The discourse in the just concluded polls was state-centric. The BJP was on the defensive. Its performance over the past five years saw rampant graft and lack of governance. Internal feuds took a heavy toll of the saffron party’s image in terms of political stability and transparency.

If it does come about, the BJP’s defeat in Karnataka will be its third consecutive loss in assembly polls after Uttarakhand and Himachal. It will undercut badly the party’s bid to shine in contrast with Congress-ruled States by citing the achievements of its regimes in Gujarat and MP.

Modi in fact was drafted to campaign in Karnataka to shore up the BJP’s floundering fortunes by highlighting the UPA’s myriad scams. But I suspect that rather than consolidating the Hindu vote split on caste lines, he ended up causing the minorities to gravitate towards the Congress at the expense of Deve Gowda’s JD (S). The anti-incumbency against the BJP was too strong for him to counter. The exact anatomy of the vote will be evident only when the final results are out— given the Indian pollsters’ proclivity to err. Of interest, however, will be the performance of Yeddyurappa’s fledgling party and whether the BJP comes second or third in the polls after the JD (S), what with HD Kumaraswamy emerging as a popular choice for the CM’s slot in different surveys.

Also, on whom will the Congress rely for extra numbers in the event of falling short of a clean majority— Yeddy or the Gowda clan? The chances of it setting up a joint venture with Yeddy are greater. That will fetch the party a social alliance comprising the Lingayats for putting up a formidable fight in the 2014 elections.

Politics is a game of possibility. But the reason for which Nitish has threatened to break the 17 year old partnership – in the event of Modi’s projection as the BJP’s PM candidate–will be as much valid in the polls to the Bihar assembly a year after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Nitish cannot support a Modi-led government at the Centre and yet keep his perceived vote base in his home state. On the face of it, the notice he served on the BJP is against all political conventions.

No one party has the right to force another into deciding its leadership.

In 1996, the Congress snubbed the United Front when the latter went public with its decision to accept the Congress support minus PV Narasimha Rao, who was Premier when the Babri Mosque was demolished by outfits of the saffron parivar on December 6, 1992.

The extension of the same principle later saw IK Gujral telling off the Congress when it sought the DMK’s ejection from the government consequent to the Jain Commission’s indictment of the Dravidian party in the conspiracy that led to Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.

The DMK issue led to the collapse of the UF regime. But Nitish’s quandary is different: the choice he has is between keeping the alliance with the BJP or the social pact that gave him the mandate to rule Bihar.

That dilemma rooted in the Muslims’ distrust of Modi is largely shared by Mulayam Singh and Mayawati in UP and Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal.

Muslims were at the centre of the social accord that catapulted the SP and the BSP to power on their own strength in the previous two elections in UP — 2007 and 2012.

As they’d as much need the minority vote in the 2017 assembly polls, they’d think a hundred times before even indirectly supporting a Modi dispensation in Delhi.

The Left parties will never back Modi. Nor will the TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu who cites his outside support of the BJP-led NDA after the 2002 Gujarat riots, as a major reason for his 2009 drubbing in the assembly polls.

In J&K, Omar Abdullah’s NC and Mahbooba Mufti’s PDP might break their record of consistent disagreement by agreeing to steer clear of Modi.

That leaves the BJP with possible support from one of the two Tamil Nadu-based Dravidian parties, the AIADMK and the DMK besides Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal and Shiv Sena despite its preference for Sushma Swaraj as PM.

As of now, the Akali Dal is the only BJP partner who does not consider the Gujarat strongman a political anathema.

But it’ll be as much willing to back LK Advani, Sushma, Rajnath Singh or Arun Jaitely for the high office.

Unlike President Asif Zardari and his son Bilawal, whom our PM received over lunch en route Ajmer, the Pak PM returned without touching ground in Delhi, leave alone meeting Dr Manmohan Singh. He was hosted instead by external affairs minister Salman Khurshid in Jaipur before leaving for the dargah with his delegation. The lunch was in a hotel, not the Raj Niwas, where foreign dignitaries are normally feted while on official visits.

The protests over the visit were triggered by Islamabad’s failure to address the India’s grievance over the beheading of a soldier along the Line of Control. To that extent, the protestors brought the visitors face to face with the depth and intensity of public outrage over the grotesque killing.

In fact, the visit, without the hosts saying it in as many words, helped India let Pakistan know that the LoC episode was unlikely to be easily forgotten. For India it was a cruel cut on the lacerating 26/11 wound Islamabad did precious little to heal by way of action against its perpetrators.

One can safely deduce in retrospect that by facilitating Ashraf’s pilgrimage, India acted in conformity with its international image of being responsible and restrained in the face of worst provocations. Except some visual back-slapping by compulsive hardliners, no purpose would have been served by blocking the Pak leader’s arrival.

India’s image has enhanced not diminished by its decision to receive Ashraf whose government is in a lame-duck-mode in the election bound country. We must be tough with a regime that can deliver but is recalcitrant. For that, we would have to await the poll outcome in Pakistan. In the meanwhile, we can congratulate ourselves for using Ashraf’s presence at the shrine to focus on the inclusive Sufi tradition under attack in Pakistan.

