Glasshouse

FAREWELL, COMRADE

Aday after election results pronounced the end of the Left regime in Kerala, outgoing chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan returned to state capital Thiruvananthapuram from his constituency Dharmadom. At the airport, the octogenarian leader was greeted by senior CPI(M) colleagues, a far cry from the heavy security and fanfare that marked his arrival till yesterday. This was not how it was supposed to end. Having survived a scare in his own bastion, Pinarayi appeared weary, smiling only briefly, avoiding any interaction, and leaving in a party vehicle. Once back, the Left veteran did not waste any time, swiftly vacating the CM’s official residence, Cliff House, and moving to a third-floor flat at the party-owned Chintha Apartments, allotted to him in his capacity as a CPI(M) politburo member. Why, if party sources are to be believed, Pinarayi may even refuse Leader of the Opposition position, citing health concerns.

AI-CATCHERS | CHARM INC.

Once mocked for his drone-like speeches, Andhra Pradesh CM N. Chandrababu Naidu is now adopting a more engaging, some may say even amusing, register in his public addresses. At Visakhapatnam, launching the $15 billion (Rs 1.4 lakh crore) Google Cloud AI hub with AdaniConneX and Airtel Nxtra, he quipped: “The world searches on Google. Google has searched and chosen Visakhapatnam.” Calling the hub “Bharat’s growth engine”, he linked it to his 1990s IT push in Hyderabad. Naidu even predicted that AI tutors and doctors would become “routine”, adding that he would soon have to recruit an AI aide to work alongside his four secretaries. In the same vein, he set a September 2028 deadline for the project and publicly nudged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to come and inaugurate it.

UNWISE WORDS

Politics thrives on words, and missteps. Gujarat BJP chief Jagdish Vishwakarma managed to turn a victory speech for the sweeping local body wins into a controversy. His reference to power slipping from the “pallu” of Congress MP Geniben Thakor is now being parsed for tone, intent and gender sensitivity. Vishwakarma insists the remark was political, not personal. Thakor and the Congress are having none of it, and have called for protests. Meanwhile, the Thakor community itself appears to be weighing its response, for now.

FUTURE GAZER

Tej Pratap, Lalu Prasad’s estranged elder son, seems to have rediscovered his political nous months after the defeat in the assembly poll. With his outfit, the Janshakti Janata Dal, getting little traction, and brother Tejashwi Yadav showing little inclination to reopen the doors of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Tej is exploring other options. So, one day, he gets dad Lalu over to cut his birthday cake, on another, he’s at Jan Suraaj chief Prashant Kishor’s doorstep, confabulating on the “shape of future politics”. The latest is a video call with the seer Baba Bageshwar, where he asks him to “see my political future”. As things stand, that might be a prediction too difficult for even the baba to make.

WILD IDEA

A wedding in the core area of the Rajaji Tiger Reserve has put Uttarakhand’s forest department in a spot. The grand preparations for the nuptials of BJP minister Khajan Das’s son—including industrial generators, coolers and a full pandal at Sureshwari Devi temple deep in the jungle—sparked a row over clearances. The department has now booked the temple committee under the Wildlife Protection Act and suspended two officials. The minister claimed tacit approval. The wedding ceremony went ahead, though, but fully stripped of the frills.

—with Jeemon Jacob, Prasad Nichenametla, Jumana Shah, Amitabh Srivastava and Avaneesh Mishra