Of the states which held polls, MP, Rajasthan, Gujarat made a political statement.
New Delhi: The first green shoots of political activity post the corona lockdown were the spate of Rajya Sabha elections held on Friday. While 24 seats fell vacant, elections were held for 19 of these across eight states. The other five won unopposed and these included Deve Gowda and Malikkarjun Kharge from Karnataka.
Of the states which held elections, those that made a political statement were Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
The Rajya Sabha battle for Madhya Pradesh had begun well before the lockdown and saw a high profile defection from the Congress as Jyotiraditya Scindia changed sides and crossed over to the BJP, all in the quest of a Rajya Sahba seat. He was apparently unhappy that he was overlooked for Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh in the Congress list.
The rest is history for that one seat cost the Congress dearly as the Kamal Nath government fell soon after as 24 MLAs also switched sides along with Scindia. That also tipped the balance in favour of the BJP during the Rajya Sabha polls as it won 2 of the 3 seats from the state.
Clearly, the BJP was hoping to do a repeat in Rajasthan when it fielded two candidates for the state’s three seats. The Congress also fielded two and worried that his MLAs would be open to overtures from the BJP; the state Chief Minister Ashok Gehlok whisked them all away to a resort on the Delhi-Jaipur highway from where he held a press conference a day claiming that his MLAs were being offered as much as Rs 25-30 crore each to switch sides (Interestingly, Kamal Nath had also made a similar claim).
On record, Gehlot said that he was worried about the 10 Independent MLAs who are supporting his government (which has a wafer thin majority). Off record, the concern was that this deputy CM Sachin Pilot may not be tempted to do a Scindia and defect with a chunk of his men. But perhaps realising that his future is brighter within the Congress (despite the fact that he doesn’t get along with his CM), Pilot closed ranks and both the Congress candidates were elected, while the BJP could get only one of its through.
That one of the Congress nominees was Rahul Gandhi’s favourite General Secretary K.C. Venugopal had only raised the stakes for the Congress. And in Gujarat which saw as many as 8 MLAs defect to the BJP from the Congress (of these three were in June and five in March), the Congress could only get one of its candidates—Shaktisinh Gohil elected—while the BJP got three of its candidates: Abhay Bharadwaj, Ramilaben Bara and Narhari Amin. Although the Congress had fielded two candidates for the polls, the last minute defections reduced its tally to 65 as opposed to the 77 it had won in the 2017 elections.
Perhaps a silver lining there for the BJP which had been worsted in the last Rajya Sabha battle in the state when it tried to scuttle Ahmed Patel’s Rajya Sabha win in 2017.
The other seat went according to script with Jharkhand Mukti Morcha Chief Shibu Soren winning from Jharkhand along with the BJP’s Deepak Prakash. Manipur saw the win of the MNF candidate K. Vanlalvena, Meghalaya saw the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance’s candidate W.R. Karlukhi win, while in Manipur, the BJPs Maharaj Sanajaoba Leishemba won. The one other state that made a political statement was Andhra Pradesh where the ruling YSRC got all four seats, leaving none for the TDP. In fact, the TDP candidate could only get 17 of the party’s 23 votes.
This was an election not without its drama for it did see the fall of one state government (Madhya Pradesh) and sent tremors down another (Rajasthan). It also had its fair share of resort politics that are now unfortunately a staple part of Indian politics.