CBI action against IB will hit VVIP security (Sunday Guardian)

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 8th Feb 2014

Ranjit Sinha s many as six senior cadre police officers from sensitive states warned in confidence that the "CBI's effort to prosecute and jail four Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case can damage intelligence sharing and cooperation" between the IB and state police units. As a consequence, "insufficient information will flow upwards about perceived threats to important political leaders", with Narendra Modi at the top of the list of VVIPs threatened by the CBI's action. These officers claimed that "IB director Asif Ibrahim had warned higher-ups several times about the harmful consequences of CBI director Ranjit Sinha's witch-hunt against IB officers" and that "even the Prime Minister appreciated the situation, but (that) Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde insisted on the charge sheets being filed". They said that "several IB officers from sensitive states have met the DIB and told him that state police are now more and more refusing to act on IB requests out of fear of future prosecution". They warned Ibrahim, who is known to be an upright and effective officer, that even the flow of threat information will dry up," as field operatives will refuse to send such data up the chain for fear of being judicially penalised if these reports are subsequently shown to be wrong. A senior officer pointed out that "out of every 25 reported threats only one may be genuine, but all 25 will need to get investigated in order to foil that plot". This, his colleagues added, is what will not happen anymore. Already, they claim, field information is drying up," that too in the high-risk environment of national polls and pell-mell movement of VVIPs. They pointed out that the IB, often orally, requests state police to release informers from jail by diluting the charges against them, or to pick up suspects for interrogation or to participate in encounters with terror modules. "State police units, after seeing what happened to their Gujarat brethren will now refuse to act unless orders are given in writing from higher-ups. This delay and complication in procedure will affect success in counter-terror operations," an officer warned. An officer claimed that "CBI director Ranjit Sinha has a grouse against the IB for (allegedly) sending negative reports about him while he was in state service and seeking to block his promotion and transfer to Delhi to the Railways". However, another officer said that Sinha "was an outstanding official and cannot be said to have a personal grouse against the IB. In fact, he has made his anguish (about filing the charge sheet against the IB officers) public". Although police sources said that Shinde "took the CBI's side against the IB" in the matter of prosecution of the four intelligence operatives, no confirmation of that could be secured. However, what is clear is that Shinde does have substantial influence in such matters, given that the cadre controlling authority for the IPS is the Ministry of Home Affairs. Interestingly, Deputy National Security Adviser Nehchal Sandhu (formerly IB director) was "questioned for six hours by the CBI because some of the input in the (Ishrat Jahan) encounter came from his office". At that time, Sandhu was Joint Director in charge of Operations at IB headquarters, and it is known that source information in the case came from his office, reportedly on the basis of intelligence received from Kashmir. However, the CBI decided not to pursue the matter against Sandhu, who is well regarded in the PMO, any further. These officers rubbished CBI claims that the IB officers "planted an AK-47 on those killed in the encounter", although they admitted that "sustained interrogation may force some people to say anything in order to escape". Pointing out that "even the CBI has admitted that two of the four killed were Pakistani terrorists", they asked if it was the CBI's contention that there were no threats to Narendra Modi when in fact, "he is the politician at greatest risk in the whole country, more so than even the PM". By the CBI's debunking past IB reports of terror operations targeting Modi, "field personnel are now wary of sending data they are getting about new threats" to Modi. Police officers warn that "the breakdown in the smooth flow of threat information and the breakdown of operational cohesion (between the IB and state police units) caused by the witch-hunt of the Gujarat-based cadre has sharply increased the risk to Modi", as well as, on a lower threat scale, other top political leaders, including Rahul Gandhi. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/cbi-action-against-ib-will-hit-vvip-security

Syria blowback: Regional Hezbollahs (Pakistan Observer)

MD Nalapat. Friday, February 07, 2014 - Less than two months into the BBC-CNN-Al Jazeera-promoted “Arab Spring” that followed the Bouazizi self-immolation during the final days of 2010,this columnist predicted that the upsurge would soon morph into a Wahabbi winter. This was either ignored or derided by the Usual Experts, who were similarly dismissive when the prediction was made (including in these columns) that the removal of Muammar Kaddafy in the manner accomplished by NATO would make Libya a cesspit for the breeding of Al Qaeda. 

