Geeta Koda may contest the Lok Sabha elections next year from Singhbhum, also called Chaibasa.
Congress has inducted Geeta Koda, wife of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda who is undergoing trial for his alleged involvement in the infamous coal and iron ore mining scam worth Rs 4,000 crore. The party had supported the Koda government, along with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), between 2006 and 2008 when the scam took place.
According to sources, Geeta Koda may contest the Lok Sabha election next year from Singhbhum (also called Chaibasa) constituency on a Congress ticket. The seat is currently held by state BJP president Laxman Gilua.
Presently, Madhu Koda is out on bail in the case which is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The move has come as a surprise to the ruling BJP as Geeta Koda, an Independent MLA from Jagannathpur, was supporting the Raghubar Das government in the state. She had even supported the NDA’s Rajya Sabha candidates M.J. Akbar and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi in the past.
Though there was talk of the Koda couple joining the Congress for quite some time, Geeta Koda finally joined the grand old party last week in the national capital in the presence of party president Rahul Gandhi. The Congress was about to induct her in December 2013, just before the Lok Sabha elections, but deferred it at the last moment.
Madhu Koda was in the BJP and won from the constituency, but contested the seat as an Independent when he was denied a ticket in the 2005 Assembly elections. He became the first independent MLA to become Chief Minister and his name found a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Interestingly, Madhu Koda was an MLA from the same constituency when he became the Chief Minister in 2006. In 2009, he successfully contested the Lok Sabha elections from Singhbhum, but lost to Gilua in 2014.
The source said Madhu Koda’s Jai Bharat Samanta Party has considerable influence in at least five of the six Assembly segments in the Chaibasa constituency and, therefore, may have a considerable impact in these areas in the coming elections.
Madhu Koda was alleged to be involved in the coal and mining scam. He allegedly took huge bribes for illegally allotting iron ore and coal mines in the state. It was estimated by the investigating agencies that Koda and his associates collected over Rs 4,000 crore through the scam.
Senior state BJP leader Ramesh Pushkar said: “By inducting Geeta Koda into the party, Congress is ‘institutionalising’ corruption. This proves that Congress leaders, too, were hand in glove with the then Chief Minister who was involved in the scam.”
Pushkar also said Congress “used” Koda for narrow gains. “The Congress created Madhu Koda, supported his government, which was involved in corruption and then sent him to jail. And now, the same Congress has inducted his wife into its fold for sheer political opportunism. They ate the ‘madhu’ (honey) out of Madhu Koda and left ‘koda’ (whip) for him.”
However, defending the decision to induct Geeta Koda, state Congress spokesperson Alok Dubey said: “Madhu Koda is out on bail and the cases against him are fabricated. Moreover, there is no corruption case against Geeta Koda in particular.”
“BJP is feeling restless because she chose to join the Congress and therefore they are raising a finger at us. BJP did not have any issue when she was supporting the NDA, but now suddenly she has become tainted for them. This is BJP’s double-standards. By criticising Geeta, their anti-tribal mindset has also been exposed as the Koda couple has wide acceptability among the tribals in the Chaibasa region,” he added.