DEFAULT COMRADE: For Chopra (left) and Dikshit victory was a cinch

On March 27, as the results of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections began to come in, it was not the bjp’s defeat but its extent that was the topic of speculation and conversation. The debate was on whether the Congress would cross three figures in the 134-member corporation. The lotus was well and truly in wilt. It couldn’t blame factionalism. The bjp in Delhi famously has more factions than voters, but the Congress is scarcely better. Delhi Congress unit chief Subhash Chopra is not Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit’s most loyal soldier. Yet the duo had enough reasons to celebrate. The city-state’s assembly elections are due in a year and a half and with the bjp decidedly more suicidal than any given bunch of lemmings, the Congress must be mighty confident.

For the BJP, the post-poll routine was familiar. Bihar, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal; you name it they’ve lost it and then resorted to “introspection”—saffron parlance for useless hand-wringing sessions. So it was after municipal power in Delhi too was gone. Mange Ram Garg, the spectacularly unspectacular local bjp president, was by common consensus villain No.1. His only known backer, Minister of State in the pmo Vijay Goel, didn’t escape criticism either. Party leaders exulted that the bjp had got wiped out in Goel’s Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha constituency."

There were the other suspects—the anti-middle class budget, the disappointment with the nda Government, the 43 per cent turnout. The buzz was Garg would “accept moral responsibility” and resign and that Madan Lal Khurana, a politician whose idea of Elysium is probably a dda colony, would be back at the helm. Whatever it does, the bjp better act fast. Chief Minister Dikshit has never looked happier, the bjp’s Dilliwallahs never more glum.

—Ashok Malik

A Cross to Bear

Last week’s biennial Rajya Sabha elections took a toll on party discipline. There were surprise victories for liquor baron Vijay Mallya in Karnataka and rebel Biju Janata Dal candidate Dilip Ray in Orissa. Ray polled 26 votes but scraped through with the bjd’s six second-preference votes, after 14 bjd MLAs cross-voted. The only saving grace for the bjd-bjp was that their official candidates did not lose. The Congress had no such problems, its electoral gamble in Orissa, West Bengal, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh coming unstuck only because it had entered the fray without sufficient numbers. In Bengal Mamata Banerjee held her flock together to get Dinesh Trivedi elected. Laloo Prasad Yadav also won his battle while overseeing the humbling of former rjd president and opposition candidate Ranjan Prasad Yadav. And despite a split in the nda votes, the bjp’s Shatrughan Sinha sneaked through in Bihar.

—Lakshmi Iyer

POWER STRIKE:After the Test win, Chopra has much to cheer about

While the Indian cricket team gets ready to cross the Atlantic and take on the West Indies, its women counterpart has returned from South Africa with a rare prize—a thumping Test victory, its first ever overseas. The team’s first-ever tour of South Africa began with a 1-2 loss of a four-match rain-affected one-day series. But in the one-off Test match in Paarl, the Indians, led by Anjum Chopra, forced the home team to follow on and won by 10 wickets.
The secret to winning on the quicker, bouncier wickets overseas? Just preparation and adjustment. Before the tour, the women trained on practice wickets covered with a mat for higher bounce and boys from coach Tarak Sinha’s club in Delhi steaming in at them. Their South African opposition came at them even more fiercely, but the Indians put up 404 in their first innings and then set their own quick bowlers loose, dismissing the home team for 150 and 266. Chopra says, “Like the men’s team, the South African women are a compact unit and field brilliantly. In fact, women’s teams are like their men’s teams all over the world.” A Test win in South Africa—there’s a cue for Ganguly’s gladiators to take up in the West Indies.