When the focus of NATO switched from Tripoli to Damascus in furtherance of that alliance’s tacit War on the Shia,a forecast was made that after seeing the disintegration of everyday life in Libya, most Syrians would back Bashar Al-Assad and his team, despite that regime’s incompetence in running the Syrian economy, and that assistance to the Doha-Ankara-Riyadh project of replacing the secular Assad with a Wahabbi leader would create a new playground for Al Qaeda. It takes enormous chutzpah for a Secretary of State to make statements such as “the presence of Assad is what is attracting extremist fighters” when it has been the cash, weapons and training provided to what from the start were clearly Al Qaeda elements by Qatar, Turkey, France and other powers that have energized this old enemy of the civilised world.

After having failed to unseat Bashar Al-Assad through the sending into combat of tens of thousands of extremists drawn from more than sixty countries, including the US, Germany, the UK, India, Pakistan, Russia and France, NATO is pinning its hope on Moscow. That capital has since the time when Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union sought to get certified as a “Good European”. Such a certification has been elusive, for the simple reason that it will come about only after Moscow accepts in full the agenda set out for it by NATO. Even Gorbachev and Yeltsin could not succeed in subordinating Russian interests to NATO commands to a degree more than 70%, which is why they were unable to earn the only tag they prized, being accepted as “Good Europeans” by the European Union. The level of Moscow’s acquiescence to NATO’s geopolitical imperatives was only about 40%, but by ensuring that Bashar Al-Assad surrender his chemical weapons, that level has reached 50%. Should Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is clearly in the Gorbachev-Yeltsin mould, persuade President Vladimir Putin to pressure Damascus further into accepting an “interim govt” sans Assad, that proportion would rise to a level close to the 70% level accomplished under Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

This columnist is an admirer of the countries within the NATO bloc, although that may not be immediately obvious from some of his writings. He regards as essential for both sides a close alliance between India and the key countries of North America and Europe, except that such a partnership will need to be on terms that are far more equitable than what is presently on offer. Societally, several members of the NATO bloc have progressed far beyond their counterparts in other continents in ensuring a better and a more independent life to their citizens. Indeed, in the UK, it has been more than a thousand years since the Magna Carta enshrined the rights of the people against the autocratic will of the monarch. The independence of spirit and ability to take personal initiatives by UK citizens, as distinct from more regimented societies such as Spain, ensured that it was the British rather than the Spanish empire that straddled the globe, and that it was British ingenuity that powered several of the inventions which made the Industrial Revolution possible. Sadly, the common sense of the British people got replaced by Teuton exclusivity when it came to the running of the empire,so that India for example was deliberately impoverished so as to prevent it from competing with England in manufactures and services, when the contrary policy - of assisting enterprise on the subcontinent - would have vastly expanded the market for British goods.

Similarly, had India been given the status of Canada or Australia after World War I, the UK may still have been at the core of the global order, rather than on the periphery as it is now NATO’s War on the Shia is misconceived and destructive to its own security interests. Its obsession with facilitating the private agendas of a few rulers in West Asia is leading it towards policies that could destabilize the entire region.Syria is a case in point. Because of the torrent of weapons and cash that has flowed from Ankara, Doha and Riyadh to “freedom fighters” active in the killing fields of Syria, the insurgency in Iraq has gor energized, and today poses a severe threat to the stability of a country that has suffered torture ever since Saddam Hussein seized power four decades ago. Libya has become a training ground for extremists with an eye on Europe, as has Syria.

