During his first term as chief minister of Maharashtra, I had once quizzed Vilasrao Deshmukh about the general feeling of critics that his was a lack-lustre government that was really incapable of doing anything significant for the people. Read more

Now that Team Anna is contemplating forming a political party, I wonder why Anna Hazare had to go as far as New Delhi to look for a clean government. Read more

Noticed a little but not much commented upon earlier this year was the fact that for the first time in a decade or more, the BJP had lost its Ayodhya seat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly. Now the party has lost a graduates’ seat from the Konkan which it had held for 40 years in the Maharashtra Legislative Council. Read more

Sharad Pawar is wont to describe the Congress party thus: it is like a zamindar of yore. When he used to sit on his terrace with a hookah he had the satisfaction of knowing that all that met his eye and far beyond belonged to him. Read more

As spokespersons go, the Bharatiya Janata Party definitely has a battery of the best. Rarely are any Congress spokespersons able to win against them, even when the BJP is being hyperbolic, bigoted, cussed or plain misleading. Read more

Speaking to a man in the know, the other week, I was rather amused to hear him describe the situation in the Nationalist Congress Party rather succinctly. Read more

The BJP’s Gopinath Munde and Nitin Gadkari have almost always never agreed on anything. Read more

In recent years, Chhagan Bhujbal has been Maharahstra’s toughest Home Minister, even willing to take on Bal Thackeray and throw the Sena supremo into the slammer. Read more

I have never quite heard of something like this – the Deputy Chief Minister of a state not on talking terms with the Chief Minister because his lollipop was taken away, not by the CM but by a third party which was well within it’s rights to do so. Read more

It would have happened sooner rather than later. But Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party was prepared for this one. Read more