From Bihar, the BJP can send only one candidate to the Rajya Sabha this time.
NEW DELHI: The parliamentary innings of BJP veterans C.P. Thakur, who served as the Union Health minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cabinet, and Ravindra Kishore Sinha, is all set to end as the BJP leadership is unlikely to give them another Rajya Sabha tenure. The tenure of both Thakur, an influential Bhumihar leader, and Sinha, one of the prominent representatives of the Kayastha community, is all set to end on 20 April.
From Bihar, the BJP can only send one candidate to the Rajya Sabha this time; the other four seats that will fall vacant will be filled by candidates from Janata Dal United (JDU) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
Apart from Thakur and Sinha, the tenure of deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha, Harivansh, Kahkashan Perween and Ramnath Thakur, all three from JDU, will be ending in April.
The 88-year-old C.P. Thakur, who was first elected as a Lok Sabha MP from Congress in 1980—the same year when he was given the Padma Shri award for his work towards eradicating Kala-azar—has been speaking out against the party’s “stand” to ignore the upper caste in general and Bhumihars in particular in the new political alignment post the Vajpayee-Advani era and during the May 2019 general election, was requested by the then party president Amit Shah to come and meet him in Delhi after Thakur had become vociferous on the “unkind treatment” that the party was giving to the Bhumihars in Bihar.
There is speculation among the state party leaders that Thakur, who was in Delhi last week to attend the marriage function of the son of the party’s national vice president Prabhat Jha, has reportedly sought the Rajya Sabha seat for his son Vivek Thakur, who had contested the Assembly elections in 2015, but could not win. Vivek Thakur has also been the national vice president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) and Member of Legislative Council (MLC) in the past. Similarly, the 68-year-old Ravindra Kishore Sinha, who is the founder and chairman of the multi-crore worth SIS Securities, too, is unlikely to be given the party nomination. Sinha, who also heads the Hindusthan Samachar news agency, had angered a section of the party leadership during the 2019 elections when he had pushed ahead with his demands to seek a Lok Sabha ticket for either him or his son, Rituraj, from Patna Saheb, a seat which was also being coveted by Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The RSS, which had always supported R.K. Sinha during his initial days when he used to travel on a bicycle, had to finally step in to sort out the differences and the seat finally went to Ravi Shankar Prasad who won it with a handsome margin of more than 2.85 lakh votes. He defeated Shatrughan Sinha who had contested on a Congress ticket. Rituraj is presently a secretary in Bihar BJP. According to party sources, the seat is likely to be given to another Bhumihar leader as the Kayastha community, which R.K. Sinha represents, has already been given a representation from the state in the face of Ravi Shankar Prasad. The Assembly elections in Bihar are scheduled for November this year and hence choosing a right candidate when it comes to caste considerations will perhaps be the most important factor to decide who will be the party nominee for the Rajya Sabha.