However, the graver threat is the pressure created by the sectarian agenda of NATO (which is reminiscent of Ariel Sharon’s folly in Lebanon in the 1980s). Should the alliance and is regional allies continue with their backing for a Libya-style solution in Syria, what is likely is that clones of Hezbollah will sprout in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and Turkey. In each of these countries, elements of the local population are so angered by the extremist mobilisation supported by their own governments that several are on the verge of becoming militants themselves. Should networks ensure that weapons, cash and training flow to them the way such assistance has to Wahabbi fighters in Syria, in less than a year, full-blown insurgency will erupt in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Bahrain. This will be very bad news for the entire globe, including South Asia, which has sent more than ten million of its citizens to the region to work in offices and factories.

Isaac Newton warned that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In their schoolboyish zeal to enforce a 21st century version of Sykes-Picot, John Kerry and his friends and allies are at risk of unleashing mayhem in the region, in the form of the sprouting of clones of Hezbollah in countries that have thus far escaped the pain that is being witnessed by citizens in Lebanon.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=232802

India does not need another V.P. Singh (Sunday Times)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat V.P. Singh lthough the Aam Aadmi Party has often descended into burlesque while luxuriating in the afterglow of ex-Income-Tax assistant commissioner Arvind Kejriwal getting transformed into the Honourable Chief Minister of Delhi, overall the citizens of this country have much to be grateful about in its rise. Most importantly, it has shown that — with a little help from the media — it is possible to fight and win elections on a significant scale, even if unable to access the huge pools of cash that major political parties in India possess. That voters have a better choice than choosing between a candidate who has made Rs 500 crore in unaccounted assets and another who is a relative pauper at Rs 100 crore of tax-dodging money. That the Indian middle class, now at 300 million strong, or just about equal to the number of utter destitute that this country still houses after close to seven decades of "freedom", has finally realised that it can have a voice that is sometimes the deciding factor in elections, and that there is no more need to sit at home and glumly watch television as one crooked candidate after the other notches up large margins of victory. Whatever one might say about Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, Captain Gopinath, Meera Sanyal or others prominent in the AAP, it is not that they entered politics because their parents discovered that they were unfit to hold any other job. Should the AAP tally in the Lok Sabha polls fall below 20, which is the estimate of this columnist, it is unlikely to make a game-changing difference in the ensuing elections. However, should it nudge close to 50, the chances are that such a spurt would keep the Bharatiya Janta Party's tally to well below the psychological level of 220 needed for an effective Narendra Modi-led government. Should his associates in the highest echelon of the BJP concur, Modi can become the PM even if his party gets 180 seats, given the bandwagon effect on smaller parties eager to hop onto the gravy-laden power train. However, in such a situation, he will be as hobbled as Team Vajpayee was in 1998. Of course, in 1999, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee continued governing the country as though he were still only a short distance away from disaster, and the resulting loss of momentum caused the decline in both cadre as well as public confidence which saw the UPA defeat the NDA in 2004. The 2009 BJP was the same as the 2004 mix, and suffered the same fate. But for a new prime ministerial candidate, the 2014 BJP is identical to the 2009 party, with the same faces holding the same responsibilities as then. Any number of thundering speeches by Narendra Modi in the company of Lata Mangeshkar and other 1960s' faces will not wipe away consciousness of this fact in the minds of most of the voters, especially if the same candidates of 2004 and 2009 get fielded this time around as well. { V.P. Singh was even more passionate about expressing his desire to rid the country of the demon of corruption than Arvind Kejriwal. Previously, during 1987-89, the big brown hope of India was Vishwanath Pratap Singh. The Raja of Manda was even more passionate about expressing his desire to rid the country of the demon of corruption than Arvind Kejriwal (who does not seem to have unearthed a single corrupt officer in the bloated Delhi administration after nearly six weeks in office). Who can forget Singh's promise that he would "get the guilty of Bofors" within a few weeks of assuming office? Instead, his closest associate in the government was Arun Nehru, whose name has often been whispered in connection with backchannel negotiations on the Bofors deal, and who was certainly no outsider when it came to Team Rajiv. Indeed, it was Arun Nehru, who by 1983 had managed to drive away the earlier members of Team Rajiv, replacing them with party hacks. After having a significant share in the transformation of Rajiv Gandhi from idealistic outsider to compromising insider, Arun Nehru's next victory was over V.P. Singh, who failed while in office to bring to book any of the culprits of Bofors he had been talking about on the campaign trail. The question is: Who will be the next Rajiv Gandhi, and will there be another Arun Nehru by his side? Will those guilty of the horrendous scams of at least the past 20 years be punished (they have, most of them, already been identified), or will they escape, the way V.P. Singh (and indeed, P.V. Narasimha Rao and A.B. Vajpayee) allowed the guilty of Bofors to escape? This time around, the country will not allow such an abdication of accountability. Even if the AAP does nothing other than talk, which seems to be the case at present, its very emergence has shown that civil society in India is no longer in the mood for excuses. The next Prime Minister had better deliver justice to this country's major league scamsters, for his or her own sake. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/india-does-not-need-another-vp-singh

