Rajnath Rising

RAJNATH RISING

Both Sangh Parivar weeklies carry prominent reports of Rajnath Singh's election as BJP president to preside over the next general elections. In their profiles, both the Organiser and Panchjanya highlight his association with the RSS. An article in the Organiser emphasises that he was a "'Bal Swayam Sevak' associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh since 1964".

While Singh's participation in the JP movement and election to the UP state assembly in 1977 are underscored as his first electoral grounding in politics, the fact that he undertook "rewriting history texts and incorporating Vedic Mathematics into the syllabus" during his stint as UP's education minister is dubbed as "major highlights". His famous "Anti-Copying Ordinance" as education minister has also been highlighted as a "turning point" for his political career because it proved that "he was 'the leader with a difference'". While his stints as UP chief minister, Union cabinet minister and BJP president (2006-09) have all been chronicled, the Organiser cover story stresses the challenge he faces to "retrieve lost ground, redeem the party". The report in Panchjanya underlines a motto for him, "sabke saath, sabka saath" (for everyone, with everyone), to carry out his job. Both weeklies, however, appear to have deemed it not fit to provide details of the last three years of Nitin Gadkari's work.

What SHINDE said

The row over Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde's remarks accusing the RSS and the BJP of conducting terror training camps has made both weeklies attack Shinde in their editorials and reports. The editorial in the Organiser alleges that Shinde made this remark in an "eagerness to please Sonia Gandhi". The editorial seeks to substantiate its allegation claiming that Sonia Gandhi has filled "the party and the government with non-Hindus", and highlights the recent appointment of the "IB head" as the latest example of minorities "superseding" other members, creating a situation where of "the top thirty positions in the government, only a handful are held by Hindus in a nation where over eighty per cent of the population is Hindu".

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