THE results of the elections to the state assemblies have been declared. The BJP has failed to reach its declared target towards achieving which it was furiously campaigning: forming its own government in both the states. Its much advertised `Operation 44 +’ in Jammu & Kashmir did not evoke the enthusiasm amongst the voters that it had worked for. It drew a blank in the Kashmir valley.

ON December 7, 2014, Prime Minister Modi called a meeting of the chief ministers with the agenda `Replacing Planning Commission’. He was, thus, implementing his decision to dismantle the Planning Commission without any prior consultations with the elected chief ministers of the Indian states.

WHEN Narendra Modi won the internal battles and was projected as the RSS/BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections, this column had the occasion to state that the RSS had finally decided to discard its “mukhota”. When the prime protagonist of the 2002 Gujarat communal carnage has been assigned this task by the RSS/BJP, it was clear that they no longer required a mukhota to mask the pursuit of their real agenda – the transformation of the modern Indian secular democratic Republic into the RSS vision of a rabidly intolerant fascistic `Hindu Rashtra’.

WITHIN six months of assuming office, the Modi government has been expanded with the induction of 21 new ministers in the council of ministers. This takes the total strength of the cabinet to 66. Of these, two are not members of either house of the parliament at the moment. Our constitution provides that such persons can hold office for a maximum period of six months before which they will have to be elected to either house.

ONE after another, all the election promises made by Prime Minister Modi during his whirlwind nationwide campaign, in a corporate jet, are turning out to be completely hollow – full of bluster and no substance.  On earlier occasions, we had exposed the feature of this Modi government with regard to its so-called `economic miracles’, achhe din aanewale hain etc etc.  Now it is the turn of the prime minister’s bluster concerning the claim that `his government’ will ensure that all the illegal black money stashed away in foreign banks in financial `havens’ will be brought back to the