Video NewsX: India Debates: Has identity politics pitted Indian against Indian

Why is Amnesty silent on Snowden? (Pakistan Observer)

MD Nalapat. Friday, January 31, 2014 - It was in this column in the Pakistan Observer that the world was first made aware of the fact that the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States has been snooping on non-NATO companies, mostly based in Asia but a few in South America and Africa as well. The only purpose behind such interception of data from these commercial entities is to give NATO-based corporates an unfair advantage over competitors from regions that historically have been considered as secondary. While George W Bush’s “War on Terror” has been put forward as the only reason why the NSA spies on millions across the globe, the fact is that it is the terror of losing ground to commercial competitors in China, Japan, Korea, India and Brazil that is driving the bulk of the NSA snooping programmes. President Barack Obama is implementing “Beggar my Neighbour” policies with a vengeance, the only difference being that he is working on behalf of the NATO bloc as a whole ( the “civilised world”) against the rest of the members of the global community.

That race is the basis of NATO and of US policy is clear from the fact that Japanese companies are never given the benefit of such unethical and illegal (in terms of international law) commercial espionage, although German companies are. Or that data is shared with Australia and New Zealand but not with Singapore or India. It was expected that the racism inherent in the policy of NATO, in particular the US, would get diluted because Barack Obama was elected President of the United States in the final weeks of 2008.Instead, Obama has deepened and broadened the institutional racism practised by the US and its NATO allies.

Interestingly, the Government of India has done nothing -repeat, nothing - to assist domestic companies to protect themselves against the commercial snooping done by the NSA and other NATO-based intelligence networks. In the 1960s,it was Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Asoka Mehta, another of the many “socialists” who specialised in toeing the Washington line - who vulgarly spoke of “India’s womb (needing to be) opened for the US”. His soul will be happy to see the way in which Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh have fulfilled his dream. The two have systematically destroyed the competitiveness of domestic industry for the benefit of overseas - mostly NATO bloc - entities, assisted by hand-picked choices in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the relevant ministries and agencies, who have been taught since their university days that “what is good for the NATO bloc is what is best for India”. RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan a few days ago further damaged the competitiveness of domestic companies in India by once again raising interest rates to “fight inflation”. Not being a moron, Rajan is fully aware that high interest rates are useless against the forms of inflation seen in India, and indeed, contribute to inflation by raising the costs of doing business. Raghuram Rajan’s interest is not the welfare of India but that of the US, country that he will return to after helping NATO bloc companies and financial institutions enter, in Asoka Mehta’s words, the very womb of the Indian economy.

Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh have continued the policy of punishing the locals to benefit the foreigner which has been pursued since the time of Jawaharlal Nehru, but none before them have done so as successfully and transparently as they have. Since 2004,the fetish about getting back and placing into high positions experts trained in the NATO-bloc has grown in India to a level seen in recent years only in China. There too, US-trained or EU-trained experts fill top jobs to the virtual exclusion of those trained within China, with the consequence that the economy of that country is at risk of a sharp slowdown caused by policies framed by US-EU returnees that are, Raghuram Rajan-style ,designed to help the NATO bloc at the expense of their own country. This despite the fact that the Chinese worker is among the hardest working on the globe, working as long and as hard as German and Japanese workers used to do in the past What has become clear as a consequence of the disclosures by Edward Snowden is that state and private companies across three continents need to beware of the widespread use of US platforms such as Google, Yahoo! and Hotmail.

Even top executives routinely use these tainted platforms to send and receive mail and date, thereby exposing themselves to snooping by the NSA, which clearly has an interest in ensuring that the information collected gets transmitted to companies based within the NATO bloc. Were the WTO a truly unbiased body, an appeal could have been made to it about this grossly unfair commercial usage of national intelligence agencies to secure data wholly unrelated to security threats. However, the WTO is as dominated by the NATO bloc as is the UN Security Council or the so-called International Court of Justice. What needs to be done is for countries such as Japan and India to get together and work on internet platforms that are uncompromised by the need to reveal all to NATO-based intelligence agencies in the name of fighting terrorism. India and Japan together have the skills needed for such secure platforms, the setting up of which is essential in order to ensure a more level playing field for companies based in Asia who are battling for market share with counterparts in the NATO bloc, especially in the US, France, the UK and Germany. Given the racial bias of such cooperation within the “civilised world”, both India and Japan have been excluded from the benefits of access to business-oriented NSA data. They need to retaliate not by mere statements (which in the case of both have been anodyne) but by setting up alternative platforms that can challenge those in the US.

The collecting of data on private individuals andcorporates, information that has no relation to security, is not only a breach of international law, but is a violation of human rights of populations targeted by the snooping agencies. However, dont hold your breath about any of “human rights organisations” such as Amnesty International taking up issue. These battle on behalf of NATO, not against its core objective of retaining dominance well into the 21st century.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=232076

The Nehru era returns, this time as AAP (Sunday Guardian)

ROOTS OF POWER MADHAV NALAPAT www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

everal of those who are members of the year-old Aam Aadmi Party were not born that sorry day in 1964 when Jawaharlal Nehru finally gave up clinging to life. As in the case of Atal Behari Vajpayee in 2003, had Jawaharlal Nehru demitted office in his prime in 1958, his reputation in history may have been a tad better. From that year, he began to lose focus and made a series of mistakes, including the dismissal of the world's first popularly-elected Communist government in Kerala in 1959, and the diplomatic and military disaster that culminated in the PLA's victories in 1962. Believing those around them who wail that they are indispensable and therefore in a sense indestructible, all too many leaders continue in office well beyond the period when their health or their common sense equips them for such a role. History, whether written by historians within the country or outside, has indeed been kind to Nehru, omitting the fact that he continued with the colonial system of law and administration in a context where these constructs impeded rather than encouraged progress. So total was his faith in what the British left behind that even a Girija Shankar Bajpai, who lobbied long and aggressively in Washington against Indian independence, was given the lead role in the determination of foreign policy. About the only "de-colonisation" which took place was the replacement of the Union Jack with the Tricolour, and brown folks inhabiting the stately official residences and offices which formerly were the preserve of white overlords. Despite strenuous efforts by the British to choke Indian business to a pygmy status, in 1947, private business houses in India were more than the equal of those in Japan or even most countries in Europe. The House of Tata, the House of Birla, as well as several others saw independence as the gateway towards spreading across the globe, thereby giving jobs and prosperity to millions. However, this was not what Nehru had in mind. He chopped and pruned private Indian industry such that by the time he passed away, Japan, South Korea and even Thailand had a business sector that was far more vibrant and diversified than their Indian counterparts. Interestingly, after a few tentative steps at reform beginning in 1992 and continued since then, the Manmohan Singh government has steadily returned the economy and the country towards the Nehruvian period of the state having a smothering degree of control over private industry. The high interest rates, high taxation and high degree of regulation that has been the signature tune of Manmohan Singh and his principal economic sidekick Palaniappan Chidambaram have destroyed manufacturing in India and slowed down the growth of the services industry. Successive — and carefully chosen — governors of the Reserve Bank of India, including the present, have delighted the overseas competitors of Indian companies by the way in which they have boosted interest rates. { Kejriwal and his party seek to revive the 1950s in India, despite the fact that a considerable degree of silt has been deposited in the banks of the Jamna since then. The manner in which he has re-introduced the Licence Raj has given Manmohan Singh the distinction of being the first Nehruvian in India. However, that sobriquet is in danger of being snatched away from him, for a challenger has come up who has even more contempt for the Indian private sector than he has, and who regards the whip of control preferable to the use of non-coercive reason as being the best way to manage the people of India. This Nehruvian par excellence is Arvind Kejriwal. He and his party seek to revive the 1950s in India, despite the fact that a considerable degree of silt has been deposited in the banks of the Jamna (Yamuna) since then. Were Arvind Kejriwal to achieve his obvious ambition of becoming the Prime Minister of India (rather than a mere Chief Minister), he would choke private industry in India as effectively as Jawaharlal Nehru did. The police in Delhi do not seem to like Kejriwal. In fact, the tenets he and his associates espouse would make the police even more powerful than they are in a country where colonial-era law and practices is still the norm. The more things change, the more they seem to remain the same. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/the-nehru-era-returns-this-time-as-aap

