25 long years, 25 long weeks

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the BJP's strength in the region, Hindi heartland papers focussed heavily on the sex scandal that erupted during the BJP's 25th anniversary celebrations in Mumbai. Apart from the obligatory lead stories on the day it happened, most had editorials on the subject. In areas like Karnataka, however, the news hardly got noticed, given the focus on the outcome of the panchayat elections, which are widely seen as a signal to which way the wind will blow during the Assembly elections. Later, the terror attack at the IISc campus was the headline in Karnataka papers. Given that the event was in Mumbai, all Marathi papers had it splashed across the front page on each day.

Punjab Kesri had an interesting twist to the story saying other leaders were also caught on the tape and they were worried they'd be exposed as well. The newspaper had an editorial which began by saying that at the time it was writing on the MPs caught up in the sting operation, it had no idea that things would reach such a stage. The day of the episode, the paper's lead story said that the Joshi affair would further increase the power struggle in the party "" this reflected the general sentiment that Joshi had been done in internally.

Dainik Bhaskar's coverage began by saying that the BJP had barely begun to recover from the effects of the Aniruddha Bahal sting operations when this CD turned up. The paper editorialised that the succession of such events in the BJP gave a lot of breathing room to the UPA coalition and said that when Parliament began, most expected the BJP to be a real vocal opposition given the Volcker and other allegations. All that happened, however, was that the party got caught in a series of issues, one after the other. The paper had a picture of LK Advani, Madandas Devi and Pramod Mahajan on the same dais, all looking pensive and staring in different directions.

Rajasthan Patrika's lead headline played on the 25 theme outlined by Advani in his speech, except they dramatised it a bit more. "25 saal ki kamai, 25 saptah mein gawai" (25 years of goodwill squandered in 25 weeks) was the headline. Apart from the usual editorial on the matter, the paper had a box on the BJP's ill-fated alliance with cameras, right from the time Bangaru Laxman was caught accepting a bribe on camera to Dilip Singh Judeo's famous money-is-not-God-but-by-God-it's-no-less. The paper also had a box on how this was the first time the RSS was not represented in such a BJP event since, after Joshi quit, no one else was nominated in his position.