Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 30: The selection of candidates for the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha has created turmoil in both the Janata Dal (United) and the Congress camps. While several senior leaders in Congress has questioned denial of ticket to them in preference to the unknown or little known new candidates, dropping of the only JD(U) minister in the Narendra Modi cabinet give indication of the growing discomfort between the two allies in Bihar, the JD(U) and the BJP.
The union minister of steel RCP Singh is the only JD(U) representative in the Modi cabinet and the party may have to lose its share in the central cabinet once Singh ceased to be a member of the Upper House by the end of the next month. Yet, the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar denied Singh a third term in the Upper House. The reason, the JD(U) sources believe, was Singh’s drift towards the BJP ever since he was inducted in the Modi cabinet.
In the Congress, the party’s senior leader and actor-turned politician Nagma has questioned denial of RS nomination to her in preference to a little known poet from Uttar Pradesh Imran Pratapgarhi for a berth from Maharashtra. Question have also been raised why none from Rajasthan have been named for any of the three seats from the state which is only one of the two states the Congress is in power. Denial of ticket to several senior leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma has also raised eyebrows in the party.
The elections for 57 seats to the RS across 15 states are scheduled to be held on June 10. Of the total, the Congress is expected to get 10 seats considering the party’s respective strength in various state Assemblies where the Upper House elections are scheduled to be held.
The denial of ticket to RCP Singh has not only created problem for him as he may have to resign his union ministry post, it has also pushed the BJP-JD(U) alliance in Bihar to the level of suspicion and distrust.
Once second in command in the JD(U) after Nitish Kumar, Singh’s relations with the chief minister and the JD(U) – BJP alliance started deteriorating since the 2020 state Assembly elections in Bihar which the JD(U) fought with the BJP but registered numbers lower than its ally. After that, in 2021, Singh was asked to negotiate with the BJP on the number of berths that the JD(U) wanted in the reshuffle of the Union Council of Ministers.
His party’s brief was to stand firm on four berths, Singh ended up with one Cabinet berth, accruing to himself. His bête noire, Rajiv Ranjan Singh “Lallan,” was then made JD(U) president in his stead and Singh himself attended conferences organised by Sangh Parivar offshoots and spouted an ambiguous line on a caste census, a big demand of the JD(U). Singh also failed to broker a seat-sharing understanding with the BJP for the last Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections forcing the JD(U) to go it alone and ended up a cropper.
Singh also stayed away from the campaign. Singh didn’t vote in the legislative council elections. He also skipped Nitish Kumar’s Iftar party and arranged an Eid Milan event at his native village Mustafapur at the same time. Nitish Kumar was reportedly also annoyed at his former lieutenant’s closeness with the BJP brass, including the party’s Bihar in-charge and Union Minister Bhupendra Yadav, whom the Chief Minister blames for the friction in the alliance.
Kumar, still smarting from the results of the Bihar Assembly poll, which left him a junior partner in the State government, tended to blame it on Lok Janshakti Party’s Chirag Paswan’s vote-cutter act, which he felt was not reined in by the BJP and was, in fact, backed by it. Since November-December last year, he has met with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejaswi Yadav, a development that has raised more than a few eyebrows in Patna and led the BJP to announce that it would be joining the all-party meet on the demand for a caste census being organised by Kumar, a demand that the BJP has not exactly supported in the past.
Quite clearly, Nitish Kumar is trying to send a message to his alliance partner, the BJP, that he is not happy with the space he is occupying in the alliance. But the BJP is keen to keep the alliance going because unlike in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP in Bihar suffers from an inability to mobilise support from several sections of society like the Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) in the State and needs Kumar to provide it. But Nitish Kumar by showing closer proximity to the RJD apparently is signalling to the big brother that he has other options and RCP Singh may have been made the pawn for the demonstration.
Though Singh’s being dropped was a forgone conclusion, the choice of Khiru Mahto, Jharkhand JDU chief, has intrigued even Nitish Kumar’s strongest supporters. No one has been able to decode why he would try to strengthen the party in neighbouring Jharkhand at a time it is floundering in Bihar.
In the Congress, a day after the party announced its Rajya Sabha nominees, all hell has broken loose with actor-turned-politician Nagma on Monday expressing discontent over not getting a berth in the Upper House. Taking to Twitter, Ms Nagma said, “Sonia Ji, our Congress president had personally committed to accommodating me in RS in 2003/04 when I joined Congress party at her behest. We were not in power then. Since then it is been 18 years, they did not find an opportunity. Imran is accommodated in RS from Maharashtra. I ask am I less deserving.” “Our 18 years of penance also fell short in front of Imran Bhai,” she said earlier.
The Congress party on Sunday announced the names of 10 candidates from seven states for the Rajya Sabha elections. The names of many prominent leaders are missing from the list leading to voices of dissatisfaction rising in the party. Randeep Singh Surjewala, Mukul Wasnik and Pramod Tiwari have been made candidates from Rajasthan. All these three leaders do not belong to Rajasthan.
Congress MLA from Sirohi in Rajasthan, Sanyam Lodha raised the question why no one has been nominated from Rajasthan. “The Congress party should tell what is the reason for not making any Congress leader/worker from Rajasthan, a candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections?” he wrote in a tweet. Pawan Kheda, who hails from Rajasthan, was a contender for Rajya Sabha in Congress. But his name is also not included in the list. After the release of the list, he tweeted, “Maybe there is something missing in my penance.”
The Congress on Sunday opted for apparently lightweight candidates like Imran Pratapgarhi and Ranjeet Ranjan for the Rajya Sabha polls, contrary to speculation about accommodating veterans Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma. Pratapgarhi, the party’s minority department chairperson and a poet from Uttar Pradesh, has been fielded from Maharashtra.
The Congress selection of candidates provided an opportunity to the Rajasthan BJP chief Satish Poonia to take a jibe at the Congress party. He tweeted in Hindi and wrote, “Congress’s Chintan Shivir took place in Rajasthan. Now, look at another achievement of this thinking. Observe the quota of local candidates….without ‘local’ who will be ‘vocal’..?” The Congress party has fielded Rajeev Shukla, Ajay Maken, and Jairam Ramesh from Chhattisgarh, Haryana, and Karnataka respectively. P Chidambaram, who is an MP in the Rajya Sabha, has once again been given a run from Tamil Nadu, while Ranjeet Ranjan has been fielded from Chhattisgarh. The party has fielded Vivek Tankha as a candidate from Madhya Pradesh.
Reacting to the list, co-incharge of Gujarat Congress Jitendra Baghel asked on Twitter: “Would you tell us how many of these candidates are from OBC/SC/ST?” Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi has approved them as the Congress candidates to contest the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha from the states, a statement read duly signed by General Secretary Mukul Wasnik.