Dear reader, At the time of writing this newsletter, the BJP is gathered in Hyderabad for its National Executive meet, with its deliberations scheduled to conclude later today. The daily newspaper over the past week should have thrown up more than enough issues for the party, which has just added Maharashtra to its long list of acquisitions, to talk about, chew on. On Monday, journalist and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair was arrested for a 2018 tweet in which he shared a clip from a 1980s film by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, master of quirky slice-of-life cinema. The arrest came weeks after he flagged now-suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma's remarks on the Prophet in a TV debate. Zubair's arrest raised grave concerns: Delhi Police, and those in the Central political establishment it reports to, have kept lowering the bar for criminalising free speech, endangering due process and the vital protections it affords to the rights and freedoms of citizens. His arrest is all the more chilling because it is part of a spreading pattern, which, worryingly, also includes the Supreme Court's backward steps on matters that involve citizens' rights vis a vis a transgressing, vindictive state - the SC order that upheld the SIT's clean chit to the Gujarat government in a 2002 case last Friday also gave the explicit cue and exhortation for the FIRs lodged the very next day against those who stood on the side of the petitioners. On Tuesday, Kanhaiya Lal, a tailor, was killed in Udaipur, the crime captured and flaunted by his killers on video. Immediately, rightly, all parties, across the political and ideological spectrum, came together to demand quick and firm punishment for the perpetrators of murder as ghastly spectacle. In the days ahead, we wrote in our editorial, parties and governments would also need to rise to a shared challenge - "…it will be the work of politics to ensure that important distinctions are not blurred and crucial perspective is not lost in a climate in which prime-time TV seems to increasingly take its cue from the fringe and hardliners, and too many of those with a social media account unresistingly give in to the temptation of delivering instant justice on complex issues by playing judge, jury and executioner. The industry of hurt sentiments is quite capable of manufacturing hate and violence, too." On Thursday, the political drama in Maharashtra climaxed with an unexpected swearing-in - of chief Shiv Sena rebel Eknath Shinde as the state's new chief minister, with Devendra Fadnavis, seen to be puppeteer-in-chief of the implosion of the Uddhav Thackeray government, taking second place as his deputy. A new Speaker has been elected in the assembly by the new dispensation and the floor test will take place tomorrow. Questions have been sparked by the episode of the fall and rise of governments in Maharashtra: About the Shiv Sena's future - will the outfit founded and nurtured by Bal Thackeray be able to pick up the pieces under Uddhav Thackeray? Questions that go beyond the Sena and Maharashtra: About the efficacy of the anti-defection law, and the politics of suspicion, distrust and fear that leads to the secret movement of rebel MLAs in chartered flights and their barricading in plush hotel rooms under heavy security in BJP-ruled Gujarat, Assam and Goa. Events in Maharashtra could also signal a new chapter in the story of the predatory BJP vs non-BJP state governments. What does that mean for Opposition politics, and institutions? Can the institutions of Governor and the Court, whose conduct has raised concerns in the Maharashtra episode about their insulation from the dominant politics of the day, step up in trying times to the letter and spirit of the Constitution? Beyond Hyderabad, the BJP needs to reflect on these three images from last week - the arrest of a journalist, anxieties stoked by a killing in Udaipur, and rebel Shiv Sena MLAs ensconced in heavy security and luxury in three BJP-ruled states. How the party looks at them, how it addresses the concerns they raise, will have important consequences. Till next week, Vandita | 