Modimatics: Minimum 240, target 300 (Sunday Guardian)

Surveys are being conducted of 380 constituencies where it is expected that the BJP has a chance.

MADHAV NALAPAT  New Delhi | 25th Jan 2014

BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi holds a bow and arrow as party President Rajnath Singh displays a mace during a rally at Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday. PTI arendra Modi has begun consolidating his leadership within the BJP, decentralising operations to centres such as Mumbai, Hyderabad and Lucknow, where formerly all operations were controlled and monitored from Delhi. Surveys are being conducted of 380 constituencies where it is expected that the BJP has a chance of winning, and in each, names are being vetted who would add an extra boost to the campaign if nominated as the party candidate, rather than drag down the ticket. This is in the context of reports that several seats were lost in Delhi and Chhattisgarh because of poor choice of candidates, including some who "bought their nomination". The target is to secure 300 seats for the BJP alone, or in the "worst case" scenario, 240. Preliminary calculations indicate that any tally beyond 200 for the party will ensure either the BJP leads the government, or that any alternative government would collapse in a couple of years, leading to a fresh election that the BJP would sweep. However, rather than 2016 or Rahul Gandhi's reminder to his flock about 2019, the intention is to "win now, and win big". A BJP tally beyond 220 would "ensure that Prime Minister Modi has a strong hand to effect needed reforms", a key strategist claimed, adding that "any tally above 240 would put him in a position where he would smoothly be able to fulfil his promise of prosperity with security and stability" to the voter. Aware that the BJP has become an enervated outfit, with cadre activity considerably reduced since Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee took a conscious decision in 2001 to move away from the saffron model towards a more Congress model of party development, Team Modi has been busy setting in place its own framework for the implementation of Vision 2014, which is the securing not just of 272 Lok Sabha seats, but 300. BJP strategists are aware that cadre disenchantment with the functioning of the Vajpayee government contributed to the party's defeat in 2004. BJP Prime Minister designate Narendra Modi is aware that a high tally is essential for him to have the credibility and depth of institutional support needed to achieve his plan of re-organisation of the working of government agencies. While the BJP may still be enabled to lead the next government should its tally be as low as 180 seats, some of its senior leaders are talking of a "last mile" strategy where they, rather than Modi, would be projected as the PM designate "in order to get enough allies to secure a majority in the Lok Sabha". The downside is that such a government would in effect be a continuation of the past, and therefore a severe disappointment to those who voted for change by opting for Modi. "It would weaken the BJP. There is no option to Modi. Either he becomes PM or Leader of the Opposition", said a strategist. A number cruncher revealed that a Modi-less BJP "would get less than 110 seats", while a BJP with Modi fully in command would "comfortably cross 240 and could reach 300", hence the significance of the projection of Modi as PM. { The Congress Party is likely to cross double-digit wins only in Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka and Assam, according to number crunchers active in assessing the situation. Indications are that a Modi-led government would be very different from the "politician-heavy" governments that have been in vogue since 1947. The names of technocrats and experts such as Deepak Parekh, General V.K. Singh and even scientist Anil