Arrogant Princes

POLITICAL relationships need to be nurtured and handled with care and affection. There is no place for arrogance. This dictum isn’t present in the books of the opposition leaders. Former Chief Minister of UP, Akhilesh Yadav and Congress’s Rahul Gandhi are out of power, but they behave like ruling princes. The duo went Bengaluru for the oath-taking ceremony of Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy. The event should have brought them closer, but reports indicate that the gap between the two has widened. In fact, Tejashwi Yadav, Sitaram Yechury and Arvind Kejriwal were staying in the same hotel. Akhilesh personally held long discussions with them. Sources disclosed that Rahul’s man Friday, Kaushal Vidyarthi, called on Akhilesh and conveyed his boss’s wish for a meeting at the former’s hotel. Akhilesh, who normally controls his anger, was miffed: “Bhaiya (Rahul) wants to meet me and then issues an order. After all, I am also the President of my party, so why can’t Bhaiya come over to my hotel?” Rahul, who thinks he is the President of a larger, national party, could not digest such a reply from a junior partner. Since then, there is an eerie silence between the two leaders.