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Thursday, Jul 22, 2004

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National

Surprise Sena nomination

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JULY 21. The surprise entry of a Shiv Sena candidate, Eknath Thakur, in the election for the post of Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha scheduled for noon tomorrow, has upset the calculation that the Congress candidate, K. Rahman Khan, was set to be elected unanimously.

However, Mr. Rehman's victory appeared certain with not only the entire United Progressive Alliance but also the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party favouring his candidature. The President accepted Mr. Rahman's resignation from the Council of Ministers sent to the Prime Minister yesterday.

The Bharatiya Janata Party was embarrassed as its leader in the Rajya Sabha, Jaswant Singh, had given his word to the Congress that the party was agreeable to the post of Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson being filled through consensus rather than a contested election. Yesterday, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, had conveyed the name of the Congress candidate to Mr. Singh and he had raised no objection on behalf of the BJP or its allies.

``A token fight''

Some Sena MPs made it clear that the party had decided to put up a ``token'' fight as the BJP had taken it for granted and failed to consult it before conveying its agreement to the election-by-consensus proposal of the Congress.

Later, the BJP deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, admitted that the Sena had only been ``informed'' about the decision to accept a Congress candidate for the position. However, she added that party general secretary, Pramod Mahajan, was talking to the Sena chief, Bal Thackeray, in Mumbai, to get him to withdraw his MP from the contest.

In any case, ``the NDA did not have the numbers to win, its total strength in the Rajya Sabha was 91,'' Ms. Swaraj said. She also made it clear that no BJP MP had proposed the name of either Mr. Thakur or Mr. Rahman. ``When the Congress agreed to consensus on the name of Manohar Joshi as Speaker in the last Lok Sabha, no Congress leader had proposed his name in the nomination papers. We are doing the same,'' she added, making a distinction between election by consensus, and an unopposed election.

Senior party leaders of the BJP also made it clear that having given their ``word'' to the Congress they would not vote for the Sena candidate. If Mr. Thakur were not to withdraw from the race BJP MPs may abstain, they said, pointing out that with the Assembly elections in Maharashtra just a few months away they could not afford to vote for Mr. Rahman ``against'' Mr. Thakur. The decision will be taken by the party tomorrow morning when all NDA MPs will be meeting to chalk out their parliamentary strategy for the remaining days of the session. By noon today, the deadline for filing of nomination papers, there were several sets of nomination papers in favour of Mr. Khan. His name was proposed, among others, by Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP, A. Vijayaraghavan, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader, Ram Deo Bhandary, Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Mayawati, and Samajwadi Party MP, Uday Pratap Singh. Shiv Sena MPs alone signed the nomination papers in favour of Mr. Thakur. It was clear that Mr. Khan would face no problem in getting elected.

Mr. Azad appeared totally unruffled by this development. He said there was no need for him to talk to the Shiv Sena, but ``if necessary'' he would talk to the party MPs. When asked whether he would request Mr. Thackeray to withdraw his nominee, he pointed out that the Sena chief was ``not an MP'' and he would ``only talk to MPs''. He was also confident that the BJP would not support Mr. Thakur. ``BJP leaders gave me their word yesterday and today.''

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