Kakodkar are doing the rounds as possible entrants, although all of this remains speculation. What is clear is that a Modi-led government would "function under his leadership and in fulfilment of his promises to the electorate", rather than — as with the Manmohan Singh Council of Ministers — be a collection of "feudal lords, each jealously safeguarding their independence from the Prime Minister's Office". The Congress Party is likely to cross double-digit wins only in Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka and Assam, according to number crunchers active in assessing the situation. "Modiji's twin strengths are clean government and strong growth." In his estimate, "If the Aam Aadmi Party gains 25 Lok Sabha seats, it means a loss to Congress of 50 seats and to the BJP of 30 seats." This could cost Modi either the PM-ship or the capacity to run the government with the freedom he needs to perform. Hence the effort to ensure that the AAP does not act the spoiler by poaching on the swelling vote banks being built up by the Modi for PM campaign, especially in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, cities where they are hoping to win seats by persuading voters "that AAP is stronger on fighting corruption and the Congress Party" than Modi. "We have to see that the AAP tally is within single digits," a key strategist said, adding that "in the weeks ahead, it will be clear that to fight Communalism, Corruption and Congress, the best bet is Narendra Modi and not Kejriwal." The leaders hand-picked by L.K. Advani to assist him in leading the party into the 21st century are without much of a base in their home states, a list which includes Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Venkaiah Naidu, Yashwant Sinha, Ananth Kumar and Rajnath Singh. Those privy to the thinking of the "Delhi Group" within the BJP say that their own forecast is that "the BJP will get around 170-180 seats, which in their view means that one of them (with Jaitley and Rajnath being the frontrunners) can become the PM, in a context where they expect (or hope) that Modi will not be able to cobble together a majority if he is projected as the PM candidate". While Narendra Modi himself is silent on possible post-poll outcomes, a strategist claimed that in the event of a lower seat tally, "we will seek to persuade him to serve as Leader of the Opposition", in the expectation that "a hodge-podge government will rapidly lose public support" and pave the way for fresh elections "where there will be a big majority for Modi". They are unanimous that there is no point in the BJP being part of any government "unless the comprehensive growth and reform agenda of Narendra Modi can get implemented". For this, the calculation is that the BJP needs "240 seats, so that the centre of gravity is with the BJP". Calculations made on the basis of ground-level research suggest that "in UP, 45 Lok Sabha seats are feasible, and 25 in Bihar", according to these strategists, who say that "this time around, there could be a clean sweep in MP and Gujarat, while in Rajasthan the only non-BJP seat will be that of the late Sis Ram Ola". They place the number of alliance seats in Maharashtra at 35, while the BJP is expected to get 17 seats in Karnataka. The expectation is that the alliance will get at least 7 seats in Haryana, as well as all except two seats in Punjab, and four in Delhi. Although outside analysts regard this as improbable, number-crunchers working towards a 300-seat verdict claim that the BJP will on its own win three seats in Orissa and two in Andhra Pradesh. They see "a clear preference for Narendra Modi" in the electorate this time, "similar to that for Indira Gandhi in 1971". A senior strategist dismissed the AAP as "promising circuses for the people while Modi promises bread". http://www.sunday-guardian.com/investigation/modimatics-minimum-240-target-300