Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'People endorse demonetization' that was published in Newsband

People endorse demonetization

In the 2017 civic polls in Maharashtra, except for Thane, where the Shiv Sena managed a comfortable victory, and Mumbai, where it squeaked ahead of the Bharatiya Janata Party by two seats. The BJP won every city corporation easily. Of the 1,268 municipal seats, the party won 628, The Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party were reduced to minor players in most of the corporations. In Mumbai, the Shiv Sena has, for the first time since it came to power nearly 25 years ago, seen a close competitor in the BJP.

The politics of regional identity and patronage may have helped the Sena become the single largest party in India’s richest municipal corporation. Its dismal performance in ensuring civic works, with sanitation, infrastructure, public health and education has angered a big section of people.

Clearly, the BJP has become the central pole of Indian politics, a position the Congress occupied for a long time. Regional leaders like Devendra Fadnavis and Shivraj Singh Chouhan should get the credit for this. Now the message is very clear and people voted both BJP and SS and hope both Parties will respect the verdict and continue to work in tandem or else suffer the fate like Congress and NCP

People certainly endorse demonetization, as seen by BJP's victories in civic polls successively. In Maharashtra, the people see Congress and NCP as corrupt and Sena as chauvinistic. Congress is losing major states one by one due to incompetent leadership at national as well as state level.

The spate of recent victories by the BJP in various polls across the country is significant. The icing on the cake so far has been the results from Maharashtra in the civic polls. It was the opposition and certain media that described the polls as a referendum on 'demonetization' and now that the results are out, they cannot withdraw from that position and claim that the wins do 'not reflect a popular endorsement of the demonetisation move'.

As far as the pathetic performance of the INC is concerned, it is obvious that the Rahul Gandhi’s leadership is very uninspiring and he is blocking the way for a more competent leader to take charge and rejuvenate the party. There has been a continuous slide in the last five years since Rahul Gandhi assumed centre-stage and there is no INC leader with a spine to bell the cat. The less said about the Communists, the better. They are mercifully decimated and out of sight and that augurs well for the nation.