A man has been detained for attempting to throw a petrol bomb at a gate of the Raj Bhavan in Chennai. The man had tried to do the same thing outside a BJP office in the city a few months ago.

Officials said the incident took place around 2.45 pm on Wednesday and the man attempted to throw the bomb near the Raj Bhavan’s main gate, which is used by Governor RN Ravi.

“The man, identified as one Vinod, will be sent for an examination of his mental health,” said a police official, adding that he is likely to be arrested soon.

The incident comes in the backdrop of the Tamil Nadu governor returning, for the second time, a state government file recommending former director general of police C Sylendra Babu’s appointment as chairman of the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission.

When the recommendation was sent for the first time, soon after Mr Babu’s retirement at the end of June, Mr Ravi had questioned the criteria for his selection as well as those of other candidates for the post, and asked whether Supreme Court guidelines had been followed. 

The DMK-led Tamil Nadu government had denied that any guidelines had been violated and pointed out that the Governor has no prerogative in such matters and has to abide by the recommendations of the elected government. 

Tensions have been high between the MK Stalin government and Mr Ravi since January, when the governor skipped portions of text during his customary address to the state Assembly. There have been other flashpoints since then as well, including when the governor allegedly suggested changing the name of the state to ‘Tamilagam’.

The DMK government has alleged that Mr Ravi behaves like an agent of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh (RSS) and the BJP. 

He could never “get over this image of someone who bulldozed his corporate rivals, managed to always procure the licences he wanted and got the government of the day to set duty rates that suited him. He had to fight the law enforcement agencies on charges of smuggling in a new polyester filament yarn plant and how companies registered in the tax haven, Isle of Man, with names like Crocodile Investments and Fiasco Investments had purchased Reliance shares at one-fifth their market prices…His political connections had even given birth to a popular joke which divided the country’s politicians in two groups: R-positive and R-negative.”

This lengthy excerpt is from a column by leading commentator Shyamal Majumdar on the legacy of Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of Reliance Industries.

VP Singh, who became India’s eighth Prime Minister, was one of the prominent ‘R-negative’ politicians of that time.

Taking Sides May Not Always Work

As Finance Minister and later, the key challenger to Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress in the lead-up to the 1989 Lok Sabha election, VP Singh employed various tactics against Dhirubhai Ambani. He positioned himself as a corruption slayer who spared no one. It’s widely known that his anti-Dhirubhai stance received generous support from a rival corporate lobby and certain sections of the media.

However, the 1989 election results didn’t provide the resounding mandate that VP Singh and his supporters had hoped for. His Janata Dal managed only 143 of 543 seats, with a vote share of less than 18 per cent. Except for a decent performance in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Karnataka, and Rajasthan, the party flopped in other states. His strategy of targeting big business failed to resonate with voters, even when national sentiment had turned against the Congress.

There is a lesson here for Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, when it comes to the VP Singh playbook of taking sides in corporate rivalries. While it may align you with one group over others, anti-business sentiment doesn’t find many supporters in the country. 

Limitations Of Mandal politics

On the campaign trail, VP Singh wore the badge of Mr. Clean. As Prime Minister, he tried to be a social justice messiah by implementing the recommendations of the Mandal Commission reserving 27 per cent government jobs for Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

“Mandal politics” had a lasting impact on India’s political dynamics. The Janata Dal and its various state-specific factions did win elections in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, and Karnataka. However, these parties struggled with a significant electoral handicap – they never managed to secure more than a third of the total votes on their own.

Even the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) led by Lalu Yadav, considered one of the most successful exponents of Mandal politics, couldn’t overcome this limitation. The RJD’s best-ever Lok Sabha performance was in 2004 when it won 22 seats with a vote share of nearly 31 per cent. In assembly polls, its best performance was in 2000, with just over 28 per cent of the votes.

The Samajwadi Party (SP), another advocate of Mandal politics, faced similar challenges. Its highest vote share was in the 2022 assembly polls, when it secured just over 32 percent of the votes.

