UPA remains united; Hemant, Dhiraj win RS seats

Vijay Deo Jha Ranchi June21, Front Page

The defeat of both the BJP candidates in the Rajya Sabha by-elections, Ajay Maru and Anup Agrawal, against JMM and Congress nominees Hemant Soren and Dhiraj Prasad Sahu respectively, had no element of surprise.

But the startling fact is that the Congress candidate Sahu got 44 votes against the BJP candidate Anup Agrawal whose hope to join the upper house staggered with 26 votes. Sahu got the support of the all independent MLAs besides one vote of the JD(U) legislator Radhakrishna Kishore.

Kishore, nevertheless, voted for Maru when it came to voting for the second seat.Nevertheless, this whooping margin declined in the case of Hemant Soren who got 38 votes against the BJP candidate Maru who managed 30 votes.

In a house with strength of 81 which is now reduced to 73, a total of 71 MLAs participated in the voting. The CPIML legislator from Bagodar Vinod Kumar Singh and Forward Block MLA Aparnasen Gupta abstained from voting.

Election for the two Rajya Sabha seats from Jharkhand were held on Saturday after Yaswant Sinha of the BJP and Digvijay Singh of the JD(U) won the parliamentary elections from Hazaribagh and Banka (Bihar).

In the counting of votes for the second seat two votes of the RJD MLAs- Uday Shankar Singh of Sarath and Ramchandra Singh of Manika - were rejected after they declined to follow the party instruction to cast vote by showing it to their election agent. Unfortunately both the votes of the JD(U) legislator Khiru Mahto were termed invalid which came as a loss for the BJP.

The result of both the seats brought an interesting yet baffling political alchemy of the State politics. Sahu had an extended support base among the AJSU camp besides the JD(U) where Kishore openly accepted that he voted for the Congress instead the BJP.

Kishore had a well prepared political answer to justify his decision and invariably blamed the BJP for a change in his stance.Two MLAs of Jharkhand party — Ainosh Ekka and Raja Peter — also became agents of the victory of Sahu besides other independent MLAs.

But the poll pattern and the mood of the legislators changed when it came to choose between Hemant Soren and Maru. AJSU chief Sudesh Kumar Mahto and party MLA Chandraprakash Chaudhary voted for Maru. Hemant never was a choice for Ekka and Peter. Suspended BJP MLA Manohar Tekriwal voted for Hemant Soren but he also kept the BJP bosses in good humour by casting his vote for another BJP candidate Anup Agrawal in the voting for the first seat.

But if there is anything newsworthy in the voting it is the crumbling index of the NDA unity. It had started with ominous creaking noise of Kishore well before the elections. In a precarious number game that was never in favour of BJP from the very beginning the JD(U) could never be an instrument of BJP's victory or defeat as such.

But the way Kishore cast his luck with the Congress it only rattled the State BJP. Kishore must be happy with discomfiture of the BJP candidates. He seems to have compensated for the loss that he suffered in the general election in Palamu due to BJP's lack of cooperation.

State JD(U) president Jaleswar Mahto said: "I will write to the central high command of the party in this regard and will ask them to take appropriate decision in this regard."Just two days before the elections Kishore suddenly became nostalgic to his good old days in the Congress. He met senior Congress leaders and never ruled out the possibility of his homecoming.

The elections will have a far reaching political impact in the coming days' politics of Jharkhand as the election result has tripped a radical political realignment. After the election result State Congress co in-charge Abdul Mannan announced that the NDA's dream to win Jharkhand was 'doomed'.

"This is a first step, and, in the coming days, the UPA will emerge as a solid rock." He, nevertheless, remained conspicuously silent over the immediate political course of the UPA: the formation of the UPA Government in Jharkhand.

"We will explore the possibility to form the Government in Jharkhand," Mannan said. For the JMM insiders the election results are the reference point, the next political drama is yet to start.