For a dispassionate view, I’d like to know what the JD (U) has to say on the Press Council of India’s chairman’s impressions of Narendra Modi?

Or what’s the Bihar-based journalists’ take on the state of press freedom in the province ruled jointly by the BJP and the JD (U)?

For that might seem a pro-Katju stance, may I ask the retired Supreme Court judge to be more discreet than valorous in his pronouncements.

He’s given to flying off the handle in the middle of fairly decent expositions at public functions.

He’s at once a builder and a destroyer of robust bipartisan arguments. He’d do a lot of good to the PCI if he were to stick to being a constructive contributor to popular discourse.

Inclined though he may be towards the Congress, Katju indeed has been taking potshots at governments of all hue in defense of a free press in particular and free speech in general. But it is wrong to assume that he alone calls the shots in the PCI.

The watchdog body comprises working journalists and most reports that it makes are essentially their work, be it threats to journalists or the scourge of paid news.

But there are occasions when their conclusions are based on shoddy groundwork and questionable evidence, as we at the Hindustan Times recently found to our dismay in a PCI order.

One therefore must question the PCI on facts, not because its findings go against a government run by parties that are in Opposition at the Centre.

I’m afraid I do not agree with Jaitley when he takes exception to Katju’s article on Modi in The Hindu. The BJP leader himself is a constitutional functionary as Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

But has that prevented him from criticizing Supreme Court judgments— including those relating to Gujarat— in signed articles?

I as much support Jaitley’s right to disagree with the PCI chief or critically analyze court orders, as Katju’ prerogative to have a view on the Gujarat CM.

Now that Modi’s emerging as a contender for the PM’s slot, he should be placed under the scanner by peer groups and the media to let people know whether he’ll make a good alternative?

If we can have speaking judges, speaking election commissioners and a speaking comptroller and auditor general, where then is the harm in having a speaking PCI chief.

Thinking people must speak up, no matter where they are. That alone will make the public debate variegated and inclusive. India cannot afford a one-sided discourse, not at least on communalism and press freedom.

Stay put wherever you are Messrs Jaitley and Katju. But keep arguing.

Technically, the last word on the issue belongs to the saffron party’s parliamentary board. But the VHP’s pronouncement and the (media interpreted) oblique support of it by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat could trigger a much bigger political polarization ahead of the 2014 polls.

A big section of the BJP’s erstwhile and present allies in the NDA are weary of Modi. Their unease will be compounded by the Gujarat CM’s projection as a torch bearer of the Hindutva plank, at the core of which is the divisive Ram Temple issue.

For his part, Modi has been attempting an image transplant since his electoral hat-trick in Gujarat. It will be interesting to watch whether he will— in the emerging scenario— revert to the basics the BJP had to forego to become acceptable in a coalition arrangement under Atal Bihari Vajpayee during the 1998-2004 NDA ruled.

If Modi’s indeed accepted as the candidate for the PM’s office, the BJP will in all probability be going into elections at the head of a badly truncated NDA. The first to exit the alliance will be the JD (U). The position of Shiv Sena isn’t also clear on the issue, the late Bal Thackeray having voiced his preference for Sushma Swaraj before his death.

If the ostensible pro-Modi tempo sustains, the poll outcome will depend on the size of Hindu consolidation in a polity driven by caste allegiances in vast parts of the country. However, in urban areas, where aspiration often triumphs identity, the gamble might be worth the risk for the BJP. It might recoup the middle class constituency it lost to the UPA in 2004.

That nothing can be said with certainty — not at the current juncture — is explained by the series of assembly polls in the run-up to the general elections. If Modi’s counterparts in MP and Chattisgarh score hat-trick victories, the picture might change dramatically. It will provide Modi’s detractors an opportunity to turn the tables in the name of keeping intact the NDA.

There are many acts to the unfolding drama. The opening scenes at Allahabad could be misleading.

So rather than advising India to protect Shahrukh Khan, he better focus on making Pakistan a safer place to live. In tearing out of context an article the Bollywood star wrote in an Indian weekly, Malik replicated the Lashkar-e-Toiba’s Hafiz Saeed, whom his police should have booked a long while ago for his role in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

To show India as a country that isn’t safe for its minorities, Sayeed had offered Pakistani citizenship to Shahrukh. The irony of it all wasn’t lost on that country’s perennially suppressed and terrorized minorities, including the Amhedias, Hindus and Christians. Several Hindu families from Sindh and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa (PK) have fled their homes and hearths in recent months for safer destinations in India and elsewhere.

Minorities in Pakistan are frequently robbed of their properties and businesses. There are widely reported incidents of forcible conversion of their children to Islam.

In fact, one such conversion of a Hindu boy named Sunil was telecast live last year in a prime time ramazan show hosted by a lady anchor notorious for selecting outlandish themes—including chasing with her camera teams, young couples seeking privacy in public parks.

The much respected Dawn newspaper wrote in response to her audience-based TV show: “The joy with which the conversion was greeted, the congratulations that followed, sent a clear signal that other religions don’t enjoy the same status in Pakistan as Islam does. It served to marginalize further the minorities who in many ways are treated as second-class citizens in Pakistan.”

That should be enough to shut up Malik.