Kamal Nath is a Hanuman bhakt and will make gaushalas across the state… that he is a supporter of our Hindu religion. We will defeat the BJP in the state,” says Pateria.Acknowledging the contribution of Joshi and Sharma in bringing the Bajrang Sena to the Congress, former minister and Congress leader Sajjan Singh Verma talks about how the BJP raked up a controversy around Hanuman in the Karnataka elections to target the Congress and ended up losing. “The real Hanuman bhakt is Kamal Nathji,” he told The Indian Express, adding: “This outfit has come to our party… and it is up to them how they help us in the elections.”However, not all in the Congress are comfortable with the development. A senior party leader says, “We are moving away from our core ideology and playing on their (BJP) pitch. This will harm us in the long term. If the people vote for us, it will be because of our policies and not because of a few extra foot-soldiers. We have enough people in our organisation.”But party spokesperson K K Mishra dismisses these concerns. “The Bajrang Sena is a far-right organisation, no doubt. But a Hindutva outfit has become disgruntled with the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, and has decided to join a secular party. That is an issue of pride for us. I don’t see ideology becoming a hindrance for us,” he says.The BJP, which is seen as struggling to get its act together in the state, brushed away the Bajrang Sena’s new friendship as a media gimmick. Speaking to reporters, Home Minister Narottam Mishra questioned the reach and acceptance of the Bajrang Sena. “Had anyone heard about the Bajrang Sena’s name before yesterday?” Mishra said.BJP spokesperson Dr Hitesh Bajpai said, “These are political gimmicks, a psychological war. These outfits, which don’t have any ground, become tools for perception management. If you have money, there are a lot of people who are ready to play like this.”

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