State-specific iterations of Mandal politics, such as the RJD and the SP, failed to garner support from all OBC groups. In fact, a significant section of less dominant and more deprived OBCs grew dissatisfied with this brand of politics. This disenchanted group played a role in the BJP’s resounding victories in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Data from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) shows that nearly half of the numerically significant non-dominant OBCs voted for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

This brings us to another point that Rahul Gandhi must be wise to. The yet-to-be-published 2011 caste census reportedly revealed approximately 46 lakh caste categories, as reported in leading newspapers at the time. Assuming that roughly half of these categories belong to the OBCs, in proportion to their population share, it means that when we refer to OBCs, we are essentially talking about a diverse group of 15-20 lakh social categories.

Each group has distinct challenges and aspirations. Their political allegiances depend on what is on offer. Moreover, there is fierce competition among proximate castes or groups closer to each other in the traditional hierarchy. Attempting to unify them under one banner and expecting them to vote together may be unrealistic. That is why Mandal parties had limited appeal in the past, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. Rahul Gandhi should bear this in mind when applying the VP Singh playbook from the late 1980s and early 1990s in 2023-24.

Finally, a disclaimer and a related observation that made me rethink the electoral appeal of Mandal 2.0.

I have seen the Mandal phenomenon altering the basic grammar of India’s politics in ways not much else could. That is the reason I anticipated a significant buzz the day the Bihar caste census data was released. One way to gauge this was by examining Google Trend data on that day. To my surprise, among the top searches in India that day, the Bihar caste census ranked a low 13. Even a nondescript cricket match and the wedding of Pakistani actress Mahira Khan caught more attention. 

(Mayank Mishra is Consulting Editor, NDTV.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.

Opposition MPs in the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs have questioned the “haste” in adopting the draft reports on the three bills to replace the IPC, CrPC and the Evidence Act, as a meeting has been called later this week for the purpose.

The committee, which is examining the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bills, has informed its members through a notice that the draft reports will be adopted on October 27.

According to sources, at least two opposition MPs have written to the panel’s chairperson raising concerns about the process of scrutiny of the bills and have also urged him to postpone the meeting.

Questioning the “haste”, both the MPs have said that they did not get enough time to go through the three reports which were sent to them only on the late evening of October 21.

Members of the panel who belong to parties of the opposition INDIA bloc are set to submit dissent notes against adopting the reports. In the 30-member panel, the BJP has 16 members.

Opposition MPs, who have in the past raised questions over the experts being called for examination, have questioned the short notice for calling the meeting even as a number of experts suggested by them are yet to be called.

One of the opposition MPs, in his letter to the panel chairperson, pointed at an “alarming lack” of consultation with stakeholders and shared a list of experts that had been suggested by them for examination.

Former Chief Justice of India U U Lalit, retired Supreme Court judge Justice Madan B Lokur, eminent jurist Fali Nariman, Senior Advocate Rebecca John and Advocate Menaka Guruswamy are among the names included in the list.

Requesting postponement of the panel’s meeting, another opposition MP pointed out that the draft report was sent in the middle of festivals even though the next Parliament session is at least four weeks away.

TMC MPs in the panel have, meanwhile, raised concern over the meeting being called a day before Lakshmi Puja which is celebrated in Bengal a few days after Durga Puja.

“It shows that the BJP does not understand anything about the culture of Bengal,” said a TMC MP, who is a part of the parliamentary panel.

Raising concern about the bills, an opposition MP alleged that these proposed laws which are meant to replace the colonial-era procedural laws are “even more colonial”.

The 30-member Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has 16 BJP MPs including the chairperson, four of the Congress, two each of DMK, TMC, JD(U) and BJD, and one of the Shiv Sena.

It was given three months to examine the three bills and submit its report after Home Minister Amit Shah had requested the Lok Sabha chair to refer the bills to the panel for threadbare examination. In the 11 meetings held so far, the panel took the views of various experts, including the Law Commission.

The IPC and the Evidence Act are colonial-era procedural laws that form the backbone of Indian criminal jurisprudence along with CrPC.